Due to a few factors, the christmas money I had been given has had to go on other things (such as the household). An offshoot of this has been lack of spending power these last few days, and with it, not being able to bag some of the sale bargains I've wanted.

Now (thanks to my sister) it seems I'll be able to bag something after all, and with a bit of messing around, I can in fact buy something now.

The two games that I currently find my attention returning to are Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate Edition and Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (both currently on a decent discount on steam). Given the fact my spending is limited, they both look to be pretty good value for money, both look like games I'd love to play for varying reasons... but I can only get one of them.

As I know plenty of people on here will have played both, which do you think I should go for and why?

Things to note:
Tend to prefer darker atmospheres in games, i dont own a control pad, I'm open to suggestions in a similar price bracket. I'll update if i think of anything else relevant.

Edit: black magic love counselling available! ;)

Do you want a challenge? Dark Souls will be it if you do ;)

Very veeeery different games, I love them both and are great games but without a joystick I cant recommend you dark souls, playing with a keyboard and mouse is a chore (it's almost unplayable without a joystick), so pick up dragon age origins, with all the dlc you have hours and hours of gameplay :)

why is is so bad with keyboard though? - cant seem to find any specific reasons I do love a challenge!

Dark Souls is a do-it-again-until-you-get-it-right kind of game. Difficult, challenging, frustrating... you really get your time's worth out of this game.

DA:O is a Bioware game. Romance, voice acting, melodrama, cheap humor... But, the overall story is pretty good. The combat ain't bad. You can use a top down perspective, real time w/pause combat with a lot of control.

I would say, if you can only get one, get DA:O.

Have fun! You just need to install a couple of technical mods to make mouse+keyboard work well. If you go that route, I can dig 'em up for you.

Because the controls are very bad with a keyboard, it was a rushed port, trust me I got it on my xbox360(140hours) and bought it on pc too, without my xbox360 joystick and the wireless receptor I cant play it on pc, the movements are atrocious with the mouse and keyboard.
In the other hand you have an excellent game too but very optimized for pc and not a port at all :) so it's not really a hard choice.
Dark souls it's a game were the controls are everything, you need to be extremely precise, a game being difficult in the right way is good but when you fight with the controls is frustrating and annoying.

If you don't own a gamepad, DA:O. Dark Souls is terrible on keyboard + mouse and the controls displayed on the screen are the ones for XBox 360 ( you see on screen push X, but that's the pad button, not the keyboard button). The PC port was done poorly and without a pad you will know quite a bit of frustration. Also requires a bit of modding to go on higher resolutions, have better textures and make the mouse function decent.

DA:O works fine with the mouse+kb, has a few paths towards endings and multiple endings. Has a few story mods and a few armor/weapons, etc mods, but those are optional. Mods in Dark Souls are mandatory (sadly, because the DS has a great atmosphere and a good gameplay, though not much of a story ).

So based on what you said- DA:O. If you had the pad, i would have recommended DS.

The game is a console port, and looks like all the interface was made for a gamepad...
I still haven't played any of them, but I want. ;p

I would go with DA if I was you (and you have access for the ultimate edition, unlike here), and wait a bit more for Dark Souls. Also it was 80% off few weeks ago...

I vastly preferred DA:O for the reasons given by the previous poster.
I'm not a fan of the "do-it-again-until-you-get-it-right kind of game."

Dragon Age achieved a good balance of setting, story, characters, and combat.

I'll also throw in my vote for DA:O. I own both games, but quit DS right away because of the horrid KB+M control. I eventually got around to grabbing a 360 controller for my PC but have yet to get back to DS. Interestingly, I'm currently in a new run through DA:O and am enjoying the hell out of it. With all the content you get from the Ultimate Edition, if the two games are comparable prices, I'd say DA:O is easily the better value just for the amount of content alone.

If you want (somewhat) tactical combat, great and funny NPC, very simple but nice story, good dialogue option and overall feeling of an old school RPG, then go for DA origins. Especially with the Ultimate edition (which is on sales on Steam) you will get more than 80 hours of gameplay. To me it was the last true Bioware RPG because after that they made generic and action RPG's that is accessible to the mass.

Now this I kind of like. I presume then the controls are fully customiseable?!

If you had a gamepad, I'd recommend Dark Souls. Since you don't, I'll echo others' recommendations for DA:O, and also the comments made about how awful the controls are for Dark Souls with kb/m. They really are very poorly done. I spent about 5 mins in the game before switching to gamepad, and I'm not sure I'd be able to play it otherwise.

Don't do multiplayer / PvP / co-op and all though, so your point is sadly lost on me.