Comment by Rickasaurus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Rickasaurus | Hacker News Reader

Having played both Demon and Dark souls, I think Demon souls was only better in that it flushed out the Maiden and the monumentals in a way which was deliberate and set the tone of the game. Dark Souls could have used something along these lines, but in every other respect it's the better game. From the improved enemy AI, to balance in the weapons and crafting, to the variety of locations and enemies, and don't forget the subtle lore in the item descriptions and placement of unique enemies and items. Dark Souls is just plain better.

That said, they both rank as my favorite games of the last ten years.

Edit: Also, if this has convinced you to pick this game up for the PC (it's often on sale on Steam for under $10), don't forget to get DSFix for the graphics and DSMFix fix for mouse and keyboard support. It wasn't a very good port, but the community has made it great.

DSFix: http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?tag=dsfix DSMFix: http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~petska/

If you like the feel of Dark Souls, try Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, if you have a Wii U or 3DS. The theme is very different, but the game is very similar in terms of difficulty, crafting, and multiplayer. It also sports, quite literally, the most finely tuned difficulty ramp I have ever come across in a game. Every new challenge will be amazingly tough, yet fair. The boss creatures are very inventive too. It ranks equally with the Souls games for me, which are easily my favourite games in the last 10 years too.

Oh man, have you seen that new Monster Hunter Online game out in Asia? I'm so jealous.

Got my eye on it. So I can run the other way and not get sucked into a black hole!

The Solaire saga in Dark Souls was interesting and compelling, though not quite as rich as the Maiden.

Demon Souls was also better in that there was no selling of inventory. Anything that you could not use, would not use, or was inferior to your current equipment, you just dropped. Dark Souls introduced the Frampt “merchant” and allowed you to profit from selling stuff, leading to a Diablo-style loot hoarding. Fortunately the prices were low enough to not affect the game too badly.

The linked-to article nailed it: Dark Souls had its own style of black humor, where your death was the joke. Frampt was whimsical and weird and felt out of place for lots of reasons. Other than the doggy-dragon, Dark Souls was the better game in every way.

I just got it on sale for $7.50. I had a pirated version I played a few hours in (wanted to see how the port was; as you say, it's pretty bad) that circumvented GFWL, storing my save in a local 4-meg file rather than on some server somewhere. And I can't restore him! I'M VERY SCARED TO START AGAIN.

But I might just do so with the fix.

Even when playing in online mode, the savegames are still on your computer. (Somewhere in the C:\Users\yourlogin\ mess...)

Oh, really? I didn't see them appear. I'll try again - thanks for the info.

>Dark Souls is just plain better.

Nope. It has a worse frame rate, just for a start. All the qualities you list are laudable, but they don't even come close to addressing "every other respect". For example, Dark Souls requires you to pick up way more items than Demon's Souls. More items is good - but not if it turns into a tiresome exercise in collection.

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