Dark Souls 2, Fixer-Upper Edition
In short it is a moderately improved version of Dark Souls 2. Of course its flawed core is still the same, and it's not as though they redesigned all the level layouts. So it's still easily the least of the Souls games. However, every part that was outright bad in the original release is either fixed or massaged. One of the most egregious parts of the base game, the run up to Velstadt in the Undead Crypt level, is much improved, for example. Instead of seven fucking guys blocking the door it's two guys and a dragon rider that doesn't respawn. It's the same idea: King Vendrick has his tomb under high security. The difference is that now it isn't painfully boring to play through.
One of the biggest problems is one that they possibly made worse, though. The beginning of the game is practically enjoyment poison and starts you out under-powered and under-equipped. It actually made me quit somewhere around the Lost Bastille the first time I tried to replay the game with the Scholar of the First Sin add-on. There are still some boss runs that are so laborious I made the decision to cheesedick my way through them and grind through them until I de-spawned all of the enemies. Notably the run-up to the Smelter Demon, while better than the original simply because they removed the archer that was the bane of my existence back in 2014, has issues with enemy detection range turning it into a gank arena unless you carefully bait each enemy out individually.
The DLC is included, of course, and while it's not the saving grace some make it out to be, it is of a higher standard than much of the base game even considering the Scholar of the First Sin's alterations. Bonfires are placed much more intelligently and with tons of shortcuts.
The Crown of the Sunken King is a great piece of content. It does some really clever stuff with rising and lowering platforms. The configuration you put these platforms in can be both beneficial and disadvantageous in different ways which encourages thoughtfulness. It ends with a pretty decent boss fight as well.
The Crown of the Iron King is probably the weakest DLC. The level design isn't hugely special and some of the gimmicks are lame, but it does have two of the best bosses in Dark Souls 2-- and pretty high up there in terms of the whole series.
The Crown of the Ivory King comes in second. It has a cute idea where you go through the same zone twice under two different conditions. It's got some fun discovery going on in the second half, but it definitely feels like recycling. The enemies in this one are obnoxious.
The DLC was all made with end-game characters in mind, so there's a bit of a problem with HP bloat. As a scimitar user there was a pretty significant cap on the amount of damage I could do no matter how levelled my characters and weapons were. This seemed to be the biggest problem in Ivory King. Furthermore, each DLC has an optional area built to be extra-challenging. I would greatly suggest not even bothering since Dark Souls 2's idea of difficulty for difficulty's sake has never been a standard-bearer and your only rewards are some incredibly lame, recycled boss fights. Want to fight the Smelter Demon again, except this time he's blue and even more shitty? Didn't think so.
It's Dark Souls 2 but moderately improved. The first time I played Dark Souls 2 back in 2014 my takeaway was that it was, "pretty okay, but flawed." That said, every time I've tried to revisit the game, including my first shot at Scholar of the First Sin, my reaction was closer to, "Wow, this game is a heap of dog shit." After playing through Scholar pretty thoroughly, my opinion has switched back to, "pretty okay, but flawed". I certainly got invested, I couldn't help but play for hours at a time, and I thought about the game a lot when I wasn't playing it. If we're talking about the immutable sanctity of the series then, no, it doesn't measure up. But it's fine. It's fine.