I've been enjoying watching my friends diving into it, hoping to give it a fair shake after my next paycheck. For now, I've been keeping an eye out for game-breakers; a friend of a friend noted they fell out of the world during a boss fight, and the game wouldn't load for them afterwards. Eventually they fixed it by lowering their graphics settings before loading the game.
Overall, I feel like the maps are more expansive than what I've seen in prior Souls games. That more open world aspect of progression gives a completely different early game experience; one friend was dungeon crawling right away and that took up most of his early game, another was on the surface dealing with tree guardians and withered treants and the like. They wound up playing about the same time, but advanced through the story at wildly different paces as a result. Certain things the overworld runner got to that made the game a lot more interesting for them early on, if you know what I mean.
But overall it's a gorgeous game to look at. It really seems like From Software amped up the polish this time around, and this game has such a vibrant color palette. I'm looking forward to the worldbuilding tricks and secrets to be scavenged and discussed as the weeks roll by :)