[quinnnn]

wat. This is why I play PS3. Practically no people hack

[John Moore]

The same is mostly true for the 360. I have PVPed A LOT on the 360 and have only encountered about 6 hackers. Or at least obvious hackers. That is probably out of a few hundred pvp matches.

[Jade Payton]

Yeah, I've only encountered about eight... and I think a few was the same guy.

Most people just hack so they can troll, or do weird things.
Hackers that actually want to PvP just get disconnects, because no one wants to be in their world.

[Lexy Dick]

He was actually a pretty nice person. Backed off an assault when I was having lag issues that prevented me from targeting him until it was resolved, and since it ended up being him and I constantly dueling, we ended up dueling for [censored] and giggles without being any sort of serious. I won about 80% of the duels we had, so it wasn't like he had an unfair advantage.

[Stu Clarke]

Yeah, I think two may have been the same guy as well.
I woudl agree with that. Each hacker I encountered made me laugh. They didn't try to pvp me fairly. One hacked it just to play. He just wanted to pve and be invincible. I left him at the bottom of a cliff where his invincibility didn't apply, mostly because I didn't understand what was going on. It was him and another phantom and the phantom was attacking me so I figured fair game. WoG both of them off a cliff. Oops. Got a PM from the guy explaining what was happening and begging me not to report him. A few other guys just invaded, dropped some items, kicked me a few times, let me backstab them like 8 times and then just left. Mostly harmless stuff. As you said, people won't stick around for hacked pvp. Of course it is hard to tell with smaller scale hacks which only increase small percentages of damage and such. I remember a guy ninja rolling with full Havel Gear when I was like SL 60. That was probably a hacker and was the only case of unfairly advantaged but subtle hacking that I encountered.

[Frank Firefly]

Going to go Sunbro for a bit on a new character. It is quite fun to engage in jolly cooperatioN! After the second lightning spell, I think I'll end up joining the Darkmoon Blades.

[jadie kell]

VaatiVidya has a nice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBJDBtn2MbQ up.
Really reminds you just how sad and deep all the characters are. His Lore series is the best.

[Terry]

It's precisely why I joined the Servants of Chaos, so that I can help just one person, the one person who has helped me throughout my entire travels, and let him not just find his own sun, but become it (dev said this is actually true)

Hmm, actually, this gets me thinking. What if the reason there is a DS2, other than because DS1 is awesome, is because the canon ending is that Solaire chose to become fuel for the first flame, while the Chosen Undead became the Dark Lord, and the two endings ended up causing issues.

[Rich O'Brien]

http://tinyurl.com/DkSPS3PowerRankings

[Mark Churchman]

Cool. But there are no names on there. At least when viewing from a mobile device.

[Vicki Gunn]

Yeah, there aren't any names on it... yet.

http://soulswiki.forumsrpg.com/t23810-ps3-power-rankings

[Rachyroo]

Hey guys, can anyone give me (if you have one and to spare) the Elite Cleric Armor (set) on PS3?

I know you can't get it without editing, but it is possible.

I'm SL125

[Lindsay Dunn]

Ugh, I give up! Gravelord servants just cannot work at all! I go to the high population areas, and all I get are Darkwraiths after Darkwraiths. Think I only had 1 person see my sign and invade, even though I was standing near the bonfire in Anor Lando.

[P PoLlo]

That's why i only made 1 Gravelord and 1 Dragon.... i also have 1 Forest, but thats a good cov... 2 Darkmoons and all the others are Darkwraiths.

[Wayne Cole]

This Is All Opinion, My Opinion Will Most Likely Be Different From Yours!!!

Although Skyrim has a couple things going for it that Dark Souls doesn't (Deep Character Creation, Heavy Modding Scene, and a better un-modded pc edition) I personally believe that Dark Souls is a overall better game. I'm not saying that Skyrim is bad, but I believe that Dark Souls has better combat, story, world, crafting, gear, and bosses. I'm going to chop up this post up into six paragraphs to make it easier for you to move through the different topics.

