I must say, I've been pretty impressed with this game (playing on Xbox one X). It has been really solid, interesting characters, I love (what seems to be) the mechanic of having a lantern in dungeons as they have no light. I've played a few hours, enough to beat the first 2 (3?) bosses.
Combat has been good, although I find the weapons a little samey, not a lot of variation in move sets. The environments don't feel quite like they have the pronounced variation of souls, but have overall been good so far. The addition of actually decent jumping and (gasp!) climbing really makes a difference in exploring areas.
It takes a lot of core mechanics of souls (coin stashes, NPC quest lines, etc) and makes them more obvious. I'm not sure if I prefer that or not, but its not a bad change. For some things it is welcome, such as showing the value of a coin stash before you open it. I'm not as big on the NPC quest progress bar as compared to the obscurity of souls, but that is probably just me as overall it is likely a positive change.
Graphics are nice, a bit sterile, but I enjoy the look. I'm on a sub 1080p set but in 4K mode things are razor sharp, nary a jaggie to be seen. There doesn't really seem to be any appreciable performance difference to go to 1080p mode, so as for now I don't see any reason to switch even if the graphics upgrade is a bit negligible on my aging screen.
I would guess that since there are no stats, etc, there won't really be the longevity of souls games, as there are not really "builds" as such, and there doesn't seem to be any melee alternatives.Hopefully we get some DLC down the road to pad that out, but as it stands now it looks like it will be a quite enjoyable 1-2 playthroughs which is more than reasonable for the asking price.
I was not prepared for seamless co-op, I didn't really know anything going into this game. So the first parts of the game I was wondering what Jokels problem was as he just ran off and did whatever he wanted, got killed a bunch of times, and would just sometimes be there and sometimes not. I kept hitting "Beckon" and being ignored, thinking to myself "NPC AI seems a bit hit or miss....". It took a bit of time for me to clue in and realize that it was another human player ;)