"Demon's Souls seems alright, but I've only played Dark Souls and so cannot select one of those options. Though I am looking forward to Dark Souls II."

Not inclusive enough.

Demon's Souls does seem more punishing for death than Dark Souls. Other than that, they seem similar from the two hours I saw Brad play.

Yeah I forgot the "I didn't play X/Y and think X/Y" was better options, those are really stupid options though and this poll is all serious all the time.

Also, cling ring. Bam no death penalty. Matter of fact, Cling/Thief in the first hour and you're set for the rest of the game, Favor and Protection at least takes a while to get assuming you don't kill that kind and generous soul who possesses it too early.

I played Demon's Souls first but found both it and Dark Souls to be equally enjoyable and do not hold one over the other. And also I am a hipster scientist.

I didn't play demons souls because i dont have a PS3. I would play it though. From what i've seen i'd probably think dark souls is better cus warping to different worlds seems silly.

Played Demon's first but never finished. I finished Dark Souls. I think Dark Souls is better. Framerate is terrible in both games of course. I'm a scientist.

Where's the option for "I think Dark Souls 2 will fail to live up to my terribly overblown expectations, but it'll probably be alright."?

I think they do slightly different things better than each other, and I really do think both are great. Dark Souls wins out though just purely based on graphical and sound design. It is a lot more colorful, armor and weapons feel and sound heavier, the atmosphere is almost palpable. I just think it's a more enjoyable game to be inside.

@capum15: Actually, "I played X first" does not include the stipulation that you also played the other game, therefore the poll is inclusive on your end.

@sunbrozak: WHAT!? Begone, heathen.

I played both Demons Souls and Dark Souls and I think both games are fantastic. However, both games still have terrible menus, frame rates, and I would enjoy just a tad more direct lore without me having to go to a wiki or some butthead's youtube video.

Interesting pole, but you should have left out the stupid hipster/scientist/warding/flesh/framerate/Dark2 sh*t so the results would be more clear. Just saying.

Dark Souls was the better game - mostly because of a more diverse set of viable weapons, armor and spells, and the interconnected world. But Demon's Souls killed Dark Souls in a couple of key areas like the character and world tendency systems, and having servers (which alone almost makes it "better" than Dark Souls). Anyway, I voted Dark.

Yeah, if you didn't play X/Y you have no bidness voting in a moar-betta pole.

@fredchuckdave: So far I've just stuck with Havel's ring and the Wolf Ring (though I'll switch it out depending on the situation), can't be assed to put on the Favor ring because I know I'll never take it off and then I'll be stuck with that and Havel's.

And I didn't kill that kind and generous soul at first, as he helped with some bosses. When I was finally able to use that orb and make things right...it felt good.

And yeah, that Cling Ring seemed pretty damn good when Brad got it. Just read up on the Thief Ring and that seems good too, similar to two in Dark Souls (Slumbering Dragon (I think) and Fog rings).

Edit: Also, oh damn, you're right, it is inclusive. Guess I can vote then!

@plaintomato: Character tendency is alright, World Tendency is just straight up stupid though and covenants do everything that WT does but better, except for them not working all the time. WT is the definition of "look this up until you can exploit it" design, because there is no way in fucking hell you're figuring it out blind. Also if you're online it either does nothing or gives you access to the best equipment in the game in the first level.

Despite Gravelord almost never working on like my 15th time through Dark Souls I did fight some BP Capras on the way to the Firesage and that was pretty tough; I merely played Demon's Souls 8 or 9 times through or so.

@capum15: I thought you were wiser... but I thought wrong. I love incidental sparing dialogue!

✓ Warding is cheesy but Second Chance is way cheesier

http://giantsouls.com

@fredchuckdave: I'm assuming you know that Gravelord Servants only really come into play during NG+, but you really didn't get anyone invading you to fix their world?

I am a Wizard and I think Demon's Souls is better.

