Dark Souls Vs. Other RPGs

I'll be honest. I created this thread because I desperately want Dark Souls fans to come in here and tell me that The Witcher 2, Dragon's Dogma, and Skyrim are awesome and deeply rewarding.

I say this because I feel bad that The Witcher 2 and Skyrim are just collecting dust on my shelf as I continually find myself incapable of tearing myself away from Dark Souls. I'm particularly concerned about The Witcher 2. I bought it and haven't played it for more than an hour (not because it's a bad game, but because I just may have a bonafide DkS addiction).

So, with full knowledge that I'm asking a community of ardent Dark Souls players, I have to know: should I go out of my way to deny myself the seemingly eternal excitement of Dark Souls to make time for these other RPGs?

The Witcher 2, Dragon's Dogma, and Skyrim are awesome and deeply rewarding.

Witcher two is great - I dislike Skyrim with a Passion - every elder scrolls since TES:III has been crappy imo, DD I don't know about - I haven't tried it but it looks great.

While I'm not certain whether or not Serious' response came with a healthy dose of sarcasm (), I'm glad to know that The Witcher 2 is worth my time.

I told my brother in-law that I hadn't died in Skyrim at all and he absolutely refused to believe me. It just seems like a 'hold-my-hand-as-I-have-a-My-Little-Pony-adventure" game.

TehInfamousAmos wrote:Witcher two is great - I dislike Skyrim with a Passion - every elder scrolls since TES:III has been crappy imo, DD I don't know about - I haven't tried it but it looks great.

My thoughts as well, plus I'd add that Dragon's Dogma is quite fun if you're willing to put up with a lot of DLC shenanigans.

DKS > Witcher 2 > Dragons Dogma > kick in the pants > Skyrim

Dragon's Dogma seems (From several Youtube video's I've watched) to be a sort of "cult classic" type of experience. Sort of low end on the production values and definitely repetitive, but unique and interesting enough to be worth your time.

Skyrim, in my opinion, is amazing. I've only beat it once so far however, because it's not as addicting as Dark Souls. lol

The Witcher 2 I can't comment on. Haven't played it yet, but I hope to buy it for 360 someday.

befowler wrote:My thoughts as well, plus I'd add that Dragon's Dogma is quite fun if you're willing to put up with a lot of DLC shenanigans.

DKS > Witcher 2 > Dragons Dogma > kick in the pants > Skyrim

I hope by "put up with" you mean not purchase

and lol kick in the balls> skyrim, wouldn't go quite that far, but skyrim is a fairly shallow, hollow and all around soulless game. Not even the voice actors who get paid money to do it seem to give a ****

I really want to play the Witcher, I entirely dislike Skyrim.

Serious_Much wrote:

befowler wrote:My thoughts as well, plus I'd add that Dragon's Dogma is quite fun if you're willing to put up with a lot of DLC shenanigans.

DKS > Witcher 2 > Dragons Dogma > kick in the pants > Skyrim

I hope by "put up with" you mean not purchase

and lol kick in the balls> skyrim, wouldn't go quite that far, but skyrim is a fairly shallow, hollow and all around soulless game. Not even the voice actors who get paid money to do it seem to give a ****

Haha, yes I refuse to buy Dragon's Dogma DLCs because they're being so shady about them. I meant if you're willing to put up with the fact that half the game is missing as fake "DLCs" that should have been included.

I enjoyed Skyrim until the 20 hour mark, when it melted my PS3 because Bethesda's QA department is apparently a pack of wild howler monkeys. Only video game I've ever returned for a refund. For some perspective on that, I still own a copy of ET for the Atari 2600.

befowler wrote:

TehInfamousAmos wrote:Witcher two is great - I dislike Skyrim with a Passion - every elder scrolls since TES:III has been crappy imo, DD I don't know about - I haven't tried it but it looks great.

My thoughts as well, plus I'd add that Dragon's Dogma is quite fun if you're willing to put up with a lot of DLC shenanigans.

DKS > Witcher 2 > Dragons Dogma > kick in the pants > Skyrim

DkS = Diablo III > Dragon's Dogma = Skyrim

Dark Souls, awesome.

Diablo III, awesome.

Witcher 2, good but for some reason it can't "hook" me into playing it more time.

Skyrim, entertaining, true it's easy, fun magic, kind-of-lame melee combat, anyways the strong point of Elder Scrolls, are their quests, and their story, and in Skyrim, while quests were kind of entertaining, the story is nothing compared to Oblivion. Haven't played other elder scrolls.

Dragon's Dogma, *** awesome, but it's more a Action-RPG, much like Diablo III, you get to customize your character, armor, weapons, skills, but the quest factor it's not very strong, they are fun, but you just play it because they are fun, not because they have a deep story in it. Though the Main Story line of quests is awesome, long, and have LOTS of plot twists which will leave you with your jaw on the floor.

