Hands-On Previews Roundup
Ten pre-release hands-on reports, from the first Gamescom hour in August 2025 to the final preview in September 2026. No review scores: those were still embargoed. What follows is what each outlet actually played and what it concluded, so you can weigh the evidence yourself.
Where they agree
- Combat feel: the parry-and-counter loop lands, and the first-person framing makes it feel like nothing else in the genre.
- Atmosphere and art direction: repeatedly described as grimy, oppressive and Bloodborne-adjacent in the best way.
- Enemy variety: reviewers note new enemy types keep arriving at a good pace rather than repeating.
- Story and voice work: the cast, particularly the two voices living inside William's head, is the thing most often singled out.
Where they agree it hurts
- Build variety: the skill tree is close to linear and several reviewers expect every player to converge on the same build.
- Weapon pool: a long play session found two swords, one pistol, one blunderbuss and a handful of spells. If you want a loot game, this is not one.
- Forced parrying: multiple hands-on reports say bosses effectively require the parry loop and that brute force is not a route.
- First-person platforming: jumping in first person is disorienting, and the later chapters lean on it more than the earlier ones.
- Loot payoff: exploration often rewards upgrade materials rather than new toys, which saps the incentive to explore.
The honest summary
Every hands-on outlet agrees on the same shape: a genuinely atmospheric, genuinely good-feeling combat game with an unusually narrow set of tools. The demo was three hours long and most reviewers played it more than once anyway, which is the more useful signal.
The dissenting voice, in full
Almost every published impression of this game leans positive, which makes the disagreement worth carrying at length rather than in a one-line caveat. This is the strongest negative reading with English subtitles, and it is specific enough that you can check its claims against your own demo memory or against the retail build on launch day.
Loyal Undead · published 2026-07-06 · verified through the YouTube oEmbed endpoint
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Extraction note: Extracted from automatic captions. The two most useful points, the default control layout and the weapon-wheel friction, are concrete enough to verify directly, and the second one explains why the game ships a Quick Cast setting.
Every preview we could verify
Fextralife
Hands-on gameplay impression · castielle
Played: A extended session of the pre-launch build
Praised the art direction, voice work and slower-burn story. Criticised the near-linear skill tree, the tiny weapon pool, the first-person platforming and loot that rarely pays off. Reported roughly 80 FPS at 1440p max settings with ray tracing on an RTX 4090 and i9-13900K, dipping under 60 in effect-heavy scenes, and questioned whether consoles will hold 60.
Verdict: Recommended waiting for a sale, or playing it through Game Pass rather than buying.
Sirus Gaming
Demo impressions · Erickson Melchor
Played: The public demo, both chapters, about three hours
Found the ordinary enemies the most satisfying part of the game and compared the feel to a first-person Skyrim with less jank. Flagged that the demo's second level is maze-like and brutal, and that both demo bosses force the parry loop. Called the story potentially the best thing about the game, and singled out the lost-children sequence in Chapter VII as the one moment that truly landed.
Verdict: Split. Liked the setting, the combat and the story, disliked being pushed into parrying at every boss.
WayTooManyGames
Hands-on preview · WayTooManyGames staff
Played: Pre-launch build
Framed the combat as familiar to anyone who has played a Souls game but closer to Bloodborne than Dark Souls in how it wants you to fight.
Verdict: Positive on the combat identity.
Game Rant
Preview · Game Rant staff
Played: Demo
Described the game as a lovechild of Lies of P and the Bloodborne school, and argued that it delivers where it counts, in the combat.
Verdict: Positive.
CGMagazine
Summer Game Fest preview · CGMagazine staff
Played: SGF demo build
Called the premise grotesque and punishing in a good way, and noted the game turns an unlikely historical idea into something that works.
Verdict: Positive on concept and execution.
DayOne
Final preview · DayOne staff
Played: The first four chapters of the retail build
The most useful single data point on the retail structure: four chapters in, the story is starting to get interesting and the pacing holds up.
Verdict: Positive, with the caveat that the game is a slow burn.
Destructoid
Early playtest impressions · Destructoid staff
Played: The first closed Steam playtest
An early look at the combat loop before the public demo existed. Useful for tracking how much the game changed between the first playtest and the demo.
Verdict: Cautiously positive.
GameSpot
Gamescom hands-on · Jean-Luc
Played: One hour at Gamescom
An hour of hands-on from the first public showing, with the reviewer noting some soulslike fatigue while still engaging with how the first-person framing changes the genre.
Verdict: Mixed, early.
Insider Gaming
Launch FAQ · Charlie Champion
Played: No hands-on
Published the launch-time conversion table, the Game Pass confirmation, the no-early-access confirmation and the pricing breakdown. The most complete logistics reference before launch.
Verdict: Reference, not opinion.
Lyrical Games (publisher)
Official press release · Paul Lombardo
Played: n/a
The gameplay overview trailer breakdown: stamina, light and heavy attacks, parry and counterattack, matching the right weapon to the right enemy, the Claymore and the Musket, the Fire, Shield and Grapple Transmutations, and the Catalyst, Lantern and Amber loop. This is the highest-grade source on the site and most of this wiki traces back to it.
Verdict: Primary source.
How to read pre-release coverage
Weight the build, not the outlet
ReportedAn impression written from an August 2025 playtest is describing a game a year and a half older than the retail build. The studio has said publicly which problems it would address, so a 2025 complaint about readability carries less weight than a September 2026 one.
Separate feel from content
ConfirmedReviewers are reliable about how the combat feels and unreliable about how much content exists, because almost nobody played more than four chapters. Complaints about build variety come from a previewer with a partial skill tree. Complaints about the parry loop come from everyone, and they are consistent.
Watch for the same sentence
ReportedWhen four independent writers describe the same fight the same way, that is a design decision rather than a reviewer's taste. Every hands-on report says the same thing about the two demo bosses: you parry, or you die. That is as close to confirmed as pre-release coverage ever gets.