Odd symbols in ESP8266 responses to AT commands
I nutted over this for quite a while. If you look up the reference for SoftwareSerial - https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/SoftwareSerial - and look at the limitations, you'll find that it won't work above 57k baud rate and pins 2 and 3 wont support change interrupts, whatever they are.  Sometimes I think some of these projects are untested.  I think I'll use the hardware ports on two arduinos and use SoftwareSerial on the right pins and baud rate to get the two arduinos to communicate, or use Software serial to talk to the pc through a MAX232.  I don't think you'll get a 115200 baud esp to talk SoftwareSerial