Ark: Survival Evolved vs Darkest Dungeon
Ark: Survival Evolved
Ark: Survival Evolved is a hardcore, prehistoric-themed (this means dinosaurs... lots and lots of them), survival sandbox MMO set in an astoundingly gorgeous persistent world where everybody is fair game. There is insane amount of resources that you can harvest, items you can craft and dinosaurs that you can tame. Not to mention, you can and will probably need to build shelters for yourself and your tamed beasts, and of course, defend it from other players.Being a hardcore survival game, you'll also need to take care to feed both you and your dinosaurs and that death is pretty permanent in this game. Even the tools you craft has durability that will gradually wear down when used. It might be difficult to be a solo player and thus, you are often encouraged to team up whenever you can.
Ark: Survival Evolved is definitely not the sort of game to play if you're easily frustrated. The learning curve - let alone the "survival curve" - can be pretty steep especially when you keep getting killed or harassed by other, better equipped survivors.
Darkest Dungeon
Darkest Dungeon is a hardcore turn-based dungeon crawler with a rather unique gothic theme that explores the psychological stresses of adventuring as well as a beautiful, comic-like art style. Play through the more realistic (not glorified) life of an adventurer as you will not only fight challenging and devious enemies, but also face a host of problems that most adventure RPGs simply turn a blind eye to such as the stress and other mental of the day-to-day of an adventurer, famine, disease and of course, the dark feeling that arose when whatever you do doesn't really seem to matter.The game is pretty much story-driven (as you might ahve expected), but it does also feature a rather innovative turn-based combat as well as over 16 different hero classes for you to play as and recruit to your party. As mentioned, the game's a hardcore game as well - this means permadeath, procedural dungeons and practically endless replay value!
If you think you'd enjoy a more narrative-driven dungeon crawler that's very different from all the other similar games you might have played, Darkest Dungeon is definitely a game you'll want to get.