Technically I played Demon's first, but the first "real" run that I had at either game was Dark Souls. While I do believe that pretty much everyone will favor the one they played first (as half the fun is discovering this new "gamestyle"), I think I'd say Dark Souls is the better game either way. I'm just not really seeing what got worse, while seeing a lot of small improvements. Also, I think the "lack" of loading screens (through open-world approach) makes the experience much more engrossing.

@oldirtybearon: Most of my time playing was in the first month, at which point no one knew what that bigass Gravelord's servant message meant; went back to play the DLC like 6 or 7 months ago and that was when I finally encountered BPs, never got invaded when I tried using the covenant.

Demon's Souls > Dark Souls

Ehh Demons was PS3 exclusive so a lot less people played it. These results will always be skewed.

I wish they made another souls game with new systems instead of a direct sequal to Dark Souls. The whole fire theme seemed kinda lame to me and the engine has real trouble rendering flames without dropping to single digit framerate.

@fredchuckdave: That's really, really shitty luck. Hopefully the covenants are better explained from the outset this time as a lot of them in Dark Souls were really cool in concept.

Oh and I think Dark Souls is better than Demon's Souls, and I played Dark Souls first.

I only got to play through 1-1 of Demon's Souls and I loved it, and that was after playing through Dark Souls on the PC. Sadly the PS3 suffered from an acute case of Last of Us and died before I could play any more Demon's Souls.

Either way it seems awesome and they're both awesome games. Awesome!

I dumped probably thousands of hours into both games, split pretty evenly between the two, and Dark Souls is an improvement in almost every way, and in most ways that it actually matters. The only major thing Dark Souls fucked up was the messaging system. I don't know if it was their dumb decision to not make "rating" a default action, or if it was because they handled that stuff differently on the servers, or a combination of the both, but I know I've dumped 1,000+ hours into Dark Souls and never got a *single* rating on my messages; whereas in Demon's Souls I get recommendations all the time, and pretty much every time I start the game back up.

Besides that, Dark Souls has improved animations; less janky parrying; way more weapons; way more armor; way more content in general. I'll admit there's definitely a certain kind of charm to Demon's Souls that goes away with refinement, but Dark Souls is still the better game.

I am a hipster who played them both for the first time simultaneously.

I played Dark Souls first and can't reasonably pick because I've still yet to play Demon's Souls. I will eventually though.

"I played like 13 hours of demons souls and got nothing from it. But I might try out dark souls one of these days, because it doesnt look as impenetrable. Dark Souls 2 look really cool"

@humanity: That doesn't really make any sense considering the poll results, even the Demon's Souls friendly categories (which naturally mandate having a PS3) seem to be losing out (note: I didn't expect this to happen, though scientifically speaking...)

k you convinced me. I forgot about covenants, they made up for tendency in spades. I still really like world tendency though and don't really see how covenants did more than just scratch the surface. I'd love to see a WT system that completely changed the game. Think if putting on the calamity ring didn't just gimp you, but loaded the levels with harder enemies, revised character placements, and access to a couple extra tangent areas, to freshen things up again.

Played Demon's Souls first. Think Dark Souls is the better game.

I played Dark Souls on PC, so the framerate for me doesn't suck at all!

That said, @fredchuckdave, I need to tag you and get your attention so I can find out if Demon's Souls has a framerate as bad as some areas of Dark Souls. I can handle drops here and there, but watching Vinny play Dark Souls on PS3 was eye-opening on how bad some of those areas are, and that was sort of disguised by the fact that I was streaming video. Plus I keep hearing horror stories about Blighttown. Is Demon's Souls framerate anywhere near as bad as Dark Souls?

Why isn't there an option for every profession in the world? This poll sucks.

@believer258 said:

I don't know if it's normal or if it was just some sort of weird glitch for me, but in DeS there were a couple of specific areas that I would get seriously 5-10 FPS in for a few seconds at a time if my camera was positioned a certain way, way worse than anything I've seen in DaS. One of the worm rooms in 2-2 is one of the big ones that I can particularly remember, but there were others, too.

That was all relatively small areas for relatively short periods of time, though; nothing as pervasive as Blighttown in DaS as far as I can remember.

