When comparing Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition vs Fallout 4, the Slant community recommends Fallout 4 for most people. In the question“What are the best RPG games on Steam?” Fallout 4 is ranked 20th while Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition is ranked 69th. The most important reason people chose Fallout 4 is:
The gunplay plays so well it almost feels like a pure FPS. You can shoot from the hip, aim down the sights/scope, or even just run and gun. However, what makes Fallout 4 stand out is VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System). When you activate VATS, the time slows down to a crawl, allowing you to mark body parts of enemies. When you execute it your character will automatically shoot the marked body parts. This is very useful for getting out of tight spots, allowing you to instantly clear groups of enemies or kill a really tough enemy charging at you. It also has the benefit of making you feel like an expert gunman, even if your aim isn't that great.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Brutally challenging real-time combat that rewards patience
Dark Souls is a hard game at its core because of the combat. It's "difficult but fair", as in, the enemies are relentless and hit like a truck, but they're not overpowered or cheap to defeat. If you take your time to trade blows, dodge, and parry as needed, you can get through.
Making your way slowly through new levels and taking on enemies one at a time, whenever possible, is the best approach. Unless you're a seasoned veteran, if you're try to bum rush your foes, you may find yourself getting quickly destroyed. It seems impossible at first, but if you keep at it and learn from your mistakes, you'll surprise yourself with how far you can get in this game.
Pro Gives you a great sense of discovery from exploring
There's an unrivaled sense of exploration you get just from traversing normally through the game's medieval fantasy world. Simply going from one area to the next is astounding, because you get to see exactly how far you've come. After travelling a distance and defeating challenging enemies, you can find a shortcut that takes you down to a previously-visited location, for example, showing you that all of the levels are interconnected in a labyrinthine-like way. Thanks to this well-implemented level design, the world feels like a grand place that's full of mystery and adventure.
Pro Epic and meaningful boss battles
Bosses in Dark Souls are huge, terrifying, and intriguing in ways that don't feel forced at all. They have stories to tell without words, showing their lore and history through awe-inspiring designs and setpieces. Seeing a tower off in the distance, getting there many hours later, and finding a gigantic boss there also builds up the sense of anticipation once you arrive to the fight. Ranging from dragons, hulking armored knights, mythological beasts, and tons more, the variety of boss types are creative, with their own unique movesets for you to learn. Alongside the combat, the bosses make the game what it is.
Pro Incredible soundtrack and atmosphere
The music in this game is astounding because of how well it fits any given situation. Moments where the music stands out most is during boss battles, with sweeping, booming choruses where it works, and quieter pieces where you may not expect them. The warm but sorrowful wind instruments you hear at the main home base area is your cue that you're in a safe location after all of your grueling battles, letting you take a moment to reflect and unwind.
Most playable areas have no music, letting you focus on the atmosphere from all of the little sound effects from enemies' footsteps and your own clanking armor as you go along. So whenever a song does start playing, it stands out more than it would have otherwise. Overall, the music definitely helps to give you long-lasting emotional memories of everything you experience.
Pro Extensive lore that's presented in unconventional ways
There's tons of lore everywhere for you to discover, but it isn't necessarily told through a conventional story.
Weapons, armor, spells, and items you acquire have descriptions on them that tell you where in the game world they came from, any prominent characters they're associated with, and a bunch of other relevant and interesting information. So when you find examples of the lore scattered around the game, like bosses wearing a style of armor you read about, or an obscure NPC mentioned in a sword's description, you know the history behind the design and their purpose without that boss or character needing to explain anything to you.
Even though the actual story in Dark Souls is very thin, there's a lot to find under the surface if you're willing to look for it.
Pro You can bring a friend along for online co-op
It's possible to play through most of the game with a friend. If you need help with a boss or if you just want to run things with another person, there's an online setup for the other player to join your world. They will return to their world once you defeat a boss or if you die, but it's possible to invite them back afterward.
Pro Solid gunplay with an interesting twist
The gunplay plays so well it almost feels like a pure FPS. You can shoot from the hip, aim down the sights/scope, or even just run and gun. However, what makes Fallout 4 stand out is VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System). When you activate VATS, the time slows down to a crawl, allowing you to mark body parts of enemies. When you execute it your character will automatically shoot the marked body parts. This is very useful for getting out of tight spots, allowing you to instantly clear groups of enemies or kill a really tough enemy charging at you. It also has the benefit of making you feel like an expert gunman, even if your aim isn't that great.
Pro Addictive to collect loot
You can pick up most of the stuff you see laying around in Fallout 4. Every item, including weapons and armors, can be broken down into reusable crafting materials. This makes it hard to stop yourself from going around and collecting everything in sight because everything has a purpose.
You can also find unique versions of equipment on the corpses of legendary enemies. Each of these items has an additional effect such as speed boost or extra damage. This may cause you to constantly pick fights you'll probably lose, but it's worth it once you get your hands on that extremely good piece of equipment.
Pro Interesting settlement management
In Fallout 4 you can set up thriving communities in various locations. You'll have to provide the settlers with housing, bedding, water, food, and protection. Over time you'll be able to establish trade routes between the settlements and expand into an empire spanning the entire territory of Fallout 4. This really gives it the feeling like you're trying to rebuild society, which is a welcome change in a post-apocalyptic game.
