Those looking to fill the gaping, Dark Souls-shaped hole in their lives have been keeping a close eye on Bandai Namco's Code Vein. Dubbed "anime Dark Souls" by many, it draws heavy influence from From Software's acclaimed Souls series, most notably in its difficulty. Check out the Code Vein Tokyo Game Show trailer if you want to see how it's also borrowing some of the mood and feel too.

GameSpot recently got some hands-on time with the English build of Code Vein, which is similar to the one shown at Tokyo Game Show but features a little extra time to explore and the opportunity to face a boss. Of course, we captured our experience for your viewing pleasure.

We weren't given an indication of how far into the game the section we were exploring was, but with the suite of powers, gifts, and equipment, I get the feeling that it's not the start of the game. The above gameplay has a few deaths and backtracking edited out, so enjoy 13 minutes of uninterrupted monster killing.

The fearsome Queen's Knight boss, as you've no doubt gathered, can be quite tricky. However, I managed to bring her down--albeit on my eighth attempt. Since the Queen's Knight is very aggressive, I opted to use my buffs and saved as many healing items as I could before stepping into the fray. Check out the fight below.

We'll have more from Code Vein soon, so if you've enjoyed what you've seen so far then make sure you keep your eye on GameSpot for more coverage.

Code Vein is slated to release in early 2018 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. We recently learned that it will not have an easier difficulty setting; instead, players will be able to freely change their character's stats during the course of the game to adapt to new challenges.