JUST PLAIN UNFORGIVING! But it's still fun...
If you are not the type of people who can get serious in a RPG that gets tougher on you when you reach higher levels, you better have second thoughts about getting this game. Or at least, according to my knowledge, this game is meant for very hardcore Japanese gamers to begin with. So, it's likely that you would face something similar to DMC3 in Normal or Hard mode, plus with a much bigger world map, oh, and no guns.
For myself, I'm having some mixed thoughts here for the game itself. First of all, it can be very addictive. The setting, the gameplay, the overall design itself, and definitely the scenery. A lot of good things that you see in this game are just plain beautiful and breathtaking, and these would pull you into the game more. Even the boss fights are just mind-blowing. (Did I mention how humungus or insanely powerful MOST of the demons/bosses are??)
If you are a regular RPG gamer, I can say that you'll enjoy this game for the most part. However, be prepare to get frustrated for more than half of your gameplay time, because my friends and I did... In the game, your character can appear in 2 forms: Revived Form and Soul Form. Revived Form simply means that you are at your peak, with full HP, whereas in Soul Form, you are either just loaded with HALF of your full HP or at most 75% of your full HP, depending if you equipped an item called Cling Ring onto your character or not during gameplay.
Basically means, you can die easily in this game, if you are the f**ked-around-the-game type. As your level, or Soul Level raises, so do some enemies, and depending on which part of the map in the area you are going. The further you are in a certain area, the enemies are much stronger than the ones you started off with. Except the bosses though (thankfully), some can be a bit pushover, but most are just pretty annoying.
Another thing you must take note of: YOU MUST HAVE PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE in this game. It's mostly gameplay without much cinematics (Too bad for me...), so dear hardcore gamers, yay for you people.
So far, this game allows the player to reach levels way beyond 100, till now there's yet to have someone who can reach the maximum level, so we'll leave that part there. One more thing to remember: when you complete the game, start over a NewGame+ afterwards, and you are over Soul Level 100, the difficulty of fighting simple enemies WILL RAISE, which means the simple zombies that you fought when you started off with Soul Level 6 or 7 will be AT LEAST 3 TIMES STRONGER, as accordance to your current level.
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that this game also DISALLOW the player to sell their equipments to NPCs, the only way to get rid of your excess baggage is to just throw them away or trade them with an online friend. Another (or more likely the most) important thing that you need to know about the game is that the currency of the game is Souls. Basically, you get some amount of Souls after defeating an enemy, and depending on the level or difficulty of the enemy like the bosses, you may get more Souls or Special Souls. This currency allows you to do practically anything that involves money here... Buy, repair, learn extra skills, learn magic & etc. Why I mention this usual jazz is because when you die, either in Revived Form or Soul Form, you will loss all your souls that you have collected so far since you started the map, but you can still retrieve your Souls when you make your way back to the exact location of where you die (as in Soul Form). BUT IF you die AGAIN when you are making your way back there, YOU WILL PERMANENTLY LOSS ALL OF THOSE SOULS. Imagining how frustrating you'll be when you lost all of the 300,000 Souls that you have painstakingly earned. Enough said.
And this game can be quite repetitive, due to your usual process of leveling up in the same map over and over and over again, before you can move on to the next map... But the good thing about that is that you get use to the map to the point of being able to use your surroundings to your advantage. So there.
I'm sorry to say that we haven't tried the Online mode yet, since that we are having problems logging online with the PS3, and with a lousy Broadband service that our dear government had provided... So what I've reviewed here about the game, is just the Offline mode. But note that the Offline mode is the MAIN part of the game which allows you to build your character better, and without you cheating your way out. Sure, you can help your friends to level up in all, but beware of the World tendency... Black tendency equals harder. White tendency equals easier. Learn how to change it and you will probably be able to play an easier (but less rewarding) game.
Overall, this game is not too easy, yet won't be impossible to beat. All you need, like we said, are PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE. Got both, you are good to go. Got neither, you may choose other games to spam or brag upon. Got either, you are prepare to train yourself.
Either way, your choice. I know my choice of at least trying to play this game properly has been quite rewarding indeed. XD