With the game being out for the better part of a day now, I gotta admit, the much less positive Giant Bomb review is by far the one closest to my experience.

As far as I'm concerned, this game would have been ever so much better if Dark Souls never existed. You can turn off most "souls-like mechanics" via modifiers, but just about anything to make the experience easier turns off all achievements, which is a not-so-silent judgment from the developers for doing it. Boss runbacks are looooong, but if you're willing to disable achievements, you can have a bonus checkpoint before every boss. So the devs really want you to do runbacks, but I struggle to see what they add to the game. Basically the same complaint as Silksong but I am even more tired of them by now, and the runbacks are worse.

Currency loss and estus flasks plasma vials don't really add to the game, either.