I played Demon's Souls for a few hundred hours, tried Dark Souls but found it irritating and at one point felt I had wasted my money, went back to Demon's Souls, then really got into Dark Souls, then lost my PS3 and played only Dark Souls for over a year. I think Dark Souls is better, but I'm a bit nostalgic for Demon's Souls.

I've only played Dark Souls, so I don't feel qualified to answer with any of those options.

ALL OF THEM WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I've played both and my Souls are tempered for the challenge that will be Dark Souls II.

I choose the "I tried Dark Souls and watched Brad's Demon's Souls thing, and I think both games would be really neat if they didn't have such god-awful control schemes" option

This.

You know, I used to see those people who would talk about Oblivion like it was the worst piece of garbage ever to be pressed to disc. Or remember when Fallout 3 was announced, and all those Fallout fans immediately started gnashing their teeth, and then gnashed them even harder once the game was out? I never really understood that; what would compel a person to be some singularly determined to despise what was otherwise, and for all intents and purposes a fairly compelling game experience.

But then I played Dark Souls. I can scarcely think of any other games I despise as much as I do Dark Souls. It's not just that I don't like it. It's that it wears the same skin as Demon's Souls. like It killed one of my favorite games of all time and then skinned it and then dressed up in a suit made out of the skin, Buffalo Bill style, and then showed up to my birthday party wearing it. It's got the same spell system and the same hud, the same weapons and controls and it's even got sparkly. But it's not the same. It's some deranged interloper pretending like it's the game that I love. I can't even enjoy Kuon or Eternal Ring like I used to now because they remind me of Dark Souls. When I play Demon's Souls, in the back of my mind I'm thinking about how much I hate Dark Souls.

I'm not sure if there was an option for that on the poll though.

Because you let me, I clicked all the options...

This isn't all inclusive. I need an option for I don't give a shit about any of the Souls games...

@stubbleman: I remember when I first discovered Warding in Demon's Souls. It gave me hope that I could make it through the game.

Stubbleman, I'm genuinely curious as to what it was you hate about Dark Souls. I love both and have thought about the merits of the designs of each, so I'm just wondering what specifically about Dark Souls rubs you the wrong way.

I guess I'm a hipster because I've only played Demon's Souls

Where's the "I'd like to play Demon's Souls, but I don't own a PS3" option?

It's funny; of all the things to complain about, I feel like the control scheme is the one that isn't a valid complaint (except for the camera I guess, but I've never had problems with it myself). The controls are as tight and precise as they could be, really. If I had to guess, you have more of a problem with the combat design (animation priority) than the controls.

I voted hipster. I figured I would vote for what is the universal truth at this site.

And of course I'm compelled to say it, vote hipster before it was cool to vote hipster...

oh boy, which one is better. Nice, ought to cause fanboy debates right here.

"I played both games and didn't like either of them."

So I voted "Dark Souls II" because maybe it's great.

I did not care for Demon's Souls much (played it well before Dark Souls even came out), but Dark Souls is pretty fun. My biggest gripe with Demon's Souls was the Zelda Shortcut Dungeon level design, and I thought that was handled much better with the bonfire system in Dark Souls 2. It became much more about the challenge of difficult bosses/enemies in Dark Souls for me, whereas in Demon's Souls I never actually had much trouble getting through the levels, but the repetition of having to redo the entire "stage" to get back to the boss and have another chance at figuring out what to do was incredibly tedious. Both games are a challenge of patience, but the former's as a result of tedium and the latter was confidence, at least that's what it was for me. I've tried to go back to Demon's Souls since, but that level design still drives me insane.

I technically played Demon's Souls first (I rented it for a little bit but didn't get past the Dragon Bridge after Phalanx), but years later I played and beat Dark Souls, then went back to and beat Demon's Souls.

Honestly, I can't pick a favorite. I like whichever I'm playing at the time more than the other. The both do what the other does poorly better. Dark Souls has generally weaker bosses and level design, and Demon's Souls has poorer equipment and overall balance.

I do find myself going back to Dark Souls more than Demon's Souls however, but I feel like that's mostly due to the former being more active now and World Tendencies being pretty much dead.