Got this myself today and I'm finding it a very fun game. Some things can be a little annoying though, for example I've just opened up access to 2 star missions and am finding the 2nd area much more difficult, and there are lot of items I can't seem to find to use as upgrades.
So far I've only tried the basic sword/shield, the iron great sword and the lance (both iron and bone), and from that limited experience I have to say the great sword is way to slow for the vast majority of stuff, and any passive mob that just runs away will always dodge it. The sword/shield is very fast, and very mobile, but lacks damage. The Lance is quite fast attack speed but you are very limited in terms of mobility as you cant make multiple quick attacks except to directly infront of you.
There are some downsides to the game, such as an OK tutorial for the basics, but there is just tons of stuff not covered, like the stats system, charms etc... and also I unfortunately have an ancient TV (not HD) and so the text is almost unreadable due to the way it's displayed.