When comparing Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory vs Dark Souls III, the Slant community recommends Dark Souls III for most people. In the question“What are the best RPG games on Steam?” Dark Souls III is ranked 16th while Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory is ranked 58th. 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 Addictive monster collection aspect
The main side-goal of Hacker's Memory is collecting all of the 300+ Digimon found within the game, which quickly becomes addictive because of two reasons.
First, it's very simple – you either keep leveling/de-leveling your Digimon and transform them into other Digimon, create new Digimon, or buy some of them at a store. If you want to "catch" the Digimon found in random battles, you don't need to weaken them or actually catch them, but just encounter them enough times. This is because each encounter gives you a % of their data and once you get 100%, you can create that Digimon. To make it even better, you don't even have to level all your Digimon manually since you're given a farm where Digimon can level up automatically over time, reducing the tedium considerably.
Second, the Digimon designs look very interesting, cool and sometimes even funny. This includes fierce wolves, massive dinosaurs, robots, angels, devils, ghosts, sentient piles of poop, and many others. There's so much variety in the designs, it can be really exciting to see what new Digimon you'll get.
Because of these two reasons, the collection aspect can easily remain exciting right until you finish your collection.
Pro Crisp and colorful visuals
The game's visuals are really well done overall, having very detailed environments, intricate character models, vibrant particle effects, and even beautifully animated cutscenes. This is further improved by the use a wide variety of colors, ranging from shades of brown and gray to neon green and neon purple. Fortunately, the game also retains great amounts of visual clarity, so the colorful style almost never gets into the way of gameplay, allowing Hacker's Memory to be both enjoyable to play and to look at.
Pro Well-balanced story
Hacker's Memory strikes a nuanced balance between dark themes and over-the-top comedy. At its heaviest the story delves into identity theft and slavery, while at its lightest you have absurdist comedy with cartoonish characters in silly situations. The story's greatest strength, however, is that it constantly alternates between the light and heavy themes while throwing in some philosophical questions. As a result, you won't get drained from constant drama as easily and the jokes won't go stale as quickly, which makes the whole narrative more enjoyable as a whole.
Pro Enjoyable domination battles that freshen up turn-based combat
Aside from regular turn-based battles that make up most of the game, there are also team-based domination battles that focus on territory control. You and your opponent get placed into an arena and each of you is usually given 3 characters that you take turns to move. The arena is split into territories that have point values attached to them, requiring you to capture a certain amount of territories (points) to win. To contest a territory with an opponent character on it, you still have to fight a turn-based battle, but the loser respawns at their starting point, so the goal never is to just defeat your opponent. This creates a refreshing mini-game that still uses core concepts of the game, which is not seen in many other turn-based RPGs.
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 No English dub
The voice-over is only available in Japanese albeit with English subtitles. This means unless you're fluent in Japanese, you'll need to read quite a bit of text to fully grasp the story, which can be a turn off for some players.
Con Combat can get repetitive easily
While there is some strategy to the combat, requiring you to target enemy weaknesses with corresponding abilities, the combat is still very simple at its core, allowing you to brute force through battles without much thought if your stats/level is high enough. As a result, the combat can quickly devolve into you just mashing a single button to get through battles quicker, which might not be that interesting and can get tiresome after a while.
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.