Has the US version been released yet, or were you playing the imported version?
A couple of thing that isn’t explained in your review is the upgrade system, the forging, the 4 worlds, magic and miracles, world and character tendency .

When you kill a monster you receive demon Souls, these can be used to purchase equipment and items. After receiving enough demon souls you “level up” your soul level. Though this won’t increase any of your stats. Instead you will need to talk to a woman called “The maiden in black” who in exchange for an ever increasing number of demon souls will increase your stats. These range from dexterity to luck to spell power. Increasing your stats also allows you to use better weapons that you will either loot from monsters or forge from a blacksmith using items that you loot throughout your adventures.

The “forging” system though simple at first becomes very intricate when as each item can be upgraded into numerous branches, each having their own advantages. Example: You have a dagger, after upgrading the dagger to +3 ( you have upgraded the dagger 3 times) you will be allowed to specialize your weapon which can add special effects to your weapon: Increase your magic power, cause your enemy to bled when you hit it etc…).

Defeating bosses will give you a special demon soul which can be used to learn special magic and miracles, as well as obtaining special valuable weapons from the forging system. You will want to forge one of these as fast as possible as they are very powerful (and if you forge all of them, you will receive a trophy and who doesn’t want trophies?).

This leads me to the magic and miracles aspect of the game: When you finish the first level of demon soul two npcs appear in the Nexus willing to teach you miracles and magic. The miracles are usually spells are defensive, healing and curing spells. The magic spells are offensive such as fireballs etc…
During your adventures you will “save” three npcs that will allow you to learn more powerful spells and miracles at the cost of special boss demon souls.
As some spells will require the same demon soul and you can only get one per game you are encouraged to play the game multiple times. The game never finishes, as “New game+” begins. All the bosses come back to life the only difficulty is that the difficulty is greatly increased: Enemies have much larger health points and will hurt a lot more. The increase in difficulty when you begin a new game+ the first time is a lot harder and unless you grinded you will die from a boss in one hit.

Now, to the most complex and unappreciated aspects of the game: World and character tendency. This is not explained at all in the game but understanding of it is required to access the better loots and secret passages to the worlds.
There are four worlds in the game, when you defeat a boss your world tendency moves to white. The more bosses you kill (there are between 3-4 in each world) the more “white” your world tendency becomes this means that bosses will be easier, will give you less good drops but you will be able to meet new npcs and access special areas in the world. If however you die in human form (dying in soul form does not change your world tendency) your world tendency moves to black: the monsters will becomes a lot harder but they will give you better equipment, and special black phantoms will appear (these are much stronger enemies that will drop very good equipment and special items). Understanding your world tendency will allow you to get the most out of every world.

Character tendency is independent of world tendency but can be either black or white. You increase your character tendency towards white by defeating black phantoms that invade your game (i.e real people who invade your game to try and kill you) and killing A.I controlled black phantoms. Black tendency is obtained by invading other peoples games and killing them and will allow you to a special quest.

The game has many complex systems that do seem daunting at first but becomes second nature when you use them. I have spent over 100 hours on this game and it was incredibly frustrating (one broken controller) but incredibly rewarding. If you have a Ps3 and don’t have this game, you should be ashamed.

P.S Sorry for any spelling mistakes.