According to Bloodborne's Masaaki Yamagiwa and Yasuhiro Kitao, we should be physically and mentally prepared to die many, many times in the spiritual successor to FromSoftware's Souls series.
At the Tokyo Game Show, only 40 players out of 1,250 attempts were able to defeat the Cleric Beast boss at the end of the demo. That's right about 3% of the entire crowd. This includes our very own Heath Hindman who "died quickly" almost as soon as he got his hands on the demo after a 90-minute wait.
The results for the demo at PAX were even worse with only 20 players defeating the Cleric Beast out of 3,500 attempts. Two of those attempts came from me, sad to say, after being killed by those giant rats which I knew were going to be a problem after I saw them in the trailer. Something about necromantic canines freak me out. But I think my Dark Souls experience led me down further than the majority of other players. The lack of a shield, and instead of two weapons, definitely makes the game harder.
That said, I suppose we can say that, in this instance, the Japanese gaming crowd is better than the American gaming crowd. (As if we are at all surprised…)