Each area has a bonfire.  You work an area for awhile until you feel like moving onto the next.  Each area acts as a playground that you can run through as often as you want.  If you feel tough enough then you move on.  The save system is perfect it just saves the game constantly.   The fact that you can't save try something and just go back to a save means you can't just fuck around , there's a cost to that.  That puts more weight on your actions then most other games have.

It's certainly not an approach for everyone but I'm finding it makes the game far more personal then most other RPG's.  Thinking of Bethesda games for example I can't count the number of times I would save the game do something stupid or just test the waters to see what would happen fully knowing I can always go back to a previous save were I was safe.

You don't have that safety net in Dark Souls.  You see a luminous figure at the end of a hallway and you need to decide then and there what to do.  Then you are committed to that choice.

Then you learn, possibly try it again or decide to come back later.  There's no safety net and that feeling is awesome.

all of which sounds great in theory. But in practise it's just tedious and boring.

endlessly truding through the same areas and the same mobs in what is clearly not the open world that was touted is a total chore. If you need to buy some resources you have to go through that crap because the merchants are so few and far between. So if you've been poisoned in blightown, and you will be, and have run out of cures from dying so much, you will have to hoof it all the way back to farm the forest or hope that merchant in the burg has some.

Ugh.

Meh, to each their own.

Kryyst: You can jump, but it's weird... You have to Run and then tap the run button again (Circle button on PS3). You can only jump forward, across small gaps. You can also use the forward+strong attack (R2 on PS3) move to jump forward.

I am also enjoying this game. I also enjoyed Demon's Souls. Most of what Ghost Whistler says is true, but for me those are only minor niggling bits in an otherwise fine game. I find this game much easier then Demon's Souls, but that may be because I'm used to it's style of gameplay. The game reminds me of tough but fair GMing more then any other out there.

Thanks for the jump tip - but I had already figured it out after posting that.  But as you said it's only good for small gaps.  My complaint was more that you can't jump up to get over some of those crumbling stairs or things like that.   Being able to pull yourself up on a ledge, not necessarily Assassins Creed style, but say something chest height for example.  Even if they made it so you could only do it in light armour I think it'd make the game dynamic much more interesting.  Still though minor quibble.

I find the games difficulty to be fair.  I generally die more because I'm getting reckless or because I push a boundary to test a new opponent.  If you play it carefully it's not all that hard.  I agree with your GM assessment that feels right.   You know pretty early into a new area if you are ready for it or not.

I was thinking that this game has much more in common with an MMO then it does with other CRPG's.  The game save system, spawn points, re-spawning mobs, misc vendors, soul/item farming etc...  Lets also throw in the sporadic Multi-player.  

One other feature that would be very handy is a pause function.  It doesn't have to enable anything else like the ability to dive into your equipment or anything.  Just the ability to pause the game for whatever life reasons that come up.

I gave up at blight town.

I have neither the inclination nor the will to deal with such atrocious level design. Mobs that spawn inside walls, or can't be hit even when they stand still right next to you while you lock on (which itself doesn't work properly). The camera that can't deal with the design and gets stuck behind walls constantly. The lighting is nothing short of terrible. Quiote honestly this game plays like a beta test. And not a very interesting one. No rewards for what you do, and no incentive to play. As a result...why bother?

The reward is - to get to the other side.  That's all any game offers.