Right, here we go.

I've finished the game once, taking me roughly 45+ hours. I received one of what looks like at least four endings judging by the hidden trophies. New game plus starts immediately after the ending and makes some sort of sense thematically. I absolutely love this game.

I'll post a few interesting things (nothing too spoilery) based on what you guys seem to be most concerned about.

At the start of new game plus I currently have 14 unique trick weapons. Interestingly, there are more that I am yet to acquire as there is a gold trophy for collecting all of them. In my first playthrough I have managed to get two of them to 10+ which is the highest level.

The blood gems are an interesting mechanic to add both buffs and debuffs to weapons. Primary weapons can hold up to three different ones as you upgrade them, each slot allowing a certain shape of gem. Gems can be quite simple, for example adding +10% general attack power or a little more complicated. The cursed blood gems seem to be more powerful at cost to some other aspect of the weapon, so maybe a huge increase to arcane damage but also a decrease to the weapon durability.

I have about 12 off-hand weapons/items, again not all of them as there is also a gold trophy for all of these. I found having a torch in one of the two slots to be indispensable. Not only does a torch light up and show off the beautiful world design, some enemies are also visibly frightened of the flames.

I have found roughly 19 FULL sets of clothes and armour (yes, there are some light armour sets). There are also some unique pieces that for now at least don't seem to belong to a set. Some of these outfits look stunning and cool as hell. A lot of them have practical uses. The White Church outfit has a very high poison resistance, good for certain areas and bosses. The Ashen set complete with Grey Wolf cap - as seen in some promotional material - has a high frenzy resistance. I guess frenzy seems to be the equivalent of Dark Souls' curse mechanic.

As for beast mode, this still remains a mystery. Certain items and runes (think rings) can give your 'beasthood' stat a buff, and then hitting and killing enemies gives this bar a boost. I managed to max it out, which wasn't easy, but then nothing seemed to happen. I'm thinking that this is something that the day-one patch will expand upon, probably being connected to online.

In terms of magic, there are a few items that I have found that can be used like magic. These cost silver bullets to use. I won't spoil these but I found one or two to be especially useful. You need a high arcane stat to use these items. Arcane also increases the enemies' drop rates, e.g. for blood vials, bullets and blood gems. Enemies also rarely drop items such as poison antidote and molotovs etc

Overall I think this game is a masterpiece and even after finishing it once I feel like I have only began to scratch the surface.