Combat

In Dark Souls you play through a third person perspective. In Skyrim you usually play through a first person perspective (although you can play through third person perspective most people don't). Although I like to usually play through first person in begins i'm glad that Dark Souls plays in first person perspective to avoid being attack from behind, and to be more aware of your surroundings. In Dark Souls you can die very quickly and if your not careful you will definitely die. In Skyrim you are a tank who just flails at the other opponent with your weapon, You gain no advantage from shooting them in the head, from behind, and you can only stun opponents from parrying. In dark souls you can parry people to do massive amounts of damage, the same goes for backstabbing. The one thing I give skyrim kudos to is their intuitive stealth gameplay, but this can become insanely op when you max stealth making the game insanely easy. Overall I would give Dark Souls combat a 9, and Skyrim's a 6.

Story

Even the majority of the Elder Scrolls community agrees that Skyrims story is bland, and predictable. I won't spoil anything for you so I won't get into the plot of either stories, only the fundamentals and how they work. When you first play Dark Souls the story seems to be nonexistent, until you really dig into the game, or watch lore videos from people like EpicNameBro on youtube. You learn most of the story from item descriptions, your surroundings, and dialogue (which can be biased depending on the character). This make the story much more satisfying and interesting. Some people might not like this way of story telling, but I think this is ten times better than learning the story from long and tedious cutscenes and other gimmicks used by AAA games. Not to go deep into the end, but if you look deep into the endings you find out that both of them are not what they seem. I give Dark Souls story a 9.5 and Skyrims a 4.5.

World

They're are practically no loading screens in Dark Souls. I could count the number of loading screens on the back of one hand. In Skyrim you go through hundreds of loading screens, I think a tenth of my skyrim playtime was loading screens. So Dark Souls definitely wins in that regard. When it comes to the environments I say Dark Souls is slightly better. Dark Souls has a lot more unique environments, but they are usually very cramp. Skyrim has very large and open environments, but only like half a dozen types of environments. What truly gives Dark Souls the edge is SECRETS! I believe most gamers love secrets, the enjoyment of finding a awesome weapon from randomly hitting a invisible wall is almost euphoric (I like secrets). As far as I know Skyrim doesn't really have that many secrets. This is why I'm giving Dark Souls a 9.5, and Skyrim a 9.

Edit: I should also mention that they're are two areas in the game that hold 5 extra hours at least to the game. The Great Ash Lake (one of my favorite locations in any video game) and the Painted World of Ariamis.

Crafting

Crafting is a vital part of both games, but Dark Souls gives you more path trees to shape your weapons. They're are around half a dozen path trees for your gear in Dark Souls, each one with its own advantages and disadvantages. In Skyrim you can only keep upgrading your gear down a strait path, but you can use enchantments (Dark Souls has enchantments but they're not permanent), I feel like both enchantments in each game are good in their unique way so I say that they're are even in that regard. So I think it is very close race with Dark Souls getting a 9.2, and Skyrim a 9.1.

Gear

In Skyrim there is light and heavy armour, Light Dragon armor is better than leather armor in pretty much better in any way. In Dark Souls each weapon, and armor has its own advantages and disadvantages. There is no weapon purely better than others. This makes for some very unique builds (There is one with a guy dual wielding shields!). In Skyrim the daedric sword is better than the iron sword. In Dark Souls The Chaos Blade (a unique weapon) is not better or worse than a normal scimitar. Each game both has a lot of different gear so I congratulate both developers for putting the time and effort in making a lot of cool looking gear, but I still give Dark Souls a 9. and Skyrim a 8.

