Solid game brought down by sluggish controls, terrible camera and some poor game play mechanics.
First of all I should point out that this game is only vaguely related to previous titles. The story evolves in the same world, but the core mechanics and characters progressions are completely different. And even though that world carries the same name, it's not exactly the same place. It has more of a steam-punk vibe. There are guns, steam powered machinery, giant automaton-robots etc.
You start the game by choosing one of 4 premade characters: Anjali, Katarina, Reinhart and some melee bloke that dies rather quickly, which represent typical RPG classes: melee, ranged, magic, etc. There is no customization or gender choice.
You are then introduced to a standard, run of the mill fantasy storyline: There is some evil b***h who destroyed the Legion (keepers of peace an order) and plunged the world into war and disarray. You, now have the goal of restoring that same Legion and bringing evildoers to justice. Now pick up your swordshotgun(yes, a shotgun) and go kill stuff. How inspiring.
For my first play through (there will hardly be a second) I chose Katherina, a rifle wielding chick. Oh, and by the way, gun shots leave a pink cloud of smoke behind and a pink bullet trail. Guess that's because you're a girl after all.
This is how combat works in DS3. You point your cursor at something and click to shoot(swing a sword), but you can't just keep LMB pressed, you need to click for every individual shot. You can imagine that there will be a lot of clicking by the end of the game. Use your RMB to move, space to block, space to roll and evade, 1 to 6 for skills and spells, shift + spell key for empowered version of spells, E for interaction with objects, NPC's, picking up loot and A and D for constant adjusting of crappy camera angles. You cannot bind keys yourself, so you're stuck with the default settings. Mouse pointer does not interact with the environment, meaning that you cannot chose which monster to target. If you are being attacked en mass you will automatically target the closest enemy most of the time, or a wooden barrel with some coins in it, or a bench...you just never know. It can be frustrating if you are a ranged character and want to take out the mage type enemies first, but can't, cause there is a guy with the sword that's closer to you, even if there is a clear line of sight. You also can't point at the loot dropped on the ground with your cursor and get the tool-tip about it. You need to be psychically close to the object in order to get the info about it and to pick it up. You can also forget about using alt to highlight objects. It doesn't exist in this game
Then there are skills called abilities here. DS3 introduces a fighting system called "stance". It means that you change you stances (two of them) and appropriate skill sets. e.g: melee bloke has one stance where he holds a shield and one-handed sword and deals less damage, but has a better protection, and second stance where he uses two handed sword for a greater damage albeit slower attack speed. Skill progression is very limited and fallows narrow path. By the time you reach mid levels you will have all of the 9 abilities(of which 3 are defensive and offensive buffs/healing skills) picked up and that's it. You also have proficiencies, used to tweak those abilities, which is just a fancy way of saying you add +1 skill point to a skill to make the skill stronger or to get some perk. It's like saying that adding +1 to barbarian skill whirlwind from Diablo is a proficiency. So basically there won't be any fundamentally different builds in this game. All Katarinas's and Reinhart's in DS3 will be very similar to each other, they will look the same, use same 9 abilities. And then there are talents, which you also pick when you lvl up. Those are passive skills that increase things like crit chance, crit dmg, amount of money dropped by mobs etc. You don't have control over your stats as they are automatically assigned when you lvl up.
The combat and progression is more similar to an action adventure genre then an RPG. There is loot here non the less, but the loot system is underwhelming. Items are character locked and have little variety in the way they look. My character (Katherina) can only use rifles (first stance) and dual wield pistols/shotguns (second stance), and the outfit that she wears looks pretty much the same throughout the game. Same old corsets all the way. Only names and stats change, maybe color and few barely noticeable details. I haven't noticed variety in melee items as well. For a male fighter dude (Lucas, I just remembered) you only get swords. There are no axes, maces, or any other type of weapons available to him as far as I've noticed.
Fighting can get very unsatisfying at times because of controls that aren't sharp, and terrible camera that needs constant attention. It can suddenly jerk around or zoom in uncontrollably, especially when you are close to walls and corners. In boss fights you often loose sight of the mobs when you roll around and try to evade projectiles, because of that. Enemies are also standard run of the mill. Yes you will be killing giant spiders, goblins and cyclops here as well.
Quests are boring in the begging but get more interesting as you progress through. The world feels claustrophobic. Almost no exploration is present. When you are in the open, you mostly traverse very narrow, linear and confined spaces. There is no world map. You only have a mini map in the upper right corner that you can toggle on and off.
NPC's and quest givers are also not very inspiring and it's hard to care for them very much. There is a dash of RPG added here in a way of conversation wheel, choices that you can make, and the fact that you can gain trust of your companions for some added bonuses, but it all feels gimmicky and underdeveloped. Oh, and you can have only one companion to aid you in battle, but you can change himher on the fly, whenever you want, which is nice. By the way, those companions are the three peeps that are left after you choose you character at the begging of the game. That sucks. I don't want to play an RPG game where I pick my char and then have 3 others that I didn't pick join me. Now I get to see all their skills, stats, I level them up, equip them, fight with them. Now why should I go and start another game after I'm finished with Katarina? Why should I have another run with, say, mage Reinhart, when he is standing right next me, and I've seen all his moves? Although you don't actively control your buddies in battles, you still have full control over their items and leveling. Another nail in the coffin of re-playability.
UI is also inconvenient and reeks of lazy console port. You have one item screen for equipping stuff, and totally different item screen for getting rid stuff that you don't need! Of course there are no tool tips on your character screen, so you don't have a clue what some stats mean. You check the manual for that of course. What does the stat "doom" mean? I'll be damned if I know. Let's check the manual, cause providing tool tips when you mouse over a stat is such an archaic feature, that they decided to leave it out. Quick-bar is fixed to utilize 3 skills by default, without even being able to assign anything on your own.
Graphics are decent, but too blurry and muddy for my taste, and I do get some weird sound glitches and frame rate drops, which is strange for a game that doesn't exactly look next gen.
I really can't think of any especially redeeming or original qualities of this title. It occasionally has a nice atmosphere, solid fights, it's mildly fun, and it's not like you want to quit playing and uninstall it.
To summarize: This looks and plays like a lazy console port and has more of an action then RPG feel to it. If you are die hard DS fan looking for that action RPG, loot fix, you will be disappointed.
On the other hand if you are more akin to action games, and don't care much about stats, builds, messing up your characters, and also don't mind myriad of small issues and annoyances that pile up together to form dung heap, you'll probably like it. It's competent but nothing more.
P.S: I haven't tried multiplayer yet. I've heard that only the player hosting the game, gets xp and loot while the other player is in "girlfriend mode". Eek! If that's true and they don't fix it, I'm not touching it with a 10 foot pole.