Got to try it for an hour only.. Yep, it's open world Dark Souls. It was still surprisingly "cut off" with limited exploration. Went with a warrior class. Literally just got far enough to where you can level up and get your mount before I got booted off. I'll be honest, it was kinda odd just jumping right in it. Everything was just kinda... there... Nothing really connecting. Hope the retail game starts you off differently, because it felt off to me.... And for someone that loves open world games and the From Souls games, it just fell very experimental. It's like, you can jump to ledges... But with every other open world game, you can climb and at least grab ledges... In this, it feels like a dated mechanic/controllable character is tossed into an environment that's not designed for it... I dunno.
It was intense at times and looks great, but seemed slow. The menus have an unusual UI and takes some adjusting to.
I hope to try it again tomorrow, time permitting. Other than that, I think the hour I had simply wasn't enough to sink my teeth into and felt like there's a lot... Almost too much, that I'm missing that makes this feel like an immersive action experience than just another open world fantasy game.
Edit: after sleeping on it, just felt disappointed that I couldn't play longer. I was so busy yesterday evening, I couldn't jump in when it started. It just wasn't enough to experiment with move sets, or even read descriptions of things I gathered.. I really need to play some more. It was barely a tease.