The Pursuer is an asshole. Especially because he kept showing up. I've started playing DSII: SotFS again thanks largely to Dan's DS stream. The early parts of it were tough (especially if it's your first Souls game as it was for me). Ultimately, Heide's Tower of Flame was one of my favorite areas I've played through, along with No Man's Wharf and the Iron Keep. The Gutter is the only area I've hated. I'm currently in Drangleic Castle working on permadeath-ing the Ruin Sentinels. The Bandit Axe and Drangleic Set got me through much of the game to date. I'm still using the Bandit Axe +10 because the damage/speed/stamina combo is hard to beat, but moved on to wearing the Alonne Knight Set, which I like a whole lot.

I've enjoyed SotFS. Some people may call it the worst Souls game or whatever, but it's still a very good game from what I've played of it. I need to finish it, and maybe I'll stop being so grind-y and stop worrying about permadeathing everything I can to get it done, especially since I'm finding more and more enemies that respawn forever. I could easily run through the rest of the game on current stats because I'm overleveled as hell, but I've enjoyed the way I've played it. Wiping out all the enemies in an area (when possible) is still fun to me. I'm glad to be getting back into it. I'd like to finish it before DSIII and be a part of the crowd playing through that at launch, but I don't know if that's going to happen. We'll see.

I mean, I'll run off what this game does right, in my opinion.

• Healing items are plentiful so there's no grind for vials like in Bloodborne or Demon's Souls.
• Unlike DS1, there's a penalty for death which incentivises you to go human.
• NPC invasions give offline combatants a PvP experience that's easier to stomach.
• Tons of weapons which widens your options quite a bit. My run used a hand axe, magic mace and great club.
• Some really nice moments. Battling up to the Dragon Shrine, for iinstance.
• Velstadt and Smelter Demon feel like proper, rewarding encounters that felt like the game's true high point.

And the things I disliked.

• The difficulty ramp. It's not really there. Dark Souls had a sense where you'd beat a thing, be really happy with yourself and then you'd face the next hardest thing. Subsequent playthroughs have diminished this but Bloodborne had a similar feel. I feel like your start out weak and, in the end, you're still weak but are presented with some pretty weak bosses that imply you're ready for the end.
• Mobs. It goes back to feeling weak at the start but multiple enemies within the first area feel out of place, although its clear that's how Dark Souls 2 wants its encounters to be. I don't agree with that. Its a philosophy you take if you're doing DLC to challenge existing players. Not players starting out on a new game.
• A lot of bosses felt like minor obstacles. Being rehashes or homages to Dark Souls 1 is fine but very few of the revisits felt like a step-up. It also harms the player's ability to gauge just where they're at. The middle felt like pure power fantasy and then the final encounters felt like being woefully ill-prepared.
• Level design was varied but didn't feel as connected as the predecessor. It felt like levels stitched together than a descent into a genuine world.
• Armour does jack shit aside from make you look nice.

I kinda want to give this a second run just to see if I can do it better.

Lol, is there are some kind of cloning machine Pursurer found after original Dark Souls 2?

I know that the OP is no longer at issue but Dark Souls 2 was my first Souls game (I've since played all of the others to completion) and the Pursuer was my first introduction to the roadblocks that the series can create. It took me forever beat him. With regard to him, specifically, the key is to roll toward him and slightly to the right whenever he goes to hit you during his charging attack. Also, low equip load and two handing your weapon is definitely the way to go. You need to dodge roll through his attacks. You have no chance if you try to block them.

***On a broader note, this strategy actually gets at what I consider the biggest difference between Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 1. In DS2, you can roll 360 degrees when locked on to a target, and honestly, you need to be sure to take advantage of that. In Dark Souls 1, when you are locked on, you can only roll in 4 different directions: toward, away or right or left from you target. For that reason, when I played DS1 (and Demon's) after starting with Ds2, I found myself swearing at my tv constantly when I would instinctively try to roll diagonally forward and toward the shield side of a boss and the fucking game would make me roll straight toward the boss, right into his attack zone. I'd still say that's responsible for most of my deaths in those games today because I switch back and forth between them all quite a bit for PvP

Old thread that I'll add to as well!

I've been enjoying SotFS a good deal, actually. I revisited Dark Souls 2 (vanilla) after Bloodborne and the change of pace turned me off, but taking on a different build made this pretty enjoyable... Although the first several hours are rough, as Lifegems are hard to come by and 1 or 2 Estus Flasks just doesn't do it.

Parrying him goes a long way as well. I've decided to roll a Dex build with dual wielding Falchions and a small leather shield for parry moments.

There's one particular attack that's easy in particular to parry--the Pursuer will ready his sword and charge at you. The amount of time this takes gives you some breathing space to anticipate his attack (and recognize this animation, as it's very unique among his other attacks), and the windup is relatively quick enough so that timing the parry isn't awkward.