Where other games ask you to ponder whether or not to play through it, Dark Souls 2 asks you to both ponder buying it at all and which version to get.
Judging Scholar of the First Sin against the Original DS2 is a pretty complicated comparison. Players of obscure taste can sometimes lean into the original being the better version, despite having objectively less (and subjectively worse) content, enemy placement, and graphics. This is because Scholar of the First Sin, despite having more generic enemies, an extra boss, “improved” lighting / graphical fidelity, and some miscellaneous changes to boot, does not necessarily prove on its own that more and better are always the same thing. Not only this, but different and better, also, fail to shake hands on every possible occasion.
If you want the short version of the answer;
Just play Scholar of the First Sin. It’s generally considered to be the superior version by the majority of people who have played both, no matter where you look. If you’re really curious about the differences between the two versions, can always pay out extra cash to play both at different times, but more than likely you’ll be safer off going with the version that has improved graphical fidelity and extra / altered enemies to fight.
For the long answer, understand that the fact that you’re reading this article at all means that you probably don’t have the right lens through which to view these different versions accurately, anyway.
The Original Dark Souls 2 is going to have qualities that just about everyone is going to be able to appreciate. And there are absolutely going to be very specific, niche facets of the game that people prefer over Scholar. But nitpicking the details of the two versions begets more time-wasting than actually playing both versions of Dark Souls 2 if those differences really do matter.
The Original Dark Souls 2 was developed by a relatively inexperienced portion of FromSoftware while the “captains”, if you will, were busy working on Bloodborne. This means that Dark Souls 2, regardless of the version you play, will always give you the experience that only a game with an insane development cycle helmed by multiple people with a team of less experienced developers behind them can give you.
That is: both versions of the game are equally strange and “black sheep-ish”. If you want to experience that kind of game, both the original DS2 and Scholar will serve it to you in ways that are different, but not so different that the game is fundamentally changed from one version to the next. You will either love, hate, or have a strange indifference for the enigma that is Dark Souls 2 anyway: so we recommend at least finishing Scholar of the First Sin first.
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