My description of the preview footage was accurate! The game totally feels like a blend of those games.
Dragon's Dogma is what my mind imagined when people described Dark Souls to me (except with party members). Dark Souls can suck it, that game is not fun at all. There's only one game that has ever made death fun: Grimm Fandango.
Anyway, DD is a blast! Its massive world is filled with epic moments battling mobs or enormous beasts. Death comes easily if you're unprepared and much like Dark Souls the game doesn't warn when you've wandered into a region you can't handle. On the plus side you can save any time you like (out of combat).
Now, on the down side there is no multiplayer, however there is an online component: pawns. These are essentially your party members who you can enlist. You get to create your own pawn fairly early in the game, it's a full character creation process too. There are some local pawns (generated by the game) you can recruit but what's more interesting are pawns created by other players that you can recruit from "The Rift." You can access the rift from any riftstone location, once you enter it will gradually populate with pawns from nearby players, alternatively while in the rift you can access a search menu and filter specifications for the types of pawns you're looking for or look up a friend's pawn.
Even more interesting is the knowledge you can bestow on pawns. When you enlist another player's pawn, it will learn as you play. Completing quests let's pawns give useful hints to a player (e.g. "We must take the right corridor here."), and battle tactics makes them more proficient against types of enemies (often yelling out the best strategies against them "This one hates fire!"). When the original creator of the pawn goes to an inn to rest upon waking up the pawn syncs and tells what he/she has learned. Also, when you retire a pawn you can give it a rating, a comment, and a gift you'd like to give to that player who created it.
It's an interesting online dynamic where you're not actively playing together but you are influencing the community of players.
