izigame.me

By now the game has had sufficient time to grow a player base, get patches, balance tweaks, and overall very positive reviews. So I think it's fair now for me to give my criticisms.
TLDR: the transitioning of Dark Souls style mechanics into a 2D platformer was very rough, with questionable design choices. More emphasis should have gone towards well established mechanics in 2D platformer games, and more play-balancing was needed. I can still recommend the game cautiously, but be prepared (and don't feel bad) to rage quit.
First off, I like the game. Sort of. I like the VISION of the game, which is clearly to translate the mechanics and feel of a Dark Souls Game into a 2D metroidvania-style game. I absolutely loved Dark Souls (Praise the Sun!), and I loved Castlevania SotN, so this should have been a marriage made in Heaven. Except it's a really, really broken marriage.
For a 2D side scrolling game, with RPG-lite levelling up elements, there are really a set of things players are looking for:
1. Good Platforming, tight controls
2. Fun Combat, stylish and sharp, with lots of viable options
3. Tough but memorable and satisfying Boss fights
Let's look at that one at a time.
1. Platforming - The platforming in this game is flat out AWFUL. Climbing detection and edge detection is spotty at the best of times, and falling to your death will likely become a leading cause of death past the midpoint of the game. You won't feel it in the early stages because not much platforming is needed, but once you reach the Watching Woods (quite early into the game), you'll feel the pain. Not a "I can do better next time" kind of pain, more of a "can we not go there again?" kind of pain.
The platforming problem is made far worse by the enemies you encounter while platforming. In later parts of the game, enemies will regularly hitstun you in mid air, or corner you on platforms too small to dodge, or delay you long enough on a crumbling platform to fall off. If you thought the Medusa head enemies in Castlevania were annoying, this has entire stages full of them, with insta-kill falls.
There's also a problem with the combination of Dark Souls style weight encumbrance system with platforming. The heavier your gear, the slower you move, which can throw off your platforming further.

2. Combat - Combat is dull, very very dull. This is primarily because of the limited movesets available to you, which does not really increase with more advanced weapons as you might initially have expected. By about an hour in you'll probably have settled on your favourite one or two weapon types, and simply be (a) spamming attacks directly (b) performing an air toss on small enemies, or (c) performing an air drop attack. Dodge and block as necessary, and unless you're throwing in some ranged attacks or magic, that's all you're going to do.
Magic is somehow even duller than weapon combat. There really isn't much variety to spellcasting, and spells are mostly simply shoot stuff in a direction according to your preferred range, speed and projectile spread. Functional, but unexciting.
Enemy behaviour variety is also rather lacking. While I do like the variety in art and imagination of all the different enemies, when it comes down to combat there are really only a few archetypes that it boils down to: Mooks who walk up to you and spam attacks, Mooks who tank, Mooks who jump at you (very annoying, but fair because of their consistent behaviour) and Mooks who fly around and shoot at you.
Occasionally there are pretty interesting ones, such as the heartseeker (big floating eye) that makes one other Mook invincible for as long as it is active, the (well-telegraphed) teleporting Split swordsmen, and the Drowned Raiders with their mix of harassing long range and punishing close range attacks. These enemies do require skill and strategy to defeat, and can be satisfying to fight.
Then there are the teleporting skeletons, some of which can knock you off platforms for an insta-kill death fall. These have got to be the most fun-sapping enemies in the entire game.

3. Boss fights - Boss quality is all over the place in this game, leading me to conclude that the game just wasn't playtested enough. A key difficulty lies with the RPG-lite mechanics borrowed from Dark Souls. Certain builds will find some bosses trivial and others neigh impossible. You'll easily find lots of discussion threads on the forums, but these are my most hated and loved:
Ronin Cran - Trivialized at range (I never got hit), but a tough fight for melee from what I've heard, as such I consider this an unbalanced boss fight, though not the worst.
Witch of the Lake - Wow, this is a frustrating one. Hard for me to fully hate on her because most attacks *can* be dodged, the problem lies with the way she moves, sometimes making such that you will absolutely get hit by a string of combo attacks (that you now cannot dodge because of said bad position) that hit far too hard. Heard that the boss can be trivialized with a Cleric class, so again, play-balancing is a problem.
Disembowelled Husk - Died within the first 10 s of starting the boss fight. Seriously, did anyone playtest this guy? And the walk back to him takes you past the aforementioned teleporting skeletons that can knock you off platforms to an insta-death fall. Also, if you run up to the boss room, did you know that enemies can follow you into the Boss fight?
Tree of Men - a puzzle boss, earning the same amount of hate as Bed of Chaos from Dark Souls.
Some bosses are actually quite good, to be fair. I enjoyed fighting Kraekan Wyrm, Dried King and the Coveted in particular. These bosses have clear setup times, a couple of sneaky moves to punish over-confidence, and good pacing.

In summary, the transitioning of Dark Souls style mechanics into a 2D platformer was very rough, with questionable design choices. More emphasis should have gone towards well established mechanics in 2D platformer games, and more play-balancing was needed. I can still recommend the game cautiously, but be prepared (and don't feel bad) to rage quit.