dark-souls-2dark-souls-2-sotfs
I haven't played any Dark Souls 2 at all. And the difficulty of Dark Souls 1, while interesting was a bit much. I heard Dark Souls 2 Scholar raises the difficulty of DS2. So I was thinking I should buy the base DS2 game without scholar. Unless there are options in DS2:Scholar that let you play easier version and you don't miss any content.
Is there content not in DS2:Scholar that is in DS2 base? Can I play the original difficulty buying DS2:Scholar?
If you want a specific order to follow, you could go by the order each DLC area was released:
There's also the order that each becomes available as you play through the game (assuming you clear the Old Iron King's path before going towards the Rotten):
But in terms of difficulty, they're all challenging and intended to be played late enough in the game (after you've talked to Vendrick) that there shouldn't be too much of a level-difference between your character before/after each DLC area.
With all the different versions out there, the publisher made this quite confusing. If you have the DX9 version of the original game with the Season Pass, you can upgrade for 20$, without the Season Pass for 30$.
Scholar of the First Sin (SotFS) is basically a "complete edition" of the game. It includes the base game and all DLC. In addition to that, there will be a patch that adds things like new NPCs and re-balancing that is already included in the SotFS edition, but will be available as a patch for the original game as well.
The benefit of upgrading your DX9 to the DX11 version are improved graphics (obviously), and gameplay changes that are exclusive to the DX11, Xbox One and PS4 version. These include new placement of the enemies (e.g. Heide Knights actually being in Heide's Tower) and more online players in a single session. These changes will not exist in the DX9, Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
The SotFS edition for DX9, Xbox 360 and PS3 is just the patched original game plus DLC, nothing more. Players of both versions will be playing on the same servers. Players of the DX11, PS4 and One versions will play on different servers, which means you can no longer play with people who have the DX9 version on PC with the new version. You will still keep the original version though.
Here is a table that details the different versions (found on videogamer.com):
Best Answer
Basically DS2 SotFS includes all content of DS2 and 3 DLC.
But it also changes some minor things, for example casual enemy placements. In majority of cases it makes the game a bit more difficult, but also more meaningful (i.e. you have to think more and press R1 less).
Concluding:
P.S. Also if you care about PvP, it is of course more active in the latest version, i.e. SotFS.
P.P.S. This can be subjective, but DS2 difficulty is smaller than DS1, basically only DLCs are quite difficult.