It starts out with an impressive opening of the sausage fest of a party waking up in a tent. While the need to have the cell phone alarm continually going through the scene until Noctis wakes up was annoying, it's at least very realistic and leads to a bit of humor. Fortunately, the opening cutscene is mercifully brief and you take control of Noctis very soon after they wake up.
You control Noctis, a prince who is basically every Final Fantasy protagonist ever. Tough, a bit brooding, but ultimately a good guy.
In your party are:
Ignis, who I gather is some sort of aide or teacher to Noctis and speaks with I swear the same voice as Balthier.
Gladious, a tough greatsword swinging guy who acts as your tank essentially.
Prompto, who is the comic relief and also the weakest member of your party.
The name of the game is your car is broken down and you need to make 24,000 gil to pay for it. Now, it is theoretically possible to make that sum of money without doing the main quest of Episode Duscae, but it's not really practical as the rarest loot only sells for 400, and most enemy drops sell for the 5 - 20 gil range.
Within about one minute you see a sign announcing, conveniently, a 25,000 gil reward for the slaying of the dreaded Behemoth "Deadeye". This leads you into a tutorial with Gladious teaching you the mechanics of combat. For the elaborate tutorial you are given most combat won't utilize every mechanic, but it's handing knowing how to warp to high ground, perform a warp-strike, etc. The most poorly explained mechanic was the parry which I failed at repeatedly until I realized that all I had to do was hold down the defensive stance button until the screen gave me a parry option (a la Wind Waker).
After the tutorial you have free roaming of Duscae, which is an impressively large scale area, especially for a demo. To give you an idea, I would estimate that it is roughly 5 times the size of the Archylte Steppe from Final Fantasy XIII, though it may be much larger, and it certainly feels so with an enviornment rich in detail.
For the first time ever, you truly feel like this is a living breathing world and not a handful of corridors. The world design rivals Shadow of the Colossus. Whether you are tramping through underbrush, walking along dirt paths through the forest, carefully maneuvering through wetlands or hiking over open plains, the world feels alive.
There is a day to night transition, which is highlighted by the fact that when night falls your characters turn on flashlights on their chests and use that as your primary light source. When night falls, it's usually about time to stop and make camp in one of the many "havens". Camping not only feeds your party with food that offers stat benefits, but also acts as your main manner of "leveling up".
Your first official quest is to search for clues to Deadeye's whereabouts. After stopping at 3 out of 6 locales, you are able to head to the nest, but searching for the other 3 locales to complete this quest nets you an EXP reward. When you enter the den, you have to fight your way through very large groups of enemies. At this point I was besieged by about 10 wolves at once point, and only barely made it out alive.
The technical aspect of this game rewards proper execution, and punishes button mashing. You really have to be careful with what you are doing. You can even hit your teammates, but not in a way that deals any damage, though from what I've seen it can distract them. Most annoying is that they will scold you with one of numerous, oft repeated lines.
0 HP doesn't mean the end, it just puts you in a "Danger" situation which can be healed for free by your party members rescuing you (and you in turn can rescue them), or by using a Potion. At the end of the battle everybody's HP returns to maximum, but the longer you spend in Danger, the more your maximum HP decreases, as hits taken while in Danger deplete the gauge. If your party members maximum HP decreases all the way, they are KO, and after battle return with a bare minimum HP. If this happens, a safe bet is to retreat, find a haven and rest.
My first encounter with Deadeye was amazing as there is an initial trap that you set and trigger with a series of well-placed movements, but it all proves for naught, triggering the "real" boss fight, which I felt was a bit of a tease. If that had been the actual way the boss was defeated, it would have felt rewarding and unique.
It didn't really matter as after we thoroughly got our asses kicked we were given the wise advice by Ignis to simply flee, which I did with relish. After camping out the next day I was prompted to visit the chocokeeper and got a story about a nearby cave to visit.
This cave... lemme tell you... this fucking cave. For one, it wins about a thousand points by actually looking and feeling like a real cave. I think I could have used the map to get through it, but I preferred wandering about in the dark by the light of my flashlight and being surprised.
Then I found myself beset by Goblins, which was highlighted in two key moments. First when I had to squeeze through one of many tight cracks, only to get a first person view of a bunch of the red eyed bastards heading right for me in a moment which probably would have made me wet my pants in real life. Second was a showdown near the end of the cave with honestly more of the bastards than I can count. Prompto died in this encounter and the rest of us spent half the battle in and out of danger. There must have been something like 25 given how many I killed and how many more kept popping up. They aren't terribly tough, but in large waves like that with nowhere to run to, I honestly felt like I might die in that cave.
Fortunately I made it through and got to the end, unlocking the Astral ability Ramuh. This gave me the strength to summon his aide while in Danger. I was then prompted to return and fight Deadeye once again with the power of Ramuh. This fight was very brief as with the first time in Danger, I summoned Ramuh who, in an amazingly awesome bit of animation decimated Deadeye.
We then headed to the garage where our car was and sold Deadeye's horn for the gil reward. After a short cutscene talking to our hot "fan service" mechanic, I was given control of the car... sort of. I could chose to teleport to "The Disc" which ended the demo. There was an option to "Take The Wheel" but it was grayed out.
That was my time with the game and honestly it's a huge step forward for the series. The entire time playing it I was going "This is what Final Fantasy XIII could have been."
