Okay there's almost no freedom of where you go so the connection with Dark souls isn't absolute but this is a game that features very unforgiving combat, a storyline that's interesting without continually getting in your face (and that leaves a lot of the interpretation up to you), and is ultimately a very rewarding experience. Your first couple of hours are likely to have some frustrating moments but once you learn to block/parry/dodge correctly and you start unlocking some of the combo's you'll really start to love this game. Completed once as the knight & twice as the barb and would recommend these character choices as the other two had much more limited move-sets when i played it (about 11 years ago - not sure if that got rectified in a patch or not)
I'm sure there's a great game here but i got incredibly poor performance from the title screen onwards that makes the game practically unplayable, I have a modern Windows 7 machine that shouldn't really be having any problems. Hopefully this is something that will be ironed out with future updates.
