When comparing Age of Empires III 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 Age of Empires III is ranked 100th. 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 Card-based upgrades and reinforcements add more to each match
Age of Empires III features a new and unique card-based system that allows for you to deploy additional units and resources from your Town Hall. By eliminating enemy units and buildings, you are awarded experience, which not only goes toward your City Level (allowing you to purchase more cards out-of-match), but allows you to activate a card in-game. These cards can grant you additional soldiers, increase gathering speed of Banks and Workers, or even a fort that you can deploy anywhere in the map.
Pro Graphics-gameplay balance
It is difficult to find good real time strategy games with aesthetics. Its high resolution graphics combined with fairly good RTS experience makes Age of Empires III a rare gem. Its AI and gameplay may not be up to the mark when compared to its predecessor, but still provides you a fair challenge.
Pro Good selection of areas to play in
There are 8 (14 with the two extensions which are inside the "complete edition" Steam is selling) different nations that the player can choose to lead to victory, each with their own different looking areas to explore. This makes for a good mix of differentiation of play depending on what the player chooses to use.
Pro Wide selection of missions
Players will see many different missions ranging from rescue missions to defensive missions. What is even better is that many of these types of missions will be mixed together into one, so there is a varying structure to each making for a different feeling to each.
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 Easily manipulated AI
During AI skirmishes, you can easily fortify your location with walls, cannon towers, and forts, ensuring that the AI continually sends large armies to their deaths. The AI will also only send their units to one certain spot of your base, thus you will always know where they will come from and which portion to build defenses at. Once your base is fortified enough, you can simply farm for experience, until no more can be gained, and then easily wipe your AI opponent out, making for one-note style of play
Con Strategy is highly lacking
Any hope of strategic depth in Age of Empires III is quickly dashed as many Multi-Player games quickly devolve into matches based solely upon amassing a large, singular army and throwing it at the enemy base ad infinitum. While the game does attempt to make terrain weigh in on how you can move your army, it serves only to restrict certain units from moving on it, and little else. Terrain does not affect sight or range of units, and acts solely as a placebo to make players think there is some strategic advantage if they don't know otherwise.
Con Could use better sound cues
Keeping track of ones units can become a difficult job (but a fun one) and having audio cues of when something is happening to your units could greatly help in this area, sadly there is very little of this in the game and could have been utilized better.
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.