Free Step Dodge

Those were my early impressions as well. Sink time into it to figure out what the hell you are doing. Tutorial placement is abysmal.

I actually somewhat enjoy it now, but for the first 30 minutes I was pretty convinced it was a really bad dark souls.

Bummer. :/

plus clunky animation from SW is still there ..lol

I played it for about an hour, 20 minutes of that was facing 2 enemies that just one hit kill you...

I never got past the 4-5 that come after you because fuck that. Really doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be a counter kill or even stealth kill.

Main problems that turned me off is the stamina depletes way to quickly, 3 swings and William is out and TNs idea of "hard" still isn't hard just BS like grunt killing you after 1-2 hits that wouldn't be a problem if this was DMC or Ninja Gaiden but it isn't

You're not managing stamina correctly. This is the main issue I had early on, and it turns most people off before they figure out how to rectify it. If you play the game like dark souls you run our of breath and die immediately.

During a combo watch the red part of the stamina guage. If you tap R1 before it completely refills you get a portion of it back. If you wait too long, its all gone and you're up shit creek.

This is absolutely necessary for any level of success in the game. The second thing is, don't more than 2 enemies at once. You are not meant to. You have rocks and arrows for a reason. If you DO stumble into that situation your best option is a spear. Other weapons will result in your being overwhelmed instantly.

tldr; the game presents itself as dark souls. But if you play it like dark souls, you will have a very bad time indeed.

Aside from the aliasing woes and framerate issues (which it hilariously offers in the Options to fix one but not the other and in the end winds up correcting neither), my largest grievance with it so far is the item system, which has not improved upon longer play.

It's best when being an action game undisturbed by the lazier attempts at RPG mechanics, and I'm left feeling like I could get a better emphasis on either focus in other games. It's not wholly abysmal, but I do find it insipid and banal in the literal senses of each word.

I'll spend more time with it later before passing judgement on whether or not I want to buy the full game (been enjoying Revelations 2; hard to pry away), but my current position is that with my finances as they are I have to be rather picky with the titles I pick up, and this one has not made a compelling case.

They were going for a super RNG item drop rate similar to diablo or borderlands. Everyone agrees the rate needs to be toned down, as well as durability improved.

As for frame rate, the game regularly stays above 30 in movie mode and borders 50-60 the rest of the time.

The issue in movie mode isn't that it dips below 30 persay, its that it fluctuates between 30 to 60. It can actually too fast for its own good for short periods of time and it looks bad as a result.