Dark Souls 3 is a much more difficult game. It's not even close.

[Speaker For The Dead]

I recently finally beat Elden Ring, and it inspired me to go back and finally beat Dark Souls 3.

wow, there is something about this game that just separates itself from Elden Ring. The level of fear, concentration, tactics, hit detection, variety of enemies...DS3 is miles ahead.

Yes, Elden Ring Boss's are absolutely more difficult. But the moment to moment encounters?

They aren't even in the same league.

[Mirona]

the difference in dark souls 3 and elden ring is power scaling and freedom of approach. you can easily overpower everything in elden ring while doing the same in dark souls 3 is much less a thing.

but when you dont try to overpower bosses with numbers or builds then elden ring bosses are, at least some much harder than dark souls 3. just that most people will never get to feel that as they have so strong characters that allow for many mistakes and still be victorious.

gael, midir and some other are just better tuned to what most people can bring against them. but in terms of attacks,patterns,combos most elden ring bosses are far more complex, you just dont really ever need to learn them.

i only did a full sl1 run in dark souls 3 but i would assume doing the same in elden ring is much harder as now you would have to actually learn encounters truly which are far more complex. for the most part. not all of them ofc.

[Artek [General]]

Bosses - ER takes the spot.

General between-boss gameplay definetely on Dark Souls here. Many enemies are straight up minibosses in their own right. Not to mention the sheer diversity of them.
ER cheated a bit by copy pasting same knight archetypes in all areas of the game, giving them minor difference in special attacks. IMHO they should've doubled down on reusing minibosses more. Margit's surprise ghost attack should be happened more than once. And I would love to fight more tree sentinels.

[Speaker For The Dead]

Elden Ring eventually turns into an action RPG power fantasy.

Dark Souls 3 is a nightmare simulator.

[Le DocGuy]

The only difficult part is managing your stamina in Roll Souls 3, other than that you just keep on rolling baby.

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Speaker For The Dead:

Elden Ring eventually turns into an action RPG power fantasy.

Dark Souls 3 is a nightmare simulator.

I don't know, there's a lot eldritch and body horror sh*t going on in Elden Ring. There's an amusing contrast between glorious Kingdom of Gold juxtaposet against crap like Scarlet Rot and Prince of Death.

Dark Souls is a bit more grim dark, but at the same time more cozy and down to earth. The Undead Settlement in Dark Souls 3 is straight up a cozy neighbourhood if neighbors weren't insane and a bit too happy with their pitchforks.

[Didaibr]

Originally posted by Speaker For The Dead:

But the moment to moment encounters?

Like I run through 95% of the encounters in Elden Ring

[Paleblood33]

when is that DS3 lighting remake mod coming out? DS3 needs some love it's a great game but it's tech is a bit archaic

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by 76561199566340351:

when is that DS3 lighting remake mod coming out? DS3 needs some love it's a great game but it's tech is a bit archaic

Is it? I found it good enough. Dark Souls 2 was way worse. Now that's a game in need of quality remaking.

[Speaker For The Dead]

Originally posted by 76561199566340351:

when is that DS3 lighting remake mod coming out? DS3 needs some love it's a great game but it's tech is a bit archaic

I don't really see any problems with the graphics. It often looks (and more importantly FEELS) much more real than Elden Ring.

[Don Lobo]

Originally posted by Didaibr:

Like I run through 95% of the encounters in Elden Ring :steamlaughcry:

And I can sprint through 95% of all DS3 enemies just the same.

Having knowledge of the game adds a lot. Maybe for a lot of you who are new to DS3 it might seem harder, but after a lot of practice it'll be as easy or easier to sprint pass everything as it is in ER.

In general as well, DS3 might feel harder overall to deal with the moment to moment because ER gives you a lot of tool variety (in DS3 you normally have a relatively focused set of things you can do even towards the endgame). For a lot of people going back, it might feel a lot more limited to not have much for crowd control or quick range options for builds not specialized in range.

Originally posted by Speaker For The Dead:

But the moment to moment encounters?

They aren't even in the same league.

Try Demon's Souls then. The areas themselves are infinitely harder than almost any boss. Some areas are also way more punishing than their analogues ever were in any of their other games.

[Pigsnortcore DSP style]

clown

[Senki]

depends on what build you use honestly

you can basically permastagger 90% of the mob encounters if you use a big weapon just like in elden ring

[An Irate Walrus]

Dark 3 can pretty readily be broken in most instances with the right weapon; the Estoc is referred to as the "Bestoc" in that game for good reason.

That said, I will definitely give you that the moment-to-moment play in 3 is much more tense than they are in ER. A big part of that, though, is down to what Mirona mentioned: there aren't any convenient power-leveling spots in 3 similar to the giant dragon in Greyoll's Barrow (especially if you have Torrent on call and rush over to the grace before it finishes its death animation) or the birb in Mohgwyn.

Because you cannot just outlevel the content (without doing repeated invasions or boss co-op, anyway), you have to face it at or near level parity, and that definitely ratchets the challenge up.

That, and only the legacy dungeons in ER really create some of the fatal funnel spaces that existed in Dark 3.

[Speaker For The Dead]

Originally posted by Pigsnortcore DSP style:

clown

snowflake

[Don Lobo]

Originally posted by An Irate Walrus:

Because you cannot just outlevel the content (without doing repeated invasions or boss co-op, anyway), you have to face it at or near level parity, and that definitely ratchets the challenge up.

What are you talking about? All you need to do is kill Dancer right away and boom! Easy souls farm from Lothric Knights : D

Oh right... you'd have to kill Dancer right away XD