/v/ told me the game is shit. Is it shit Codex?
Area design (especially in terms of art): Starts out very good, then quickly goes to shit, then crawls out in the last half of the game and becomes great. But this is probably the lowest point of the game
Difficulty: at least on par with Dark Souls 1.
Combat: Weapons seem to have a more diverse moveset, and there are more weapons. Enemies are also much harder to backstab fish, as many of them don't let you circle around them for the BS: Apart from this, as good as Dark Souls. Maybe better, since they improved spellcasting and miracles.
Game size: It's considerably larger than Dark Souls
Online aspects: Seems like the best of all the souls games thus far, with diverse covenants and the nerfing of several things that made PvP annoying, such as the broken backstabs.
Story: This will have to wait until I can play the game myself and check everything, but it seems to be less straightforward than Demon's Souls, so they didn't dumb it down.
By the way, NG+ is no longer an afterthought, so expect stuff to actually play out differently.
/dsg/ thinks its great, btw.