I'm over twenty hours in and loving it - decided to run my usual strength / faith lad and have had the usual experience. Sucked early on but is now kicking ass. Lightning destroys magic users and the zweihander is still my big beautiful boy that smashes enemies into stagger. Its at a B scaling on strength as a heavy weapon so it's getting me by and I kind of don't want go give it up.
I think my only gripes are - I've had multiple bosses stagger over and over with my hits and never escape the spam. It's fun and makes me laugh but it feels like it shouldn't be happening. The other thing is the rolling / shield. I'm running a 100 physical shield with that immortality spell on it but vs combos it's useless, rolls straight up suck. The delayed attacks of bosses is frustrating most of the time. I'm speaking as someone who's played all souls aside from Sekiro.
Also I've come across several enemies who will spam an attack / magic without stopping. I've had to hide and wait for them to lose aggro because they will non stop shoot at me. Its kind of bizarre.
Summoning has been fun, I camped in a little cave and set my summoning sign up for some easy grind and had a lot of fun guiding people through. I haven't been invaded yet, which I find a little weird, I'm guessing the invasions are different here.
Overall its a solid game, really fun and is how all open world games should be, little guidance with encouragement to explore.
Side note - I put quick step on my zweihander, I didn't even think you could but there we have it.