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A question for those who have played both Dark Soals and Skyrim.

I played Skyrim a bunch of hours yesterday. Enemies didn't react to my blows, I was just flapping my sword around. I can already tell 95% of the loot is going to be trash. I tried to kill the annoying tutorial guy but he would only kneel down, only to get back up being completely friendly again. I ran around and saw a deer... I could keep up with the fucking deer, running, until he decided to go diving in a river; I gave chase and died asfixiated, looking at the deer happily swimming around at the bottom of the river. In the beggining sequence, some dude tried to run from the guards that were going to execute him... and he managed to do it! but apparently the imperial soldier didn't notice and asked "anyone else want to try?". Some dude tried to move some rocks "I just need to move these rocks" then he suddenly ragdolls lol. The scripted dragon sequence was so fucking embarassing...
Pure comedy, but as a game, it's mediocre. The setting is as generic as they come, and I can already tell the story is on the level of nerd fantasy salvatore shit. I'm going to kill every npc I can, I don't need bad voice acting ugly faces stating the obvious predictable plot.

Whereas Dark Souls, on the other hand, meshes absolutely beautiful and unique backdrops with realistic and rewarding combat. Each encounter is carefully crafted to provide a different challenge, there was a lot of thought put on game design (saving the last areas, which I suspect were rushed). Just think about the path leading to the Undead Parish from the broken statue altar. Look at the enemy placement and the enviroment; that's amazing and carefully planned game design.
Skyrim game design is non existant; when you pit it against Dark Souls, it feels like they vomited everything on the game world, copypasted trees and mountains everywhere and called it a day.
Dark Souls story is minimalistic and is just another thing you have to "beat". For example, if you want to know what happened to the daughter of chaos, you need to gather clues. It's not "on your face", but a word is enough to the wise.
Dark Souls in general is a game that requires commitement. If you're looking for an alpha wave game, Dark Souls is not for you.

I could go on and on but Skyrim is just the inferior game. The difference beetwen playing Skyrim and playing DS is like the difference beetwen picking your nose and playing Megaman 2.
 
Dark Souls I found to be engaging and difficult, but ultimately quite rewarding as a result.

Skyrim I found to be fun and much more forgiving, and more entertaining as a result.

Of the two, I've put around 15 hours into DS and 40 hours into Skyrim. Skyrim has an addictive quality Dark Souls just hasn't got for me. I simply cannot wait to play Skyrim again - Dark Souls on the other hand, I will finish AFTER I'm done with Skyrim. I'm having too much fun in Skyrim to play any other game. The random encounters, the crafting, the exploration, the replayability, its just a great package that will only get better once the creation kit is released and the modding starts. Dark Souls is a great game but Skyrim is fantastic.
 
DKnight said:
I played Skyrim a bunch of hours yesterday. Enemies didn't react to my blows, I was just flapping my sword around. I can already tell 95% of the loot is going to be trash. I tried to kill the annoying tutorial guy but he would only kneel down, only to get back up being completely friendly again. I ran around and saw a deer... I could keep up with the fucking deer, running, until he decided to go diving in a river; I gave chase and died asfixiated, looking at the deer happily swimming around at the bottom of the river. In the beggining sequence, some dude tried to run from the guards that were going to execute him... and he managed to do it! but apparently the imperial soldier didn't notice and asked "anyone else want to try?". Some dude tried to move some rocks "I just need to move these rocks" then he suddenly ragdolls lol. The scripted dragon sequence was so fucking embarassing...
Pure comedy, but as a game, it's mediocre. The setting is as generic as they come, and I can already tell the story is on the level of nerd fantasy salvatore shit. I'm going to kill every npc I can, I don't need bad voice acting ugly faces stating the obvious predictable plot.

Whereas Dark Souls, on the other hand, meshes absolutely beautiful and unique backdrops with realistic and rewarding combat. Each encounter is carefully crafted to provide a different challenge, there was a lot of thought put on game design (saving the last areas, which I suspect were rushed). Just think about the path leading to the Undead Parish from the broken statue altar. Look at the enemy placement and the enviroment; that's amazing and carefully planned game design.
Skyrim game design is non existant; when you pit it against Dark Souls, it feels like they vomited everything on the game world, copypasted trees and mountains everywhere and called it a day.
Click to expand...



Most of your problems with bugs are quite typical of free-roaming worlds, specially of this nature. As for enemy placement, reuse of assets, well it's a huge sandbox game, not a bunch of interconnected levels carefully crafted. This games are completely different in nature and can't be directly compared. What did you expect? Every tree unique and every enemy carefully placed in Skyrim's world? Cut the fucking bulshit. There's a difference between constructive criticism and fanboyish bulshit, as this thread has shown. Your comments fit the later rather well.
 
