head to head

Dark Souls III cover artvsZelda II: The Adventure of Link cover art

Dark Souls IIIvsZelda II: The Adventure of Link

Dark Souls III leans Execution (Practiced Mastery); Zelda II: The Adventure of Link leans Execution (Practiced Mastery).

EXECUTION8 /10READS1 /10VARIANCE1 /10OPTIMIZATION7 /10
Dark Souls IIIZelda II: The Adventure of Link

Axis by axis

Execution8 vs 7

Dark Souls III leans harder on execution: fast roll timing against aggressive scripted bosses

Reads1 vs 1

Even - both lean on reads about the same.

Variance1 vs 1

Even - both lean on variance about the same.

Optimization7 vs 6

Dark Souls III leans harder on optimization: movesets and builds are fully mappable

Two games can score the same on an axis and still test it in very different ways - read each rationale, not just the number.

full breakdown

Dark Souls III

full breakdown

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link