When comparing Madden NFL 19 vs Dark Souls III, the Slant community recommends Dark Souls III for most people. In the question“What are the best online multiplayer Xbox One games?” Dark Souls III is ranked 12th while Madden NFL 19 is ranked 42nd. 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 True-to-life gameplay that accurately simulates the NFL
The gameplay in the Madden series excellently plays out just like the professional American football league in real life. You get to play as teams from the current year's league, with rosters that are up-to-date with the latest players, including the biggest celebrity names. The actual NFL rules are in play as well, where you control your quarterback while on offense, passing to other players in order to score, or managing your defensive players when the other team has the ball, working to tackle them and earn turnovers. If you're a diehard fan of American football, then Madden NFL 19 is a great way to live out the experience of being in the NFL through a video game.
Pro Responsive and organic controls for maneuvering your players
The latest update to the long-running Madden series gives you more freedom in how you control your player when he has the ball. You can change your speed while running to throw off opponents, such as hesitating to force the other team to stop while you find an opening and make a run for the touchdown. You can also side step the defense, spin around other players, and pretty much pull off the same types of moves that you see in real life from players out in the field. This makes the game feel like much more of a simulation of the sport with the way you have much more natural control over your team members.
Pro Photorealistic visuals
Madden NFL 19 is a great looking game. Players look true-to-life, with their exact proportions, hairstyles, and girth of their muscles matching how they are in actual pictures. You can see the sheen of sweat on their arms and see the ruffles in their uniform as they get tackled. And the weather is nice too, especially with how snow shows up on the field in patches and uneven patterns just like in real life. Just like with every other new Madden game, the devs did an incredible job with improving the graphics, keeping the technology advancing forward.
Pro Continues the story mode from Madden NFL 18
Madden NFL 18 had a pretty decent story mode that followed the careers of two best friends, with Madden NFL 19 continuing from where the last game left off. It's a nice change of pace to play through a dedicated story mode in a sports game, helping to show the more human side of the league and the types of things that many players go through, in trying to balance their private and family lives with their time out on the field. While it's not exactly a sweeping and intricate narrative, it's an interesting little bonus.
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 More or less still the same old Madden
Honestly, if you've played any one Madden game, you've played them all. Aside from a few tweaks and experiments here and there, this is an annual franchise that banks on selling the same experience year after year. The graphics get better, and they keep the roster up to date for the current year the NFL season, but there isn't much else that they can do with a sports game that's meant to simulate professional American football. If you don't want to fork over the money to pay for this game when you've already played and enjoyed other Madden titles, you won't miss out on much.
Con Weird clipping issues
There are some strange instances where players' bodies, or sometimes just their limbs, clip through each other in ways that clearly look bad. It happens a lot during tackles and sacks, with players tumbling around over each other on the field. Their physics just look off, clashing terribly with the polished graphics and weather effects on the field, and pulling you out of the experience.
Con Occasional game crashes
There are some major problems where the game will crash, forcing you to boot everything back up to try and get back your lost progress. The devs should be able to put out a patch that takes care of this issue, so you may want to hold off on getting the game until then.
Con Bland story mode
Even though it's great that Madden NFL 19 continues the well-received story mode from the last game, it doesn't really live up to expectations this time around. Getting to see the two best friends deal with their real-life struggles is still intriguing, but other than that, things feel really forced and generic, and it's way too short, taking about four hours to finish. They continued the story for the sake of continuing it without innovating or keeping things interesting. It's too bad, because they could have done a better job building on the sadly novel idea of having a dedicated story mode in Madden to change things 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.