When comparing Blue Dragon vs Dark Souls III, the Slant community recommends Dark Souls III for most people. In the question“What are the best RPGs for Xbox One?” Dark Souls III is ranked 30th while Blue Dragon is ranked 37th. 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
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Pros
Pro Engaging classic turn-based system with unique magical phantoms that grow with you in combat
You take turns attacking with your party members, cast magic, defend, use items or change formation. Figuring out enemy weaknesses and exploiting them will give you an edge, giving you a real sense of accomplishment as you take quickly down monsters with the best elemental spells. Your magic comes from shadow-like phantoms you control that are like mini-summons. Your phantom retains all of the abilities you learn even as you switch jobs, like using healing magic even when you're no longer a white mage. You can pick and choose the skills you want to customize your phantom with, making them more powerful alongside you as you grow stronger.
Pro You get to control how you engage enemies in strategic ways
You'll find monsters out in the open instead of in random encounters, and you get to control how to fight them or avoid them with special skills. If you select nearby groups of enemies with a cursor, you can take them on one after the other for better rewards. If you sneak up on monsters, you can stun them and launch a surprise attack to deal more damage to them. Or if you're in a hurry, you can execute enemies and take them out of your way. You won't earn any experience points if you do this, but it's great for those times when you return to older areas and you don't want the hassle of weaker enemies slowing you down.
Pro Cool anime art style
The characters in Blue Dragon all have a charming anime art style that sets them apart from most games. Their wide eyes, spiky hair and colorful clothes give them much more personality. You'll feel like you're playing through an anime series in a video game as your characters fight in battle and interact in cutscenes. Anime and manga artist Akira Toriyama from the Dragon Ball series designed the characters and monsters, giving them his trademark style.
Pro Improved framerate on Xbox One with backward compatibility from Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 version of Blue Dragon suffered from a fluctuating framerate and other performance issues like screen tearing. With backward compatibility on Xbox One, the framerate is much better, remaining at a steady 30 FPS save for a few rare exceptions.
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 Repetitive story
Depending on how invested you become in the plot to save the world from the evil wizard antagonist, you may get bored with the game's story. It's your quest to travel from town to town, saving everyone from the evil spells in the air and an infestation of monsters. There are some plot twists here and there, but they're easy to spot ahead of time. Outside of that, it can get too easy to boil down the story to this repetitive cycle of saving various towns and finding out more about the evil wizard.
Con Reused assets
Some of the monsters in the game are merely recolored versions of ones you encounter earlier in the game. It may not be noticeable enough for some, but for other players, they may be turned off by these reused assets.
Con Story has a slow start
Blue Dragon's story takes at least ten hours or so before really getting started. These first ten hours are mostly linear without much meaningful character development. The world opens up a lot more after that, but some players might not feel motivated enough to reach that point.
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.