The Debating Society
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A place where ModDB members can debate civilly, and learn from each other's views.
For me this was a tough one. I've played the hell out of both games and they both keep bringing me back to them. They are both titans in gaming and the RPG genre but for me one of them does something better than the other and that's gameplay.
This may be controversial considering Dark Souls is often held up as a game with a perfect combat system but for me Dragon's Dogma triumphs here. For me there is no other game out there with action combat matching the same level of enjoyment and thrill that Dragon's Dogma provides with its combat. Dark Souls is amazing in its combat and many call it deep but I believe Dragon's Dogma had the deeper combat.
Now many people probably played Dragon's Dogma on its normal difficulty and that's all well and fine but the game truly shines on its hardest difficulty when you play from scratch (meaning you start as a LV1 character as opposed to switching to hard-mode mid-way through the game or in NG+). It's here that exploiting enemies weaknesses actually becomes ESSENTIAL for the majority of the game. I was at LV 70 on hard mode and I still had to use the weaknesses of many enemies to defeat them. Elemental attacks and party set-up become more important and you have to focus a lot more on your resistances (as deliberations are a lot more harmful on hard mode with one fireball spell being able to end your life at early-mid levels).
Item boosts also become essential as do your abilities. It's also on hard mode where you'll find that holding regular enemies for your companions to strike becomes a more useful skill. It's here where the pawns actually pull their weight and become needed as opposed to the annoyances they are on normal mode.
For me. Dragon's Dogma provided more thrill and adrenaline than Dark Souls and it has just as much depth in gameplay if not more. Blocking, parries and ripostes are actually important on hard mode.
My conclusion is that Dragon's Dogma has the better gameplay. DkS has the better story and atmosphere.
Dark Souls for sure have a much richer lore. You can spend hours reading about all the stuff in game, and just experiencing Lordran. However if we're talking about Gameplay, Dark Souls (especially PC but not exclusively) has bad multiplayer to say the least. With all the hackers and such it kind of ruins it. Although it still can be very fun. Also the PC port of Dark Souls is very poor as well (with the super sensitive camera and such, but there are mods to fix it). I can definately see why you prefer Dragon's Dogma in terms of gameplay.
The worst part of DkS multiplayer isn't the hackers but the lag-stabbers and backstab fishers. Then there's the gankers and grifers. I've only ever came across six hackers.
Although I'm speaking solely for the single player in DkS and its general combat mechanics when comparing it to Dragon's Dogma. For me, DD on hard mode just came out top. It has a lot more depth which you won't realize on its normal difficulty.