A great action game with heavy RPG elements to it. However not for the weak of heart...
A game for those who do not mind dying... a lot, it is a hard game to describe fully, but it is worth experiencing for yourself.
Story
Basically, the king of the land called Boletaria decided to awaken an ancient and powerful demon called the "Old One" in order to harness the power of souls. However, this did not go over very well as the land became covered in a "colorless fog" and with it; swarms of demons. Of course civilization collapses and you are the warrior, knight, or magician etc. who is tasked with defeating the demons. This is all the story you are given, however if you are a book worm and are into reading the in game texts written on rocks, talking to NPCs, and checking out item/weapons descriptions, you will find more details about the rich, and intricate story. Otherwise, you won't discover much about it by just adventuring through the game. This is a good thing if you do not care for the story as the game does not require you to know any back ground details to play it.
Game Concepts
Everything about this game is centered on surviving and taking the proper percussions to survive. And to drive this point home, the game focuses primarily on the collection and spending of souls. Souls are the only currency in the game; you must use them for everything, such as leveling up your character, buying, making, upgrading, and repairing gear, weapons and ammunition, and for increasing your knowledge of magic. The primary way to gain them is to kill enemies or find souls off of dead bodies scattered across the world. This is the most precious commodity; so unfortunately, the game likes to exploit the worth of souls. If you are slain, you lose all your souls and you have to go back to the spot where you died and touch your bloodstain to get your souls back. Well not exactly, it seems that the bloodstain where you gain your souls is actually about the spot you were 10 seconds ago before you died, so this prevents you from having to jump off cliffs a second time to regain your souls if you lost them from a large fall. However, if you die on the journey back to your bloodstain (all non boss enemies come back to life if you die to make this make this harder , you create a new one for that time you died and the old one you never picked up is lost forever. This can be frustrating, as hours of obtaining souls can be wasted in seconds. Also if you die in human form, you become a ghost, and while you deal more damage as a ghost, you have 50% of your original health or less then when you were alive depending on how good your character tendency (basically karma) is. If you die as ghost you do not die forever, you come back as ghost again. To become a human again, you must defeat either a boss (proving you didn't need the health anyway), use a rare revival stone, or participate in certain online activities discussed later. You have a central hub like place called the Nexus where most of your valuable NPCs live with the sole purpose to help you, and from there you can warp freely between any of the 5 worlds (granted you beat the first boss). Lastly, if you beat the game by some stroke of luck or genius, you then just made the game harder for you the next time you play it. Congratulations on that.
Game play
It is a very intense game that can have your heart racing at any moment; it is not a game for those who cannot handle the stress of combat and staying alive. Unfortunately, no matter what you do in this game, whether it is the tutorial, a cliff, or an enemy, or some guy online out to chop your head off, you will inevitably die in some terrible way. The whole point is to get up, dust yourself off, try again and learn from your mistakes. You cannot be overconfident in this game as one arrogant and risky move can spell your death and send you back to the start of the level in an instant. Also, this game (unlike most others) teaches you to be aware of your surroundings and of your personal limitations, don't try to bring a large 2 handed sword in a narrow corridor, as it will hit and bounce off the walls before it has a chance to strike your enemy, try a spear instead, save your big sword for when you are out in the open and you need it to kill multiple guys in one fell swoop. You cannot use certain equipment effectively if your stats do not meet the requirements to use them. You are not invincible if you role, you still can be steam rolled if you don't roll into a safe place. Your things will break in combat if you do not repair them often. And you cannot anticipate the game to play itself; you have to be the one with the will to play. A good thing is that there is no music in the game unless you are fighting a boss (which makes the music even more epic due to it's' rarity) so you have to keep your ears open to listen out for the tell tale sounds of enemies near your location. Logistics are a big thing to pay attention to in this game as well, for example, more damage can be dealt depending on the how fast you were when you collided with the weapon or whether you were parried or unbalanced when you or your opponent was struck. You have to be calculative and in order to do well; you must also expect the unexpected. There are many ways you can approach different situations, however, none are necessarily wrong or right, as any way method that works is fine.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer is very unique and commendable. It is a single player game, so you cannot interact with others online directly for the most part. You can however see other people as white ghost moving around in their worlds, and though you cannot effect their actions, you can watch and or imitate them if you want to. People can write messages on the ground made out of preset words for others to read, people can recommend a message which restores the writer's health and makes the message stay longer, and so leaving bad messages won't help anyone, and will go away quickly. If someone dies online, they leave a bloodstain for you to find, this is different from your bloodstain as you cannot gain souls from it, however, you can see what that player did right before they died, but you do not see what or how they died, so use these as a learning experience. If you are a ghost, you can either invade someone else's world to steal their body if you kill them, or you can be summoned to help someone else kill a boss which also grants your body back. If you are alive, you can summon ghost players, but at the same time you can be invaded by someone out to kill you.
Issues
The rag doll effects of dead bodies are unrealistic as you can kick around bodies by just walking on them (sometimes producing comical effects), sometimes the frame rate drops when smashing into lots of things, potential lag during online play causing unfair, preventable deaths at the hands of another person, no new content for beating the game, weapons do not have large pools of move sets.
Conclusion
A great game that is not for everyone, only for gamers who have the patience to deal with it, it can stress you out and make you mad, but if you stick with it, the rewards for winning feel great.