DKnight said:
I played Skyrim a bunch of hours yesterday. Enemies didn't react to my blows, I was just flapping my sword around. I can already tell 95% of the loot is going to be trash. I tried to kill the annoying tutorial guy but he would only kneel down, only to get back up being completely friendly again. I ran around and saw a deer... I could keep up with the fucking deer, running, until he decided to go diving in a river; I gave chase and died asfixiated, looking at the deer happily swimming around at the bottom of the river. In the beggining sequence, some dude tried to run from the guards that were going to execute him... and he managed to do it! but apparently the imperial soldier didn't notice and asked "anyone else want to try?". Some dude tried to move some rocks "I just need to move these rocks" then he suddenly ragdolls lol. The scripted dragon sequence was so fucking embarassing...
Pure comedy, but as a game, it's mediocre. The setting is as generic as they come, and I can already tell the story is on the level of nerd fantasy salvatore shit. I'm going to kill every npc I can, I don't need bad voice acting ugly faces stating the obvious predictable plot.

Whereas Dark Souls, on the other hand, meshes absolutely beautiful and unique backdrops with realistic and rewarding combat. Each encounter is carefully crafted to provide a different challenge, there was a lot of thought put on game design (saving the last areas, which I suspect were rushed). Just think about the path leading to the Undead Parish from the broken statue altar. Look at the enemy placement and the enviroment; that's amazing and carefully planned game design.
Skyrim game design is non existant; when you pit it against Dark Souls, it feels like they vomited everything on the game world, copypasted trees and mountains everywhere and called it a day.
Dark Souls story is minimalistic and is just another thing you have to "beat". For example, if you want to know what happened to the daughter of chaos, you need to gather clues. It's not "on your face", but a word is enough to the wise.
Dark Souls in general is a game that requires commitement. If you're looking for an alpha wave game, Dark Souls is not for you.

I could go on and on but Skyrim is just the inferior game. The difference beetwen playing Skyrim and playing DS is like the difference beetwen picking your nose and playing Megaman 2.
Click to expand...

Jesus christ. Game design non-existant? Vomited everything on the game world? Megaman 2? A lot of people are gracious enough to recognise the positive aspects of both games. If you turned the hyperbole down I might have agreed with you on some of your points. There's a way to get your points across and have them resonate, instead you've decided not to be taken seriously. Fair enough.
 
They are both great. Dark Souls is hardly the paragon of perfection that the totally insane fanboys that are crawling out of the woodwork in this thread will have you believe. Skyrim isn't perfect in a lot of ways either, but they definitely are two of the best games of the year for quite distant reasons.

Tell you what, if you are just using bows then Skyrim's combat is way better than Dark Souls.
 
130+ hours in Dark Souls and currently 50 in Skyrim. Both are awesome. I'm starting to get a little bored in Skyrim though but the world still pulls me in.

I'll definitely will be returning to Dark Souls soon and in the end it's a better game in my opinion. But putting them against each other is needless since they're both very different. Both require huge chunks of time so I see why would one need to choose between them though.

And Dark Souls isn't as difficult as people say. I consider myself mediocre in games and I could beat it. Of course there's challenge that requires the kind of patience which isn't too common in modern gaming but that's the way it's designed.
 
Foliorum Viridum said:
I'd say satisfaction is at least 50% of the game, if not more.

The only time the game is more frustrating than satisfying is in the first few hours when you're finding your feet.
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This is exactly right. The first few hours, as you are just learning the pace and combat, as you realize that you will have to be cautious in your exploration, this is the hardest part of the game, especially so if you are entirely new to the series as I was.

But once you get that rythm, it's pure bliss.
 
crayman said:
They are both great. Dark Souls is hardly the paragon of perfection that the totally insane fanboys that are crawling out of the woodwork in this thread will have you believe. Skyrim isn't perfect in a lot of ways either, but they definitely are two of the best games of the year for quite distant reasons.

Tell you what, if you are just using bows then Skyrim's combat is way better than Dark Souls.
Click to expand...

Magic is extremely satisfying in Skyrim too. The problem is really the h-to-h combat. It sucks so much that I can't even understand how people can play it that way lol. And this comming from someone that plays always combat oriented characters. Not with Skyrim (or ES games in general). But then again, first person combat is never optimal compared to third person.
 
bob_arctor said:
This is exactly right. The first few hours, as you are just learning the pace and combat, as you realize that you will have to be cautious in your exploration, this is the hardest part of the game, especially so if you are entirely new to the series as I was.

But once you get that rythm, it's pure bliss.
Click to expand...

Even though I finished Demon's Souls and thought I would find Dark easier, I still got really frustrated in the first few hours. It definitely requires you to re-learn a lot of things and also get accustomed to the world etc.

Demon's and Dark have some of the most punishing first few hours of any games. After that, you'll even quit or fucking love it. Thankfully I'm the latter for both games.
 
Dark Souls is currently my GOTY, but some of you people are simply not accepting the very nature of open world game design, when shitting on Skyrim.
No matter what you think about it, there's not one just and only way to design games.

That said, Skyrim has a lot of problems (the lack of restrictions is not one of these, on the contrary, the game is even TOO worried about costraining you) but so does Dark Souls, which is not a perfect diamond, especially in the last levels.
It has thousands of ways to broke the balanced gameplay, it has a lot of glitches and exploits available.
Again, it is my GOTY so far and it is an exceptional game, but it's far from perfect, just like Skyrim.
 