Bosses

The Main bosses in Skyrim are dragons, they are all the same, they just breath ice, or fire, and have more or less hit points. There are a couple of non-dragon bosses, but the big baddies in the game are dragons, and they can get very repetitive. In Dark Souls there are no to bosses that are the same, from the dragon Kalameet (who is way cooler than Alduin) to pinwheel the necromancer, a poor soul who's body was infused with his wife and daughter in a terrible marred attempt to bring them back to life. So the bosses in Dark Souls get a 9, and in Skyrim a 7.

anolysis

I used to believe Skyrim was the better game, but I was biased and never played Dark Souls. I bashed Kevin Levine (A Journalist at IGN) for saying Dark Souls was better, but than again his review was very biased. I'm going to eventually put another post stating the advantages Skyrim has, but I'm going to save that until I can do more research so i'm less biased.

Conclusion

Don't get me wrong Dark Souls and Skyrim are both great games, but in my opinion Dark Souls is just inherently a better game. I honestly could go on and on about leveling, mods, graphics, pc edition (especially pc edition), UI, and more, but I believe that these are the fundamentals I should touch on.

That is why i'm giving Dark Souls a 9.5, and Skyrim a 8.5.

[GEo LIme]

I was going to go to town when you said Dark Souls lore made it a better game even though it wasn't easily identifiable during gameplay, but then I remembered you're comparing Dark Souls to Skyrim, not the Elder Scrolls.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your opinion. This is much better than a "SKYRIM SUX0RZ, DARK SOULS PWNS ALL, NERDS. GOML GG NO RE" post.

[Micah Judaeah]

Thanks for not ramming on post like I expected people to. Yes I am comparing Skyrim to Dark Souls, but I still stand that Souls lore is better than ES lore BUT it is a very close race.

Edit: Also just for everyone to know I am going to make another post stating the pros of Skyrim (mods, character creation, Roleplaying, etc, etc) I'm going to do research, and replay Skyrim before I do a post on that though (I liked to be informed before I do stuff like this)

[Queen of Spades]

I've never played dark souls but I'm pretty sure that's just a hack an slash game ain't it.

[SEXY QUEEN]

I would debate you to the ends of the earth, but that would be a pointless waste of everybody's time.

[Sammykins]

Actually no. It is a very tactical Action RPG where you have to pay attention at all times. It is definitely NOT Diablo 3 (not two, two was good, but Dark Souls is still not like Diablo 2)

[Chris Cross Cabaret Man]

I would happily debate you if you want , But do you know extensive amount of lore in both universes?

[Chris Duncan]

Good review, dev. I absolutely agree with you. Dark Souls is a brilliant game, that--contrary to popular belief--is quite deep and interesting once you make the effort to explore its lore. The game doesn't shove anything in your face, and there is no hand holding, so you have to figure out everything by yourself. This can lead to you finding lots of secret areas, equipment, and other cool things you otherwise would've ignored. The world and its lore are beautifully crafted, and sometimes you just have to stop in order to admire the scenery.

I also agree with what you said about combat (which actually requires some strategy and thinking), the creative bosses, and pretty much everything else. Both Skyrim and Dark Souls are great games, but Dark Souls managed to become my game of the year; it was a cruel and merciless game, but it was so rewarding, even to just accomplish simple tasks. I'm looking very much forward to the sequel.

[Connor Wing]

I agree.

Not at all.
It is the exact opposite of hack-n-slash.
Every move you make in combat has to be calculated to fit the scenario, or your mistakes will get you killed.
It's more like a game of chess.

[Justin Hankins]

Thanks!

[Amber Ably]

I liked your post, dev!

First of all, thank you for not being one of those trolls Expresate accurately described and actually breaking down aspects of each game. Anyway, I have Dark Souls but have yet to play it (Thinking of buying a controller so I could fully enjoy it...) but some stuff about Skyrim that you mentioned I agree with: Skyrim's main story was not anything to rave about, but it wasn't the worst story however not the best. Bosses...were there even bosses? Alduin was a joke, and fighting Dragons was as tedious as closing Oblivion gates. I like Skyrim though but it has been a while since I have played it.

Anyway, thanks for the great review!