My first souls-like (apart from Hollow Knight), I wanted to do them chronologically and this game does indeed seem like a first attempt at something good. The concept "So hard that makes you become a better player" is sorta genius, but otherwise the gamedesign is at least underwhelming here.

Having to get all the info about stats/weapons from the internet, because the game itself just doesn't tell much - that alone is a very bad sign. To add to that, difficulty is totally unbalanced, game gets super easy after Flamelurker, some bosses are weirdly simple and that not even counting final bosses of the worlds, who are just glorified normal units. RPG element isn't very variative, most of the weapon upgrades are objectively weak. And the idea "Hey, let's make the player go through the whole level to get another attempt at a boss" is pure garbage. If devs are being edgy, and this is all for the sake of difficulty and getting good, then let's make all the games permadeath, then it's be sooo rewarding, right?

All in all, I definetely had my fun with the game, but hoping for something better in the next installments