If you have to ask, play it safe and get Skyrim. The gamers that would enjoy Dark Souls more, they know it, deep in their heart. Nothing could have stopped them from copping already.
 
ZombieSupaStar said:
dark souls whole hook is based on frustration 99% then 1% ZOMG elation, if you have any anger issues, do not buy it.
Click to expand...

+1 for ridiculous hyperbole. If the game is frustrating you that much, you need to slow the fuck down, UPGRADE YOUR WEAPONS/SHIELD, and think. People who ran in to fight the Capra Demon 20 times doing the same goddamn thing every time and expecting different results are the kind of people who I'm talking about.
 
You made a good choice with Skyrim. Dark Souls is my GOTY like a lot of people in this thread but when I come home from work after a stressful day there is no way I can get into Dark Souls, whereas Skyrim I can just start up and lose myself. The characters are most definitely voiced better than any other TES game (or gamebryo game for that matter) and the locations are more detailed and interesting than any other sandbox RPG out there.

That being said you will need to play Dark Souls eventually.

Dark Souls is unique (sans Demon's Souls of course) and on another level though as others have hinted. I've picked up so many games the past few weeks. Super Mario 3d Land, Skyrim, Zelda SS, Uncharted 3... I still keep using the majority of my gaming time going back and attempting to make it through my NG+ on Dark Souls. Everything about the game has a weight to it that gives it a very 'real' feel. It makes your progress feel meaningful.
 
I will probably be told to gtfo, but how/why even bother comparing Skyrim with Dark Souls?

I have played and throughly enjoy both games, for completely separate reasons. They are both great games. If this truly is a "which should I get?" thread, then I say get both!

However, based on the OP, I think you would enjoy Skyrim more
 
I thought about it, and I think it's very difficult to answer. Dark Souls is fantastic, but so is Skyrim, in their own ways. They are so different from each other I can't really compare them.
All I know is, I'd like a game like Skyrim with Dark Souls' fighting engine and animation (I just adore that there is no "ice-skating" in DS..), AND not the least the sense of difficulty and progression. I'd like to feel that I can't do this until I'm way more experienced. I'd like to feel the "fear" I have when I play Dark Souls.
I actually think I've put in more hours in Skyrim by now... And I'd like to go back to Dark Souls at some point.
 
I'm really not seeing the harm in comparing these games.

Would everybody be similarly against comparing King's Field or Arx Fatalis and Skyrim?

Can we really not acknowledge that the games have different goals but still might do things better or worse than the other? And that those things might be more or less important than one another?

I see this phobia all over the place on GAF, and I understand that you aren't going to get much out of comparing Metal Slug to Civilization, but that's not the gap we're looking at right now.
 
Tain said:
I'm really not seeing the harm in comparing these games.

Would everybody be similarly against comparing King's Field or Arx Fatalis and Skyrim?

Can we really not acknowledge that the games have different goals but still might do things better or worse than the other? And that those things might be more or less important than one another?

I see this phobia all over the place on GAF, and I understand that you aren't going to get much out of comparing Metal Slug to Civilization, but that's not the gap we're looking at right now.
Click to expand...

Well in that case why don't we do what Gametrailers was originally going to do before they started this shit and compare Skyrim to ME3? Another game that really isn't that comparable to Skyrim, but let's do it anyway for some reason.
 
A little further apart, maybe, but I'd have nothing against some dude making a thread asking for comparisons between the two.
 
the Souls games are about the tension of slowly walking through an area you haven't explored before, shield up, listening for footsteps, the creak of undead bones, the hiss of monsters lurking around the corner. That tension slowly rising, punctuated by moments of agony as you die, and you venture forth again, and you die, and it drums to a crescendo as you hit a boss and when you triumph - motherfucking satisfaction.

Skyrim is about filling your house up with junk and unique items you'll never use. (I love Skyrim).
 
revolverjgw said:
But not TOO guilty... the general flow of these games can get on my nerves. Example, I'd be inching my way through that long forest, then encounter a giant hydra... fascinated, I'd cautiously fight my way closer to him and get one-shot when he saw me. Fine, next time I'll be more careful, I'd try something different, and then something different again.. eventually making the boring trip back to that area from the nearest bonfire just grated on my nerves. There was a lot of that... I'd fail at something, which was fine, but having to make my way back through long areas that no longer presented challenges would make me stop trying. The shortcuts and bonfires seemed awkwardly placed... sometimes they'd be convenient and encourage experimentation knowing I wouldn't waste too much time fighting my way back to a tricky spot, sometimes there would be ridiculously spaced out and made me not want to bother.
Click to expand...

Gotta agree with this. A friend of mine started the game over again and Im waiting for him to get to level 75 so we can start co-oping again. So I decided to start up a new character with a faith build just to see the difference. It made me realize that at some point, the game just stop being fun. There are so many places I just dont wanna go again (TOTG, Blight) many places where I never have to go again (Sens) and everywhere in between is just exploration at this point. I simply hate the later levels. Everything after Londo is awful. For instance, Dukes archives should be a fun level but the enemy placement there is terrible thus making that level near unplayable.

Kinda just wandering aimlessly with my level 80 character at this point. Not actually wanting to go anywhere.
 
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