This game delivers the entire experience in a way I've never quite seen. I'm new to the souls-like genre, and FROMSOFTWARE games. Here are the thoughts:

I've spent 200+ hours in this game as of writing this and I've barely left the starting area - Limgrave. My nightmares consist of Runebears, traversing the mist, and boss fights. I've been startled, pillaged, rekt, and absolutely confused many times, but I wouldn't change any of it. I remember the first time I saw a giant I had Attack on Titan flashbacks and began trying to summon my inner Captain Levi. It's just a blast. An absolute blast. The greatest feeling of accomplishment is when you start to beat bosses or new enemies on your first attempt. You can feel your ability, your reaction time, your muscle-memory coming more and more into play as you practice, and it creates a thrilling experience. Struggling with an enemy type for hours only to come back a few days later and realize how much stronger and faster you've gotten is a very rewarding experience.

I was a bit nervous about the difficulty as I'm not usually a fan of hard content (or very good at it), but to my pleasant surprise, it wasn't as daunting as I'd thought it'd be, and it actually ended up becoming one of my favorite games.

I can't remember the last time I had this much fun just exploring and running around in a game's open world, and realizing the sheer scale of it all was both exciting and overwhelming. I spent something like 50 hours exploring Limgrave alone and getting familiar with the gameplay and controls.

If I had trouble with a boss or an area, I'd just go somewhere else on the map until I felt ready to take it on, and there's plenty of things to do before even beating the first story boss. Discover new dungeons, Cave, Hidden Item, Secret Spells, Underground, Mini bosses etc.. Summoning Spirit were also a huge help, and I was very happy with the options available. Trying out new weapons art was fun, and even finding new ones for the lore bits was very compelling and made me want to collect them all.

Even if the game seems difficult, I think giving it a chance is really worth it. The game gives you a lot of options In open world amazing quest, beautiful scenery that is pretty enough reason to try it. If you're struggling, and there are plenty of play-styles, magical spells build as well to play with.

This is the game which actually teaches you that Quitting is not an option but dying is