Let me sum this up for you.  

The technology behind cryptonote obliterates darkcoin.  It's mathematically provable, it doesn't have random nodes that mostly exist in the amazon cloud to mix shit.

Monero cons

Original authors are scam artists so other devs have taken it over (for XMR)
Low market cap
Mostly held up by bitcoin whales who have no experience in altcoins
Not enough money to fund development (devs are using their own money).  Probably will run out at some point and project will die.
Kinda fubar'd emission

Dark cons

Massive premine
Alternated emission curve to jack price up (make early guys rich on shoulders of late guys after the fact).  Use of node required funding to prop price up.
Spaghetti code
Hypeish name that attracts the wrong crowd
Project will die as soon as devs don't have more coins to unload on a market they create by releasing features.  Even if that isn't the case, changing emission curve as dramatically as it was PLUS the massive instamine will kill it longterm.