The level up change is stupid.
Inconvenience is not good game design.
I never saw it as an inconvenience. Having to go back to the Nexus was a deliberate decision made to tie into the overarching risk/reward system of DeSo. If you have watched any Let's Plays (or more recently, a
Breaking Brad from Giantbomb), you can observe how it works perfectly.
For the most part, x-1 parts of each world are the largest. As a result, you end up with a large amount of souls before you find the boss and open up x-2. For new players, this often means they play through x-1 a bunch of times, die in a similar area, compound their soul amount until suddenly they are carrying what seems to be a huge amount, and now they have to balance whether to return to the Nexus to level up, but lose all and any progress they've made to that point (4-1 and 5-1 are both excellent examples of this. Damn, even 5-2 is), versus ploughing in, and risking the souls they're carrying.
In the case of
Breaking Brad above, Brad repeatedly questioned the merits of pressing on versus returning during his 4-1 session, during which Vinny (his co-pilot) said that he couldn't wait for Brad to die and lose his souls, and become unburdened by them.
Admittedly, this only works relatively early on, and during first play throughs, while the player hasn't completely grasped or reconciled the inconsequence of losing souls. Once a player has determined that 10,000 souls isn't a large amount, or they are on NG+, it simply doesn't matter and for sure, (but then, I'd argue that neither does levelling up at that point) - and it can become a nuisance then.
In no way is the Nexus a perfect solution (and of course, the use of bonfires in DaSo was not dissimilar to this either - you still had to backtrack to a bonfire there and give up your progress. I'd argue that this really only mattered in Sen's Fortress, however, due its length and lack of bonfires relative to all other areas).
Also, the Nexus is a modern day version of a traditional
Resident Evil save room, music and all!
Not true. You got to hear the maiden's awesome voice every time: "So the world can be mended..."
This, too!
All these impressions sound fabulous. Seems like they've nailed down some of the inconsistencies in DaSo and consolidated the best things of both previous games into this one. Yet, from the videos I've watched, it certainly has its own identity (partly due to the lack of flip-flopping ragdoll corpses
...)
Can't wait!
