- when testing if cutscenes would pause at the first part of the game, i was pleased to see the 'active time lore' thing. that's a nice touch, but i would like to see that available in the menu as well with all the previous versions of the cards. i kept pausing cutscenes to see if it brought up anything new, which messes with the flow of the story. i'd like be able to look at them afterwards
Pretty much the same as everyone here: I was initially thinking of waiting for reviews before deciding to get the game, but playing the demo was very convincing and now I got it pre-ordered. This is really good stuff, looking forward to the full game.
As a side-note, I find it strangely relieving to see that 'letting people play a demo' still seems a very effective marketing strategy. I remember deciding a lot of game purchases from 'trying a demo' in the early years of the PS3, but for some reason supplying a game demo went out of style. I'm glad they did it for this game.
There's quite a bit of positive word of mouth spreading around purely as a result of the demo, at least from what I've seen. I know personally of two people who were on the fence about the game that immediately pre-ordered after playing it, and one of them is usually a bit of a stick in the mud when it comes to traditional FF gameplay.
I definitely enjoyed the demo, I'm not quite as hyped as everyone else seems to be, but I had fun. The graphics look great, the light playing off the sword on your back while walking around looks nice (was nice in VIIR too, I don't know what's so satisfying about that, haha).
It's difficult to put my finger one exactly what feels odd about it. There is the fact that it's playing the European medieval angle so straight. But Tactics is pretty damn medieval in its atmosphere as well. I think it really first hit me in when you can walk around the little castle town. It just felt so much like the Witcher or something, like I was playing a different game, haha. I guess it's just that unusualness. It feels so Western. Not that this is inherently negative, I'm not some sort of truther gatekeeping how something needs to be in order to be "Final Fantasy," but it still just feels...strange.
Maybe a good example is
the dragoon. Which is of course an extremely Final Fantasy moment, but his armor was still pretty tame, standard armor.
But again I don't think something NEEDS to be outlandish to feel like FF, but it's as unusual as it was to see FFXV characters wearing extremely modern clothing. I have a hard time imagining something like an airship appearing in this world. But I assume there will be. I enjoyed the small fantasy touches, I liked the water being poured out of crystals, and the use of magic for mundane things like trimming the castle gardens The extremely on-the-nose Game of Thrones references/similarities really fought to pull me out of it, I hope those diminish after the initial setup.
One thing I will be a stickler about is that the lack of a playable party is an unavoidable demerit for this game as an FF, but so it goes. The combat itself is good, I enjoyed that it feels more deliberate still than Devil May Cry. There may come a time later where you're stringing together triple-S combos, but for the duration of the demo I felt I was methodically choosing which move or small set of moves I wanted to make at each point in the fight. I haven't done the more advanced fight mode, and that one feels more spoilery than just playing the opening, so I'm not really planning on it. I was pleasantly surprised that we got to
control Joshua for a bit, and it didn't feel like you were a helpless gimmick. Indeed I liked how much more oomph his fire spells had, which made sense.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more of an irrational outcry about how we just chose icons from the world map to go to each new area instead of traveling to them. I'm assuming the zones will be naturally connected in the full game, but still, this feels like the sort of thing that twitter would freak out about before it has all the information. Same with the Active Time Lore, it's neat, and I thought it was helpful if not great for pacing. But it is surprising to see its near-universal praise when it is basically the Datalog but accessible mid-cutscene
The music is unsurprisingly great. That rendition of the Prelude that plays over that army battle is especially good, also the peaceful one on the world map. The victory fanfare might be a touch over the top, honestly But the song in the 'dungeon' was good, felt very XIV.
It was certainly a compelling start to the story, in fact I'm struggling to imagine how the stakes get elevated from here
How dumb are these assassins though? When they start freaking out that Joshua's berserk button has been pressed, I was saying at the screen "Well what the hell did you THINK was going to happen, violently murdering his father in front of him? Why didn't you kill him first?"
The Ifrit/Phoenix fight was spectacular for sure, although Ifrit apparently continuing to be completely unfazed by any attack, no matter how strong, started to make it feel a little tedious. It didn't feel like he just managed to get the upper hand in the end...he just felt like he was cheating, lol.
He might be reading a bit too much out of a demo consisting of the first 2 hours of the game, but he'll get no argument from me that VIIR has the superior battle system.
When something did stagger I wasn't totally sure of what I should do after using my Phoenix cooldown, but figured that would be something I'd figure out after playing more (seemed like a toss-up between the flaming sword charge-up attack vs just attacking).
He might be reading a bit too much out of a demo consisting of the first 2 hours of the game, but he'll get no argument from me that VIIR likely has the superior battle system.
When something did stagger I wasn't totally sure of what I should do after using my Phoenix cooldown, but figured that would be something I'd figure out after playing more (seemed like a toss-up between the flaming sword charge-up attack vs just attacking).
For the combat stuff, I think there really needs to be custom button mapping... People have already gotten release copies and stated there is no custom button mapping in the full game either. I draw on comparison to FFXIV, because that's the game that team has been developing for 800 years, but FFXIV does allow you to remap all of your buttons to whatever stupid combo you want, and I expected it in this game too.
Also, while I enjoyed combat for the most part, I agree with the Twitter dude regarding stagger / will.
Everything else was just kinda there or as expected cause I had watched the trailers. I appreciated the little details more. People using magic in this world for stuff like refilling cups, or Joshua using a Phoenix fireball as a torch, are fun touches. Torgal running into Clive so hard that he collides and flips over on his back? Cute. Like Strange, I liked the subversion of the traditional goblin design as well.
For the story overall, my primary hope is that, you know, there's that line in the trailer and also in the demo where Clive declares that he will fucking kill someone. And I very sincerely hope the story follows up on this statement and takes the direction of "revenge is fucking awesome, actually". It's a fictional story, none of these people are real, we do not need moralizing.
I’ve seen full takeovers of London buses and even seen ads on my way into work in South Dublin. Never thought Ireland would be a hotbed of Final Fantasy activity but here we are.
Per my previous comment, I’ve been in a Rebirth bubble and praying for a new trailer since the teaser last year so not given XVI too much attention.
You’d think the fact that they dropped a Rebirth trailer only a week ago would fully turn my head, but the strength of the demo has completely captured me. I was surprised they would put a Rebirth trailer out so close to launch, but perhaps they knew all along that the strength of the demo would speak for itself…
The nice thing about this is that they're apologising profusely for this patch because they made this promise XD
They've also said it's not actually a day one patch in the sense that it'll be applied to the game already (if it's digital) and that people who aren't able to get it should still have a good experience. Which is a far cry from XV at least.
The extremely on-the-nose Game of Thrones references/similarities really fought to pull me out of it, I hope those diminish after the initial setup.
But the song in the 'dungeon' was good, felt very XIV.
