Souls-like that's only keyboard and mouse? Man you really want me to die a lot.
So far I really like what I see. The movement and animations are nice and smooth. The combat's decent. The range on the sword seemed very short and I kept misjudging whether I could hit an enemy or not. That and the fact that you can only attack in the cardinal direction your facing made combat a bit frustrating. But of course, like with any Souls game, part of the fun is the janky controls and the learning curve of how to work with it, so I can't fault the game too much for that.
The stamina management feels very tight throughout the game, with how you can only dodge and attack like 4 times before your stamina is empty. That isn't a negative though, since I like the slower and more methodical gameplay. Makes it hard to get out of a stick situation though.
The spells were, interesting. I'm not a big spell guy in these games, and the fact that you have to memorize a key combo to cast them made me not use them in combat much. But they worked well utility wise. The light for obvious reasons and the bolt for managing aggro. Also, as much as I liked the lighting mechanics in the second area, I feel the duration of the light spell is way too short. During multiple encounters I would cast it and it would run out before I killed everyone, which either forced me to fight blind or in a tiny area around a light source. Again, this could be intentional, but it sure as shit didn't make that encounter with the bow and two sword dudes any less of a pain in the ass.
I'm not 100% with the level design. Part of the issue is that I got lost easily. See, Dark Souls doesn't need a map because every square inch of the game is unique (for the most part), so you can be placed randomly anywhere and know right away where your at. In a game like this though, where every room and corridor uses the same few textures and templates, it makes it very hard to know where you're going. The first area wasn't bad since it was open and relatively small, but I found it difficult to navigate the lower level because of how samey every corridor felt (the light mechanic didn't help much either). Adding more features and unique designs to areas would help, or you could just keep areas small, or you could try adding a map. (Or you can just ignore me. idk I just play a lot of games, not make them)
I like the weapon mechanics. The ability to switch out secondary effects effects on the fly, with the caveat that they have harsh penalties, is an interesting design choice. You could even have a shortcut for switching effects mid fights, but that might take out some of the planning and prep you would do before fighting difficult enemies. I like it though. There's also the obvious issue of only having two weapons, which are identical to each other outside of stats. It's a demo, so that's not really a complaint.
The boss was meh. It looked cool, but I only died to it once, and that was from dodge rolling off of the edge. The sweep and projectile attacks were very easy to dodge while the slam attack was damn near impossible to time without spamming the dodge. Adding to that the ability to fully heal yourself five times and with plenty of downtime between attacks to heal, It just wasn't very exciting. Again, it's a demo, so I can't be too harsh. Just hope the bosses get a bit more spicier in the future.
Overall though, I enjoyed it. It's polished for a first showing and what's here just made me want more. I'm excited to see where it goes.