The demo's officially out now.
I played it again but haven't finished it because I find the combat sluggish and unsatisfying. It starts to take a long time to just take down any one monster as it leans very heavily on parries and dodges, but the input and animation lag drove me crazy. The social media manager put up this useless tweet about playing in game mode on your tv, but I'm already doing that on a new TV with ALLM and 120Hz TV reviewed for low input lag. Lots of other people on other game boards have noticed this problem too. I found the combat much more satisfying in the Valkyrie Elysium demo I played a year and half ago even though the overall production values there were nowhere to this level. There were also times when I would hit the attack or dodge button but the game does not register it at all, perhaps because the player character was locked in a prior animation or some other reason.
Like I said before this does not play like or have the normal difficulty of a Devil May Cry or Platinum Games action game. Perhaps closer to a From Software game on a sliding scale of one type to the other type.
It's hard to judge the story because they cut a lot out of the demo, but the moments where your character comments on stuff and has a back-and-forth with the male character over the intercom wasn't quite intriguing or interesting enough. It wears this veneer of being inspired by Nier (including the music which is pretty decent) but it's not wowing me like a Yoko Taro game.
Maybe if I had all the skills unlocked from the beginning it would be easier to play, but where it starts you it's more frustrating than anything.