There's a lot of good here, but right now I think it's muddied by poor pacing.
The opening section does a great job of building intrigue, but it drags on just long enough that it starts to become tiring.
I didn't properly enter my first battle until 21 minutes had passed. It left a really poor first impression.
The game world is laid out in a "go along this path, interact with the content" sort of way, which is not a bad thing on its own. What I see as a problem is how cramped together everything is. Being bombarded with so many amusing NPCs in such a short time just made it exhausting, and the charm wore off quickly.
The dark turn at the end of the demo was executed well in a vacuum, but like the cramped paths before it, I felt like it was too much, too soon. I didn't feel a whole lot of build up to it.
The core combat is a lot of fun, a lot of care was put into the presentation, and I am super interested to see what happens next in the story. These are the things I love a lot. It's just that as is, I'm hoping for some tweaks to the early game, so these elements have more room to breathe and can really shine.