Elden Ring vs Dark Souls 3: Which to Play - Game Scout

The clearest split is structure. Elden Ring is the Souls formula with the corridor removed: an open world of open fields, legacy dungeons and catacombs that hands over its map with no waypoints and lets players wander into threats far above their level. Dark Souls 3 keeps the classic Souls shape, a mostly linear path from bonfire to bonfire through crumbling cathedrals and ash-choked kingdoms, with the occasional branch rather than an open field.

The trade is freedom against focus. Elden Ring rewards curiosity and lets a stuck player leave and come back stronger; Dark Souls 3 keeps everyone on a curated route where pacing and difficulty are tuned deliberately. Which one is better depends on whether getting lost sounds like the appeal or the frustration.

For newcomers, Dark Souls 3 is the common recommendation as a warm-up, and Elden Ring is the more forgiving game to actually finish. Dark Souls 3 teaches the core grammar, stamina, spacing, timing and boss reads, on a tight and consistent path with no distractions. Elden Ring uses that same grammar but softens the wall: an open map means a hard boss is rarely mandatory right away, and summonable Spirit Ashes can turn a duel into a two-on-one.

• Start with Dark Souls 3 if you want to learn the fundamentals in their purest, most focused form.
• Start with Elden Ring if you want the most accessible entry and more ways to get unstuck.

Neither is required to understand the other. The two share combat DNA but tell separate stories, so there is no wrong order.

Elden Ring's combat is the closest FromSoftware has come to Dark Souls 3, then it adds to it. Both center on stamina-managed melee, dodging, parries and magic, but Elden Ring layers in jumping attacks, crouch stealth, mounted combat on horseback and Ashes of War that swap a weapon's special skill. It also eases friction, restoring stamina fully when out of combat and reducing fall damage.

Dark Souls 3 answers with speed and precision. It is the fastest game in the original trilogy, tuned tight after Bloodborne, with weapon Arts and a boss roster widely held among the studio's most cinematic. Where Elden Ring is broad, Dark Souls 3 is sharp.

Elden Ring is far larger. A focused main run averages around 120 hours, and full completion climbs toward 170. Dark Souls 3 is a tighter campaign at roughly 50 hours, and about 105 for everything. If time is the constraint, Dark Souls 3 is the shorter commitment by a wide margin; if scale is the appeal, Elden Ring is one of the biggest games the studio has made.

Both games rate as Great on Game-Scout, and the gap between them is small. Elden Ring holds 4.71 out of 5 across 174,869 player ratings; Dark Souls 3 sits marginally higher at 4.78, though from roughly half the sample at 93,087. Critics lean the other way: Elden Ring's PlayStation 5 version scored 96 on Metacritic against Dark Souls 3's 89 on PlayStation 4.

The reasons track the design. Elden Ring's praise centers on exploration, boss variety and replayable builds, with the recurring complaints being no quest tracking and occasional performance dips. Dark Souls 3 draws praise for its combat, atmosphere and boss set pieces; its most common reservation, echoed by long-time fans, is that the straighter path trades the original's interconnected world for a linear one.

There is no single winner. The right pick depends on what a player wants from a Souls game. Choose Elden Ring for scale, freedom and the most accessible route in; choose Dark Souls 3 for a tighter, faster, more curated test that many consider the cleanest expression of the formula. Players who love one very often play the other, and Dark Souls 3 remains the most-recommended primer for the Lands Between.

Both sit near the top of our best FromSoftware games and best medieval fantasy games lists, where the full rankings put them in context against the studio's wider catalogue.