Other RPGs? I haven't played good RPGs in this generation, besides these, and maybe Mass Effect (though like Skyrim, the fun of it it's about quests and story, not because it's action packaged). This Generation just doesn't make enough good RPG games. All RPGs I see are either, plain bad, copy of Diablo III, or a remake/based-in-old-games.

We need more RPGs, but not just more, with need innovative ones. Dark Souls and Demon's Souls pushed the limits of how Action-RPGs are. They gave a nice touch to character leveling and customization of skills. And they gave it a nice identity because of it's difficulty. Skyrim was a bit fun but just because it's like "OH MY GAWD EPIC BATTLE AND I'M ON IT". Kind of reminds of Call of Duty, where you like it just because you see good epic backgrounds , but we need a good, innovative gameplay, not just a nice looking game.

Not talking about graphics itself, but about how gameplay is. In Call of Duty, you just are a *** Rambo, who runs everywhere shooting everyone, you're awesome, you're a hero, you go solo, you don't think, you act, and you run away from cool explosions. That isn't fun, for me at least.

Much like FPS in this generation, RPGs are mostly dead. Every FPS is a bad copy of Call of Duty/Battlefield (I like battlefield though, it has a more tactic approach at least), or a simulator. Or just it's a sci-fi shooting game in the future where you have to kill aliens because they invaded you. Even in sci-fi games they aren't innovative, most future games try to innovate with weapons, instead of gameplay mechanics.

Just that.

We need new things, that's the problem of this generation. That's why I want PS4 and Xbox 720 already, people need a new technology to get ideas, just because currently PC it's not the focus of big game industries who put the money to make games. That's also one of the reasons why most Indie studios are making new and cool games.

I would also like Cloud Gaming to be make true, that would just break the barriers of hardware, making anyone who wants to, be capable of playing games at their maximum power. It would also make easier to publish games for Indie studios . Though I think if this ever comes true, the new big companies who will control us all will be the ones that provide these services. (OnLive, Gakai).

PS: And no, I don't agree with the DLC thing about Dragon's Dogma, I played the game just fine, I loved it, it lasted 50 hours, and I almost didn't complete any secondary quests.

Oh my god, this was very long.

Skyrim is great, and I'm probably gonna get or borrow Dragon's Dogma in a few weeks.

Welp, I bought the Witcher 1 Enhanced Edition back when it was $3 on Steam, and I just played an hour. I had some frame rate problems (though I think that's on my end) and the combat felt clunkly. Mind you, I only played for an hour.

I spent 40hs in Skyrim, but it's not a game I would purchase in my opinion. It became way too repetitive, full of bugs and technical problems (PS3), and the melee system lacks weight and depth. The magic system is great though, but Destruction is a severely gimped tree without grinding Enchanting. I've only died to falls in that game, and I played all the time in Adept. It bothered me when the game decided to autosave the exact moment I tripped off a mountain range. So, yeah. Auto-death every time I loaded. And my last save had been hours ago.

Dragon's Dogma is made by Capcom. DLC shenanigans are to be expected.

But alas, my view on Action RPGs has been severely affected by Dark and Demon's Souls. They were just that much better than the competition. And I think the reason why more people haven't tried the game is because those so-called Internet Game Gurus - I mean gaming journalists, my bad - exaggerate and overreact at the difficulty of the game.

TBH I probably would have given up on Dark Souls and be stuck somewhere between Firelink and the Catacombs, if I hadn't watched my buddy play and show me all the tricks. That's when I fell in love and bought it as soon as I possibly could.

Very good post ChizFreak, thats i how see this generation. Ok, it has produced some fantastic games for me like Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption, InFamous, GTAIV, Heavy Rain etc... to name a few but there is way too many FPS's. I wouldn't mind if they were different and brought something new to the table but they all just copy CODs formula. I dont blame developers, i can imagine they want to try new innovative things but aren't allowed by their publisher because its too risky, they want to play it safe, they see the crazy sales COD gets and so instead of fresh new creative games we get another fps clone. Rockstar and Valve will never be influenced by 'whats selling' and thats why they have such high respect from gamers.

Before i played the Souls games i loved Skyrim, now i see it as a good game thats just... "lacking". To be honest a lot of games are lacking, they all feel to familiar, like you've been down this road a thousand times. But the Souls games feel fresh and new. Also, in a lot of ways, its an education in gaming. Alongside Heavy Rain and Flower, this is the most original game this generation by far.

By the way, because of this game i still havent played Dragons Dogma which i was excited for until i popped in Demons Souls to pass the time, everything went out the window then. As for Witcher, im a PS3 gamer so i'll have to miss out on that one.

By the way, by the way, the Souls game feel more like an Action/Adventure game more so than an RPG, in my opinion. Like and A/A with RPG elements.

