When comparing Dark Souls III vs Õkami HD, 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 Õkami HD is ranked 83rd. 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 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.
Pro Unusual and one-of-a-kind combat methods
Throughout the game, you can use three types of melee weapons: mirrors, rosaries, and swords. Each one can be used to weave combos in tandem with your character's acrobatic movements, smashing or slashing the demons you encounter.
The real highlight of Õkami, however, are the paintbrush techniques, which can be used for attacking enemies or manipulating the environment. You simply select your paintbrush, which slows the game's speed to a crawl, allowing you to draw anywhere on the screen. For example, drawing a single line over a demon or object will slash it, drawing a circle in the sky will cause the sun to rise, and drawing a path from a body of water will create a waterspout. You don’t need to draw the lines perfectly, it is enough to roughly match the required drawing. It's a really fun and creative way of fighting normally not seen in games.
Pro Large, enchanting, and atmospheric world
Õkami, though not an open-world game, still has a vast map, consisting of seven regions and numerous subregions. You have an opportunity to explore all of Japan and experience everything the country has to offer, going from tall dense forests, over the picturesque coasts, to frosty mountains. Along the way, you’ll find history, rooted in Japanese mythology, and you'll meet a lot of imaginative characters. Some of them might only keep you company for a few missions, but you still get invested in their stories and development.
Pro Unique and breathtakingly beautiful art style
The unusual art style takes inspiration from traditional Japanese woodblock paintings, called Ukiyo-e. Crisp black contour lines and explosions of color after successfully bringing back life into the world give a constant impression of being inside a work of art: every tree, every building, and every figure looks like it was painted with ink.
Pro A lot of different activities
Apart from the main storyline (curing the Demon-cursed areas by looking for guardian sprouts and letting them bloom), there are ample employment opportunities – characters in this mythological Japan need all kinds of help, so you'll get a lot of missions and sidequests. The paintbrush techniques get a lot of use in these missions as well, for solving riddles and puzzles. You might need to win a race to get a guard's mask back to him, look for a lost bunny, or defeat a bunch of demons so that a drunk guy could keep his name as the best warrior in the land. Or you can just fish or feed cute animals.
Some sidequests need to be at least partly done to move the story along, some of them are totally optional. However, every good deed restores your status as a God: if you do good in the game, you get points, which can then be used to increase your health or the amount of ink you can carry, and that keeps the player motivated.
Cons
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.
Con Indiscernible dialogue voice-over can be grating
The voice-over was done by actors actually saying the text that's shown in the dialogue box, but then the recording was speeded up and resulted in a cartoon-like gibberish. These high-pitched voices can become quite annoying over the 40-60 hours of gameplay, luckily, the voice-over can be turned off in the settings.
Con Long unskippable cutscene at the start
Right at the start, there is a ~18-minute long, slow cutscene that you can't skip. Later there are some more cutscenes, but these can be fast-forwarded through.