While the two games are pretty different in many ways, both FromSoftware's Dark Souls franchise and Bethesda's most recent entry into the Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim, have many things that make the games similar.
Fans have been comparing the two games, with each fandom stating that their fantasy, adventure RPG is the better of the two. This is why we have decided to throw out hat into the ring and list of some of the best points made by each side and come to an answer on which game between Skyrim and Dark Souls, is the better.
11 Skyrim: Open World
Just like every other game in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim is a fully open world with endless amounts of things to discover. There is a bit of a meme that goes around the Skyrim community that instead of going along with the main story, it's better to play the game by just picking a direction and walking in that direction just to see what happens. while it's a joke, the massive open world that the game provides, makes this a super viable way to play.
10 Dark Souls: Throwback
In about the last decade and a half, there has been a somewhat small but not insignificant amount of the gaming community, usually, somewhat older gamers, that have been saying that games these days are just too dang easy. They said that even the hardest modes of games are still not enough. This may or may not have inspired FromSoftware to make Dark Souls, the successor to Demon's Souls, one of the hardest games of this generation.
9 Skyrim: NPC Interactions
One of the things that's great about the massive world in Skyrim is that your actions can really have an effect on it, changing it drastically. This is seen with big actions, like shoving the world into eternal darkness.
What is more subtle but arguably more important is the way your interaction with NPCs can be shaped by your actions. The biggest example of this is how the guards of each of the towns will have lines that reference some of the actions that you have done or groups you joined
8 Dark Souls: Less Important Story
Some players don't really care for story at all. This might come as a surprise as story has seemingly become a bigger and bigger part of the gaming in general, with massive titles like The Last Of Us mainly being built and marketed around its story. In Dark Souls, the story exists and there is a dedicated fan base of players that really like it and enjoy looking into, but they would be lying if you said the story didn't take a backseat to the gameplay.
7 Skyrim: Branching Stories
There are massive amounts of stories that you could go through in Skyrim, and only one of those hundreds actually involves the main plot of the game. On top of all the stories that the player can encounter, there are ones where the player can directly affect the outcome of the story. These branching storylines give the player a level of control in the world that most won't get. This continues to add to the feeling that the player is having an effect on the world of the game.
6 Dark Souls: Story Ambiguity
In the last entry on Dark Souls, we talked about how the story of the game took a backseat to the gameplay and the setpieces that you fight giant abominations in. The story, for those players that are interested in it, isn't really told as the player progresses through the game, one has to go out and look for it. The story can be found by interacting with various NPC's and through the descriptions of items, but there is a large amount of room for interpretation.
5 Skyrim: More Combat Capabilities
The combat system in Skyrim, while now fairly dated by today's standards, was fairly comprehensive for the time. The game had a ton of different enemies that required different ways of fighting, especially when it came to fighting dragons. The game had different melee weapons, both one-handed and two-handed, bows, magic and don't forget about the special abilities and dragon shouts that could be used to quickly change the tide of battle.
4 Dark Souls: More Focus
The thing about Skyrim is that due to its open-ended approach to gameplay, it can lead to many ADHD riddled players constantly bouncing back and forth between different quests and new locations as well as just cool things that the player wants to look at. This is a problem that isn't found in the Dark Souls series.
While there are side quests that certain NPC's give you and it can be somewhat hard to navigate, the game does a good job at keeping the player focused on a goal, which is fighting the next boss.
3 Skyrim: Mod Friendly
Mods are one of the best ways that developers can increase a game's lifespan and they barely even have to do anything. Just making the game mod-friendly and having access to them be easy is enough to have players making and playing community content for years. It's part of the reason why Skyrim has had a near decade long life span, and it makes literal boatloads of money for Bethesda. There is a mod for anything you could think of, from armour to weapons, to entire new storylines.
2 Dark Souls: Difficulty
Like we mentioned earlier the level of difficulty in Dark Souls can in many ways be considered a throwback to old school games on earlier console generations. The game's difficulty is the game's biggest selling point. The game takes away a lot of what we as gamers are used to when playing other similar games like Devil May Cry. The game lacks the smoothness and animation cancelling abilities of others, in favor of brutal punishments for any mistakes.
1 Answer: Skyrim
After all of these factors that we have discussed, it was very close and a really hard decision to make but in the end, it seems that Skyrim just edges out Dark Souls. In terms of being a game, there is much more appeal to Skyrim. Despite all of the popularity that the Dark Souls franchise has gained in recent years, the games just can't, at least not yet, reach the legendary status that was set by Skyrim on its release and continues to create to this very day.