When comparing The Walking Dead A New Frontier vs Dark Souls III, the Slant community recommends Dark Souls III for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Dark Souls III is ranked 70th while The Walking Dead A New Frontier is ranked 130th. 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 Great story
TWD: A New Frontier features a brand new story in The Walking Dead universe with an all new cast of characters. This time around, you play as Javi, an ex-baseball player with a gambling problem who is trying to protect his family during the zombie apocalypse. Javi is somewhat of the black sheep of the family, but as the world devolves in chaos, he is forced to step up and protect his sister-in-law, nephew, and niece after his brother disappears. The four of them hit the road together to salvage for supplies and search for a new safe place to call home. During the course of the story, you'll be fighting for survival in this messed up world, meeting interesting characters, running into plenty of problems, and making really tough choices to save yourself and your loved ones along the way.
Pro Main character Javi is very likeable
Main protagonist Javi is a bit of screw-up and the black sheep of his family when the story starts. However, as the world starts to fall apart, he quickly grows into his own and becomes a very likeable character. He is forced into many tough situations where he is always putting his family's safety above his own, and as a result, we get to watch him grow as a person. Overall, he is very easy to relate to and it's fun to cheer him along on his journey from goofball to hero. Javi is a great new addition to the series.
Pro Loads of difficult and impactful choices
At the heart of this story-driven game are the wide array of interesting choices you get to make. What you say and do will have an impact on how the story plays out, so it's kind of fun to ponder each one. Characters will remember your past actions and conversations, which means all your decisions and dialogue choices carry a lot of meaningful weight. How you choose to interact with various characters will influence how they treat you down the line. Each episode contains many different dialogue paths, as well as 3-4 major heart-wrenching, tough, and super impactful decisions that literally determine the fate of each character and how the story unfolds.
Pro Maintains a sense of familiarity while offering a new perspective
Even though we take on the role of the new character Javi this time around, an old fan favorite, Clementine, makes an appearance and becomes heavily involved in the story as well. The inclusion of Clementine in the story and the newfound relationship between Javi and Clem really adds a wonderful touch of familiarity to the series, while still giving us an all new story to play through. We get to see the world through Javi's eyes, instead of Clem's, which is an interesting perspective shift.
Pro Huge amount of replayability
Resembling an interactive novel, TWD: A New Frontier plays out as a series of dialogue choices or decisions that result in specific actions. It's pretty interesting to replay the game many times and choose all the different ways of handling situations just to see how they play out.
Pro Voice acting is incredible
Voice actors deliver their lines with a lot of emotion, never feeling forced or fake. This excellent acting really helps draw you into the story and its characters. There's a lot of great chemistry between the various voice actors as well, resulting in conversations that flow well and sound very natural.
Pro The game is cross-platform
You can play it on PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Kindle Fire HDX, and Android.
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 Very short
For a $25 game, only having seven to eight hours of playtime among five episodes is pretty poor. Each episode is only 60-90 minutes long, whereas episodes in the other two games in the series were around three hours apiece. While the story itself is great, it is overall much, much shorter than season one and two, which may be a great disappointment to some.
Con Some choices will be biased towards Clementine
The whole reason season one and two existed was to tell the story of Clementine. She has grown into the beloved character of the franchise. This third installment in the series, however, has us playing as a new character named Javi. Clementine is still heavily involved the storyline, and this is where the issue arises.
Sometimes we are asked to make choices as Javi that involve Clementine. However, since we've built up a strong liking for Clementine over the past two games, it's way too easy to swing all choices in her favor - even if Javi wouldn't actually make those choices himself. This can be bit a immersion breaking and make for some rather biased decisions that make little to no sense in the actual context of the story.
Con Too many quicktime events
QTEs are used during action sequences, which is fine, but sometimes they are used in places where they are not needed, such as pushing a dumpster to block a doorway or connecting some wires. These unnecessary QTEs disrupt the pace of the story at best, and at worst, completely ruin immersion by having to repeat the same frustrating sequence over and over when you mess up.
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.