Damn hard. But worth every hour spent grinding on it.
But all that is just to get you to the nexus, the hub of the game where you'll find all the NPCs and portals to other worlds. The game is BRUTAL! It's true. You fall off the path and die, you start at the beginning and lose all your souls so you have to backtrack through all the enemies you just killed to get your souls back. I lost a LOT of souls because of that. The bosses are excellent. Some are intuitive, others you need to resort to the numerous wlkthroughs or wikis to find usueful hints and tips. The meat cleaver is also an AWESOME playing field leveller. Well worth heading for Adjudicator demon soul early on in the game if you can. So, after 80 hours of playing it I beat all the bosses and then you get to start all over again for a NG-! Joy! And the multiplayer is a pretty cool aspect too which I'll explore worth in depth on the second run through (if I have time).