Warachia said:
Dark Souls wasn't really unique either though, the combat was taken from Monster Hunter and nearly everything else from random folklore.
I will say that I thought it fixed a number of the bullshit things in the Souls series (like not having some planks that you can walk on and some you can't with no visual indication of which is which), but I can also agree it's too short.
As someone who's played a ton of MH (at least until my psp broke and hunting buddies moved away) and a shit ton of Dark souls, I've just gotta ask: how is the combat the same? I mean there are superficial similarities, with positioning and dodging being very important. But beyond that I'm not really seeing the connection. For one thing I always found that the lack of a lock on function changed how I approached a monster dramatically, especially with the focus on tail cutting (which, admittedly, was present in a few souls fights) and body part breaking in general. I suppose you could make the argument that both combat systems are mostly designed with one on one fights in mind, but in MH your character is much less agile than the monsters you're hunting, so positioning is everything. A lot of the time it's the opposite in Dark Souls, your character is usually much faster than your opponents, even to the point that chain backstabbing is the best way to fight larger humanoid enemies.
Anyway I love both series but I always found they played very differently.