I'll put it simply: You will die. A lot. Then, you will die some more. Every time you die, all of the souls you gathered will be lost in a bloodstain at the point of your death. If you die again before you make it back to that point, they are lost forever. Enemies can kill you in just a few hits, and they will often gang up on you, sneak up and jump you from behind, or snipe you with arrows and firebombs. Your character is not exactly Ryu Hayabusa either. If you take a typical hack-and-slash approach to combat, you will die hilariously fast. Every dash, every evasive move, every swing of your sword takes stamina, which needs time to recover. Block for too long and your guard will be shattered, at which point you will likely get impaled and killed. When you die in human form, you come back as a spirit with only half of your max HP. Dying in a game normally evidences that something was too difficult for you, and this game responds by making things MORE difficult. All saving is done automatically by the game, and portals back to the nexus world (the game's safe zone and hub for stat boosting and shopping) are few and far between. The game auto saves when you die, and it does it fast too. I tried pulling the plug on my PS3 right after getting shanked by a zombie, and it STILL saved. Oh, and every time you die, all the enemies respawn.