Recent reviews by Gis

I've played OG Vindictus in 2010-2012, then dropped for a few years, then picked it up again sometime around 2017 for a year or two. I mained Evie, Arisha and Eira. So I can't really compare charatcers and how they play to the original, but I can compare almost everything else.
So. The Demo. Played as Dalia, maxed her out and maxed out Fiona played her a bit, maxed out the "merc supply", or whatever this version of battlepass is called
Firs of all it's UE5 it looks good, but it's devCat - optimization was never their forte, so the game does have performance issues, sometimes.
Story kinda follows the og vindictus but with less context and side stuff (I assume side stuff will be added later)
Armor being only cosmetic - good choice, while it's fun in an mmo to minmax different sets single-player game does not need this.
Weapons are somewhat cosmetic - you do craft new weapons and you upgrade them and get stats, but they all go to the same weapon level pool, and weapon skin does nothing. That's a good thing in my opinion, but some people may find it too simplistic.
Skills - we have "shared" skill tree and skill tree for different characters. Shared skill tree has account-wide upgrades, like additional flask uses, stat upgrades, etc. And personal skill tree has only essentials - skills and some upgrades to them, very basic but may be it's just the demo (max lvl is 20 in demo, but you can unlock every skill on every character if you farm a bit). It's fine
Resources - shared on account, so you can farm up currency, ability points and upgrade materials on one character to upgrade another. That is good QoL - i like it.
Characters - may be I'm blind or dumb, but the only wat you can change character - is if you teleport to a "campsite" and then change character, you can't do it in Colhen, and that is annoying. For example if you want to upgrade weapons for Lann, before you go fight a boss, but you are currently playing as Fiona - you need to teleport to a campfire, switch to Lann, teleport back to Colhen, upgrade weeapons - teleport to a boss. Same with skills, you can only upgrade them at a campfire. That is annoying, And I hope it's possible to do it in Colhen and I'm just stupid.
Bosses - well they are all familiar faces some even have almost identical animations, just slightly updated. Some of them are challenging, and some feel unbalanced (too easy or too hard).
Combat - that is my issue with this game. I can't say that the combat is 100% soulslike but it's up there. It feels like the old old Vindictus, slow, sluggish sometimes, hit once dodge 10 times, repeat. I don't really like it, I prefer hack-and-slash combat of Vindictus from 5-6 years ago, you go in, clear mobs real quick, then you fight the boss and he can give you a challenge, not the 10hrs of learning all the mechanics challenge, but still. And then you have raids, that is where you learn mechanics and play with const party, or pray that you queued up with people who know how to play.
And I think this Vindictus, the single player one - would be better as a hack-and-slash, not a dodge and roll simulator.
Attacks sometimes are not telegraphed clearly, some people call it "parry-slop" when you have 10 years wind up before an attack hit's you or may be 1 second wind up, or may be it's actually not a wind up but a fake out kick. I just call it "dodge simulator".
And yes that is my opinion and it is subjective because I don't really like souls-like combat.
If you liked the OG vindictus combat - you will probably like this version too, if you liked it more after, i think, «Rise» update - then.. well you probably ain't gonna like it here.

I also dislike the «always online» in a singleplayer game. And yes i know it has «co-op elements» but that is not an excuse.

I didn't see any monetezation, because they are not decided on the model yet, but we have cosmetics and battlepasses (cosmetics are bought with ingame currency), and it's nexon, so you can probably expect some crazy stuff. At least there won't be any NFTs

Oh and lastly - English VA is... a thing.

All in all the demo worth checking out. Just to pass the time if nothing else

as for the full release - time will tell, but probably will be «skip and wait for it to go on sale» kind of game