This is how I feel after playing the first level.
Visuals & Performance:
The visuals had a pretty high level of fidelity, but it lacked aesthetic coherence. The enemies all felt like they were from the same category, but not the same universe. Mostly the look of the game was good, but it would probably feel more natural if the look mirrored the old-school style that the gameplay is going for. Also, holy framerate batman! I don't know what resolution these textures are or what kind of stuff is being processed, but this game needs some serious optimization!
Sound Design:
The sounds in this were pretty standard, but the dynamic music did not work at all! I don't have a problem with dynamic music, but the shift here was so frequent and jarring that it got annoying very quickly. I know the music changing is optional, but it could have been executed much better! Keeping the more exciting music playing continuously would have been much better choice.
Gameplay:
The movement was responsive. The looking felt normal with motion blur and mouse smoothing turned off. The combat was decent. I didn't like the choice to start with hand to hand combat. It takes a lot of work to get any kind of melee combat to feel satisfying. The melee combat felt more like skyrim than something like dark souls. I also didn't love the shooting. The pattern of the staff in the first level felt totally random. It felt more like I was spamming the fire button in the general direction of the enemies, as opposed to actually aiming and getting the satisfaction of hitting an enemy on purpose. In my opinion, the first gun you get should be a semi-auto weapon that will hit anything in the middle of your screen. I also think that any weapon that's not an explosive projectile or something similarly powerful should be an instant bullet. The random nature of the starting staff mixed with the slow travel time of the spells made it very unsatisfying to use.
These are just first impressions, but I think the first level of a game is very telling. I'll probably play more of this game to see how the level design changes. I really hope this game gets some tweaks, because it could be really good!