Is the early game harder in Scholar?

In his "Dark Souls 2 is a Good Game, and Scholar RUINED It!" video ‪@feebleking21‬ made a lot of evidently false claims.

In this video I will focus on his claims that Scholar made the early game harder and that Vanilla let's you level up faster and better prepares you for multi enemy fights.

False claim 0:00
Intro 0:13
Vanilla path to Ruin Sentinels 1:16
Scholar path to Ruin Sentinels 2:56
Ruin Sentinels runback 4:26
Earlier McDuff 4:58
Early weapons 5:44
Pursuer encounters 6:57
Gargoyles and Bastille Key 7:18
Clearer intended path of progression 7:54
Earlier access to infusions 8:16
Straid 8:53
Exploding hollow ambush 9:44
Another false claim 10:37
Soul farming in Scholar 11:12
Introduction to multi enemy fights 11:30
Summary 14:55