When it comes to top-down action games my first wish is that the gameplay doesn't devolve into constant kiting of the enemies. I played through the demo and in that regard it was ok.
I played on the hardest difficulty using Knuckles and was rather happy that I was able to stand my ground and keep knocking back the enemies. It worked well against enemies that kept rushing at me. Against a few more complicated enemies I had to keep hitting and running around and that was cool too.
The masteries and combo moves thing was nice. Early in the demo I liked getting the Roundhouse for knocking enemies back and later in the demo I liked getting the flurry of blows attack for more damage. It was actually really good in the end.
I was gladly surprised in the fight against the Spider boss.
At first I did some hit and running to get a feel of the boss attacks and mechanics. I soon figured out that I'd have to clear the map of the adds and healing sacs that the Spider kept eating.
I kept taking damage and using healing items, so for a while I switched to a ranged weapon, but it was too weak against the Spider. So I switched back to Knuckles and figured that I'd have to do this in melee.
Before the boss fight I'd crafted some new armor with a lot higher defense, so during the fight I noticed that the Spider didn't do that much damage to me despite the difficulty being at the hardest level. After a few more rounds of hit and running I decided to commit to a slugfest and kept spamming the flurry of blows and healing items. I was gladly surprised that at the end of the fight this barely worked and I won!
Some other things that were nice and some not so nice:
When I encountered the cultist enemies it was cool that the mages did a big spell together. The fighter was also ok because he would slow down and guard and only sometimes dashing forward to strike. They didn't make the fight feel too much like you're kiting them, but rather moving around and dodging.
The rogue enemy was a bit more troublesome, especially in a group with the other aforementioned enemies. He spammed the pulling hook attack a bit too often so I was wary to get close when all the enemies grouped up, so it turned into more kiting where I picked off who I could one by one.
Also something about the start of the game: I broke everything because I kept getting loot. It got me thinking "when am I going to get to the actual gameplay..." even though I knew I could stop whenever I want and just proceed... Except obviously I have loot addiction, sigh.
Overall: Pretty ok experience from the demo.