Flik, did you pick it up yet?
It is definitely a grinder type of game. You have to do a lot of free exploring and quest re-doing to get what you need (most notably cash from completing the quests). Looks like there's no actual levelling up during the "campaign mode"...basically the only way you get better armor and weapons is by gathering materials from monsters, animals, plants, rocks, etc. and creating them. You can also add enhancements to slots (kinda sorta like FF7) on the armor/weapon.
This is not your typical hack n slash either, at least not with the boss monsters. You definitely cannot just go in there hacking away blindly. Bring plenty of supplies, good, strong weapon/armor and some strategy or you will be dying quite often.
I did the online portion a bit last night. That's gonna take some getting used to. I don't like the fact that if my partner dies, I still suffer. In quests, if you die 3 times or hit the time limit, the quest is over. Each time you die, the reward money drops more and more. Basically, if you have a crappy partner that keeps dying, you also pay the price. Sure enough, I was with a crappy partner last night.