Hey, football games always copy the same formula and make almost no progress whatsoever between games. And EA releases one per year per sport at least. And I don't see much people complaining over that.

Counter-Strike, Halflife and Team Fortress hats sell well, as does GTA. It's a logical fallacy to say that they don't care about what sells well, since they actually do; that's why you keep seeing more games in those franchises.

I'd say the Souls games manage to mix not only RPG and Action, they also bring some concepts out of dungeon crawlers. And that's something I love.

Azran wrote:Hey, football games always copy the same formula and make almost no progress whatsoever between games. And EA releases one per year per sport at least. And I don't see much people complaining over that.

Counter-Strike, Halflife and Team Fortress hats sell well, as does GTA. It's a logical fallacy to say that they don't care about what sells well, since they actually do; that's why you keep seeing more games in those franchises.

I'd say the Souls games manage to mix not only RPG and Action, they also bring some concepts out of dungeon crawlers. And that's something I love.

Of course they care, but that doesn't mean they will keep doing games of a successful franchise, without innovating in anything, keeping the same mechanics, same graphics, recycled maps, etc, basically the same thing with a new look. Of course there are some examples of companies that do so (Activision with CoD and PES, and maybe EA with Battlefield and Medal of Honor?, seems like they are gonna release one after another), but there are some (few) companies that still do games because they want to, not just because they want to make money.

A good example, is Valve. All the Half-Life were awesome.

It's about innovate to push the limits, AND (obviously) making a good game, there are lots of game who don't innovate much but are still good (Diablo III, Half-Life 2: Episode 1-2), now, the issue is when companies start doing games which are the same as the previous one, just to make people pay again (CoD, PES, FIFA [at least there isn't much innovation]), AND paid DLCs without worth content (or the infamous on-disc-hidden-content).

I always make time for things I enjoy. I dropped dks all together for over a week to play the newest saints row, and again later to watch all of heroes.

The objective of a company is to make money. Managing to do that through methods that actually respect and acknowledge the loyalty of the customer is up to each of them.
I do like when an studio actually demostrates that they care about their customers' opinions and requests (like FromSoftware does). Then you got the other end of the issue, like EA and Capcom with their DLC gimmicks and unfinished games.

Blizzard is actually kind of an interesting example, to say the truth. I think their last really innovative game (in relation to the rest of the franchise) was Warcraft 3. Since then, they've been recycling concepts and making them prettier (even if those concepts are actually good). Nowadays, Starcraft represents the old-school RTS games even more than the C&C franchise.

Anyway, sorry for the derail.

Skyrim was great fun until I played Dark Souls, Mass Effect 3 was even better fun until I played Dark Souls. Now I can't be bothered with either, the only game I can still bring myself to play is Max Payne 3 because I can't compare it to DkS. Though even then I'm thinking a lot about the next thing I want to do in DkS.

Op I have to agree with you, Dark Souls has ruined gaming for me.

i dislike skyrim and think lots of skyrim players got tired of it too.
i downloaded dragons dogma demo, but its just werid, i'll always compare to dark souls and it wont be as great as. i'll buy it tho, try to keep an open mind.

try monster hunter, i think everyone shoudl play that game, if you think demon's/dark souls are hard you havent seen nothing yet.

I know it's not technically an RPG, but an RPS but Borderlands is, in my opinion, freaking amazing. I can't wait for Borderlands 2(and the Last of Us). I am generally a shooter junkie(Counter Strike, Battlefield, SOCOM) but this game draws me in. It's just so...amazing...it's like it brands you with a Darksign and forces you to come back to it every time.

I bought Kingdoms of Amalur and it's there collecting dust since day 1. I even bought Demon Souls and I want to make a lot of builds there as well.

I haven't tried Dragons Dogma but it looks good and I'm considering getting it sometime. Witcher 2 and Skyrim are both very good games though however they are both slightly different to Dark Souls. Witcher 2 would be closer to Dark Souls I would say though.

Problem most people here have with Skyrim is that the combat is far too easy (Because it is lol) and so unlike Dark Souls it's not very challenging, however still enjoyable blasting people across a room However that's because it isn't for the exact same audience and Skyrim isn't completely built around combat like Dark Souls is.You can go where you want and do what you want, with a lot more story and interaction in the world.

Witcher 2 is a great game and the Combat is challenging so it would be good for most Dark Souls players I would think. But it's also got a great story and gameplay.

I love all 3 of these RPG's and completed them all on max difficulty (Dark not Insane for Witcher though, if you know what Insane is you know why )however I've spent the most time in Dark Souls. Why? It's the only one with PvP. Not saying I want it in the others but it just makes me come back for more and want to try new things.

I'd like to discuss the "a lot more interaction with the world" part on Skyrim. I think both DkS and Skyrim have exactly the same degree of interaction.

Then again, I'm one of those who think Skyrim's freedom is just an illusion.