When comparing Thea: The Awakening vs Dark Souls III, the Slant community recommends Dark Souls III for most people. In the question“What are the best RPGs (role playing games) for PS4?” Dark Souls III is ranked 22nd while Thea: The Awakening is ranked 52nd. The most important reason people chose Dark Souls III is:
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 III is very thin, there's a lot to find under the surface if you're willing to look for it.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Detailed ways to manage your settlements and party members
Thea: The Awakening revolves around the fine details of building settlements in the world, collecting and managing resources, and keeping your party members well-stocked with what they need. Resource management is key, letting you build new pastures, and structures like defensive walls for your settlements. Each time you send your party members off on an expedition to earn experience points and collect valuables, you're responsible for making sure that their equipment is up-to-date and that they have plenty of food or firewood to survive the journey.
You'll also want to make sure that you keep your citizens alive by protecting them from enemy encounters through battle and through side quest choices, or else you might lose potentially valuable party members for the future.
Overall, there are a ton of elements and tools that you can experiment with to help your settlements and companions thrive.
Pro Your decisions matter for both side quests and combat
You have plenty of freedom to choose whether to fight enemies or avoid them, as well as how side quests impact the world around you. As you explore, you'll run into dynamic events that give you a mini-story to read about the lay of the land, such as how it's been invaded by orcs or other creatures. You'll then get to choose whether you want to engage the enemies in combat or use your diplomacy skills instead. Side quests also come about as you explore, offering choose your own adventure decisions such as saving a band of settlers, killing enemies who might later turn out to be benevolent, and plenty more. It's a unique system that really gives you the sense that your decisions have an impact on the game.
Pro Typical combat is replaced with a unique card game
Instead of fighting enemies in regular turn-based battles, you'll play a unique, numbers-based card game where you and your AI opponent take turns placing cards on the field. The idea is that you line up your attacker cards, like soldiers, with the goal of their attack power outnumbering the defensive number on the enemy's card. To supplement your attackers, you have defensive cards like spell users who can inflict ailments like confusion against enemy units. Once you're done setting your cards down on the field, you'll choose to pass your turn, and then the action happens automatically, with strong attackers taking out the cards with the weaker defense, and the defensive units coming in to help. It's a fresh alternative to the combat you'd expect from turn-based systems, and it's great for anyone looking for something new.
Pro Full voice acting
Every line in the game is voice acted by authentic actors who fit right in with the dark fantasy setting. Because there's so much text to read, it helps a lot to have such great voice acting to supplement all of the information, all with excellent pronunciation and believable accents. For anyone who might be turned off by so much text, you can definitely rely on the great voice acting to keep your interest.
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 III is very thin, there's a lot to find under the surface if you're willing to look for it.
Pro Stunning environments
The world of Dark Souls 3 looks amazing, so you may often feel the need to stop and take in the beautiful sights. This can be the sheer size of structures, mountains, or caves. It can also be the decorations, inscriptions, or details in a room. There's always so much to look at, allowing you to truly immerse yourself in its world.
Pro Can give a great feeling of accomplishment
The Dark Souls series is known for its difficulty and Dark Souls 3 is no exception. It's filled with difficult enemies and tough boss battles, able to cause you grief on more than one occasion. However, every time you progress to the next safe spot or defeat a boss you'll often be filled with a mix of joy and relief. Beating this game will almost certainly feel like an achievement.
Pro Unpredictable boss battles
The boss battles in Dark Souls 3 consist of several phases, changing up how the bosses fight over the course of the battle. They will gain new abilities, become more aggressive, or reveal various nasty surprises. This creates an enjoyable experience that is different from most modern games where bosses are just glorified pincushions.
Pro A great variety of equipment for almost any playstyle
You'll be finding new pieces of equipment quite often, giving you many options to choose from. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to pick the equipment that best suits your playstyle.
For example, heavy armor will make you move slower, but you'll be better protected. Greatswords have a wide reach, but you swing them really slow. Conversely a dagger is very fast but it has a horrible reach.
Pro Solid controls
This game feels and plays really well. Your character responds to button inputs immediately and it almost never feels like you're losing control over it. The control scheme can also be customized, giving you the option of a more personalized experience.
Pro Great combat system
Dark Souls 3 is a very fast-paced game but it's not just about having quick reflexes. A lot of the combat comes down to exploiting your enemies. To do that, you have to learn their patterns and attack the moment they pause or perform a telegraphed attack. This creates a combat system, which rewards awareness and patience, and is satisfying to master, even if you don't have extraordinary reflexes.
Cons
Con Not for players who dislike micromanaging small details
If you're not a fan of keeping track of little details like how many resources you have, weapons for your party members, and how many turns you need to build an enclosure around a settlement, then Thea: The Awakening might not be for you. There's a lot to manage and tons of busywork, which might be a deal-breaker for some players.
Con Tedious inventory management
With so many resources and weapons to handle, you're unfortunately stuck with manually dragging and dropping required items through menus. There isn't a quicker, more efficient way to sort through what you need. It can get quickly get boring and ruin your time with the game.
Con Too many genres mixed into one game
This is quite a niche game, with role-playing elements, settlement building and survival tactics, and a card game all wrapped together in one package. It can get confusing for someone who likes one of these genres and not the others, possibly discouraging them from trying the game out.
Con Poor support for mouse+keyboard control
The default DS3 key/button bindings actually prevent full use of certain weapons by requiring the shift key to be pressed and not-pressed simultaneously. Rebinding is possible, but limited by issues like the left mouse button overriding all others and certain bindings not actually working in game (e.g. Shift+MiddleClick).
Con It's hard
You should try avoiding the trap of great review scores since most of them fail to mention the difficulty. It's simply put - hard. A lot of the combat requires quick reflexes, good mechanics, and the mental fortitude to carry on after failing for hours. If you're new to the Souls-like genre or simply want to enjoy a relaxing evening playing a video game, you most likely won't enjoy Dark Souls III.
Con Poorly tuned dynamic visiblity
You may notice some texture pop in while sharply turning the camera. It can be somewhat distracting if you notice it, but most of the time you won't because it happens in the distance.
Con Occasional performance issues
There are portions of the game that will have noticeable framerate drops, which can negatively affect the gameplay. Most of the fault lies with the game engine, so getting better hardware won't help that much.