Pro Great selection of mods
You can can find all sorts of mods at the Bethesda website, giving you the freedom to change the parts of the game you don't like. This includes interface adjustments, graphical improvements, additional quests, and many other things.
Pro Huge world with loads of content
The world of Fallout 4 is massive so there's quite a lot to do. Many areas to explore, tons of quests to complete, and lots of collectibles to find. There's easily enough content to keep you playing for over a hundred hours.
Pro Addicting building mechanic
One of the more interesting parts of managing your settlement is the house building aspect. There are various preset houses you can put down quickly, but you can make large structures entirely from scratch, starting with the foundation and ending with the roof of a 10 story building. While there are some constraints such as limited building area, you can really let your imagination loose, allowing you to spend countless hours on it.
Pro Great storyline
The main story has a very personal theme of family and revenge, featuring a main character looking for their lost son in a post-apocalyptic version of Boston. The side-quests also provide a decent backdrop, expanding on some of the plot elements of the main story. There are many twists and mysteries, but the narrative remains coherent throughout the story, creating a very enjoyable experience.
Pro Companions can help make the game a little easier
There are a bunch of companions to find in the game, starting with Dogmeat, the dog. Each companion has their own skills that can help you. For example, Dogmeat can dig up hidden items and bring them to you. They can also distract the enemy, causing the combat to be a little easier since all the attention won't be on just you. The only real downside is that you can only use one companion at a time, but you can easily swap them out. Using a companion is not mandatory either, so if you prefer the added challenge you can travel without a companion.
Pro Diverse enemy types keep the gameplay exciting
There a lot of different enemies found in the game such as super mutants, feral ghouls, robots, mutated wildlife, and many others. All of them have their unique behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses.
For example, robots often use heavy weaponry such as rocket launchers and lasers, making it really hard to deal with them. Fortunately enough, they're very vulnerable to EMP grenades and can also be hacked.
Another example are the feral ghouls that will almost always charge at you. They can surround you really fast, clawing away at your health and affecting you with radiation, but they lack any intelligence. So if you plant mines infront of you and attract them with gunshots, they'll lose their legs in the minefield, leaving them at your mercy.
The various enemy types and methods you can fight them with keeps the gameplay fresh for a long time.
Pro You can adjust equipment to suit your playstyle
In Fallout 4 you have a lot of options when modifying your equipment, giving you a chance to make equipment that matches your playstyle.
You can take an assault rifle and change most of its parts. Each part you can change has an upside and a downside to it. For example, adding a long range scope would make the rifle useless in close quarters, but it would be great for pick off targets from afar.
You can also tailor your armors for various situations. You can lower the weight or add pockets to make carrying loot easier. Or you can add additional linings or padding to gain increased protection against various hazards such as radiation.
Pro Deep perk/skill system
Fallout 4 has a great selection of perks centered on surviving in the wasteland. You'll gain a point each time you level up, allowing you to select one of the perks. The perks can give you an increase to your sneaking ability, improve your lockpicking skills, or even add unique effects such as causing bullets fired by enemies to ricochet back and killing them. There's easily enough variation to make multiple playthroughs feel fresh and exciting. To make it even better, if you don't like multiple playthroughs, you can just unlock every single perk on a single character, albeit with a much longer playtime.
Cons
Con Unforgiving and discouraging learning curve
Even though Dark Souls is technically fair, it's still really hard to get into. From the start, there's a minimal tutorial where you read messages scattered around the area for tips on the controls, and then you're forced into an immediate challenge that you have to figure your way out of. The game is clever in the way it pushes you into seemingly impossible situations and makes you think on your feet, but gamers who are new to the genre will more than likely find a serious culture shock here. Because the learning curve is so incredibly steep, you may struggle for a while before things finally click.
Con Certain mechanics leave new players open to unfair PvP invasions
There are a few ways you might find yourself invaded by another player even when you don't want to be. The method for inviting co-op players into your world also leaves you open to PvP invasions, which you can't turn off. The other one involves how you can only carry five healing items with you at the start; there's a way to increase this to ten, but by doing this, it becomes possible for PvP-minded players to enter your world to challenge you to battle whether you like it or not. There's also an area a couple of hours into the game that's notorious for high-level players seeking out oblivious newbies to tear them apart, so beware.
Con Significant performance issues
You may experience some frame dips here and there as you play, but it's pretty bad in one particular level called Blighttown. The frame drops are really awful there to the point where things are practically unplayable. There's a mod on PC that can take care of this issue, but players on consoles sadly have to deal with the mess.
Con Pipboy UI feels unpleasant to use
When you open your Pipboy (a personal computer that manages your quests, inventory, character data, etc) the screen containing the useful information only covers about a fourth of the entire screen. As a result some of the elements are too crammed, requiring a lot of scrolling. This can be really annoying if you're trying to find something in a list of 100 items.
Con Occasional bugs
There are bugs in the game that users will run into. While most are not game breaking, it can detract from the experience.
Con The dialogue choices are confusing
Most of the dialogue choices will only show a few words that don't actually reflect what your character is gonna say. This creates a disconnect between you and your character, making it seem like you don't control what your character is gonna say at any point.