My own list for underrated would be something like:
5. Sunken Valley - Very beautiful, with strong stealth and grappling hook gameplay, and surprising visual variety and connectivity with other areas.
4. No-Man's Wharf - Atmospheric. Ganks are punishing when rushing through but fair and rewarding when patient and clever. Strong storytelling through art, gameplay, and inference.
3. New Londo Ruins - Great lore, super atmospheric, and strong level design. Love the Darkwraiths, while the ghosts are interesting if annoying at times. Best lord soul boss despite being the only one absent from intro.
2. The Gutter - Best usage of the darkness/low visibility mechanic in series. Very layered level design that isn't too precarious but just enough to build tension, and its extremely gratifying to witness your progression by lighting more and more torches.
1. Undead Settlement - Still has some of the better layout in the series, lots of enemy types with encounters that reward the observant player, two strong minibosses, a lot of new NPCs, and great visual variety despite initial impressions.
While for overrated it would be:
5. Inner Ward - Just a bit. Great level but could never understand why so many see it as the best area in DeS.
4. Forsaken Castle Cainhurst - Visuals are amazing, sure, but story and gameplay are good. Just good. I mean, pretty linear design with as much as three different rooms just being overloaded with ghost ladies.
3. Anor Londo - Exceptional visuals and story, but gameplay ranges between some of the best in DS1, and some of the most annoying and unimaginative enemy placement and level design in the game.
2. Drangleic Castle - Walking up to it is great, but the visuals never reach that level again. Gameplay is quite decent but that's all. Did not live up to the hype.
1. Cathedral Ward - Looks way too similar to Central Yharnam. The art direction doesn't do the best job of selling what its story is supposed to be and thus doesn't do a good enough job to distinguish it; it just feels like more Yharnam. Enemies are pretty strong and varied, but level design is less so. While it has multiple paths of progression, each of those paths is narrow with little to no interconnectivity with or layering over or under the other paths, limiting the sense of exploration. One of those is outright BS with the need to do the usual Souls-style, ultra-janky platforming in the HC Workshop, and is probably the worst example of it in the series next to the Flamelurker shortcut.
