Play Dark Souls III first if you have played neither. It is shorter, more focused, and teaches the combat properly. Elden Ring is the better game, but it is enormous and it lets you wander into fights you are not ready for, which is much harder to read as a newcomer.
Same studio, same combat language — stamina, rolls, and a world that explains nothing. Both punish impatience and reward learning one enemy at a time.
The open world is the whole point: you can leave any fight, go somewhere else, come back stronger. That freedom also means the difficulty curve is yours to manage, and a lot of people bounce off because they walked into the wrong region. Summons and spirit ashes make it far more approachable than its reputation suggests.
More like this: games like Elden Ring.
Linear by comparison, and much better paced for it — every area leads somewhere, the bosses are the best in the series, and it is finishable in a normal amount of time. If you want the Souls experience without a hundred hours of map, this is the one.
Play Dark Souls III first if you have played neither. It is shorter, more focused, and teaches the combat properly. Elden Ring is the better game, but it is enormous and it lets you wander into fights you are not ready for, which is much harder to read as a newcomer.
Better is the wrong question for these two — they are close enough that the answer depends on what you want from the next twenty hours. Pick Elden Ring if you want to explore. Pick Dark Souls III if you want it tight.
No. There are no scores anywhere on this page. This is a written opinion about what each game is for, so you can judge whether it matches what you are after.