Hi guys! Today I will talk about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Dark Souls 3. I will do a comparison between them and I will let you be the judge of which game is better. First I will talk about the storyline of those 2 games, then I will talk about the difference or similarities in their gameplay, and lastly, I will compare the visuals and tell you my final thoughts. Now let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Storyline
I know that a lot will say that my opinion is subjective, but no one can truly be objective about what is good storytelling in a game since different people like different things.
Dark Souls 3 storytelling is very confusing, to say the least. I swear before I watched a video on YouTube explaining the story of Dark Souls 3 I had no idea what the story was about or why I did the things I did in the game.
Now to be fair I haven’t played the other Dark Souls games, I have only played Dark Souls 3 but I can’t really use this as an excuse for Dark Souls 3 since I also played Witcher 3 and I hadn’t played any of the other Witcher games but I still understood what the story of Witcher 3 was about.
From what I read in Dark Souls 3 you are supposed to learn the story through reading item descriptions and dialogue from NPCs and you still only learned half, the other half is guessing and theorizing.
I can respect their decision to write a game’s story that way but I can’t say that I am a fan of it.
I prefer to play a game like watching a movie with dialogue and cinematics, the game can still have other story things hinted through item descriptions like Sekiro does, but I want to understand the story through watching cinematics and through dialogues.
I prefer the “show don’t tell” approach and Dark Souls 3 prefers the “tell don’t show” approach.
Sekiro has a more standard storytelling approach and you can understand most of the story through dialogue and cinematics.
There are also things hinted in item descriptions but you still can understand the majority of the story through dialogues and cinematics. So in the story department, I have to go with Sekiro, but I still have to say that my opinion is subjective, I analyzed the differences so you can decide what you prefer.
Gameplay
The main difference is that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice focuses more on the action combat while Dark Souls 3 has a clear focus on the RPG elements. I will explain the differences in more detail in this section, I just wanted to mention the major difference before I begin.
So let’s begin.
In Sekiro your weapon throughout the whole game is a katana and the enemies have been optimized for the best possible fights using that weapon, making for
In Dark Souls 3 you have access to a variety of weapons but because of that, the enemies couldn’t be optimized for fights against a specific weapon so they have a more neutral approach.
Now there are goods and bads in both situations.
Firstly, in Sekiro, the good thing as I said is that you have a more unique combat experience since the enemies have been optimized for fights with your specific weapon, and that makes the fights more interesting.
The negative is that many people will find boring playing with the same weapon the whole game, and since there aren’t many different builds you can play in Sekiro using different weapons it doesn’t have as good replayability as Dark Souls 3.
As for Dark Souls 3, having different weapons and builds sure improves the replayability of the game but the weapons you choose heavily affect your experience of the game since the enemies couldn’t be optimized for a specific weapon.
What I mean is that depending on the weapon you use, you will find the game either more difficult or less difficult because some weapons are easier to use than others and some weapons make the fights so easy that you barely need to put effort to beat some bosses.
You need to decide what’s better for you, to have more replayability or more unique fights with enemies that are optimized to fight you with the weapon you use.
I choose the second.
One more thing that I have to say that is important for those that like multiplayer is that Dark Souls 3 has co-op mode and PvP (through PvP uses P2P connection and that means that your connection speed and how far you are from the other player heavily affects the gameplay and can make the fights extremely laggy).
Sekiro doesn’t have multiplayer at all, so no co-op, nor PvP.
Visuals
Here there isn’t much to say. Sekiro has better graphics which isn’t something unexpected since the game came out 3 years after Dark Souls 3.
Of course, Dark Souls 3 has more outfits for you to choose from, but since you can’t transmute them their stats, most times you will be forced to wear things you don’t like just because they have good stats.
Final Thoughts
Both games are amazing and they have strong and weak points. I would recommend playing them both but if you have to choose one then my personal recommendation is Sekiro.
Sekiro takes Dark Souls’ combat a step further and makes it something unique. I haven’t seen anything close to Sekiro’s combat system except Fallen Order’s combat system, which has taken a lot of inspiration from Sekiro. Sekiro has hands down the best and most fluid combat I have ever seen in a game and it truly deserved the Game of the Year award.
This is it, guys. I hope you found the article informative and that I helped you decide which of the 2 games to buy.
Write in the comments below if you agree or disagree with what I said and if you think I forgot something. See ya in the next article.
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Follow @GamerWelfareHere are the links for the images I used:
https://www.igdb.com/games/sekiro-shadows-die-twice/presskit