Game needs some work. Having rolling be dependent upon first using a (bad) dodge makes it feel both latency-heavy and overall very wonky. The point, of course, is to use the "harden" ability to make up for the lack of being able to spam a roll, which is fine, but that ability has a reasonably long cooldown of sorts, which makes dealing with combo-heavy enemies, or groups of enemies, a big pain. It feels and looks reasonably good when you're just swinging your sword, though I got into trouble multiple times; the UI doesn't exactly frame well the player's stamina, so a lot of times you end up just sitting there thinking "why the fuck am I not moving? Oh. Right."
The level in the demo isn't great. This is not "souls world design", it's rather simple and straight to the point: it's a game primarily about enemy encounters, near as I can tell. There is one secret boss near the start which is kind of a nice surprise until you realize it's a "poison boss fight" -- literally the worst ever. In fact, there's oodles of poison everywhere, which is whatever, but it doesn't fill me with confidence that the Souls inspirations will come from all the good stuff and none of the bad.
The actual boss of the demo, which I didn't beat but came reasonably close to beating, was not great. It felt a little bit like a DPS race, since I just couldn't seem to avoid getting hit by at least 1 thing every time I went in. Good Souls bosses tends to have easily telegraphed punishes that require familiarity and good timing to exploit but I didn't spot any of those here. Running back to the boss felt weird since the boss location is actually just not that far into the level.
Last but not least, the Souls stuff is really on the nose. This is a game that just wants to be called Dark Souls so bad it seems almost mad about it. I get that it's out of love, but there isn't that much reverence for it -- some of the UI stuff seems right out of Souls, like the loading screen stuff. Just irksome.
Right now I'm actually feeling less positive about this than I did before I played it. It's Lords of the Fallen more than Dark Souls. Which may be a plus for some people who need a fix. Hell, I'll probably end up getting it because I need a fix every now and again, and maybe this will be it, but I wouldn't expect it to rise above its station.
www.epicgames.com
