Duscae.

The Final Fantasy XV demo is finally available and I can't be sure it's going to be any good. Somehow I have avoided any sort of press about the game aside from it starting off as Final Fantasy Versus XIII and being bumped up to main series status. Granted I haven't completed it, the experience feels like what it started out as: a side game. I like my action oriented RPG's that try to do something new but I really enjoy a new "Final Fantasy" experience every few years. XIII (and its trilogy) was a flawed experiment that probably put a lot of people on the fence for day one purchases of any new titles.

First off,  while the graphics are good the character designs are horrible. I don't know why everyone is wearing black on black, even I wore a bit of color in high school. These aren't uniforms either, it seems they choose to be seen this way. One of the major things XIII had going for it was character diversity at a glance; XV gave the "smart" guy glasses and a British accent and the buff dude tattoos with a gruff biker voice to match. There's probably more story to what's going on but the first impressions are pretty unlikable.

For an action RPG this game seems slow. Maybe it's because Dragon Age: Inquisition has been spending a lot of time in my PS4 but this almost feels like a low rent version of that game play wise. You have a party that you control the main character of and hope everyone else does their tasks as effectively as possible. Noctis (or Highness) manifests different types of weapons based on what part of an assault you are on. Using a short sword to open with a fast attack, then switching to a zwei-hander for an ongoing assault, and ending with a spear thrust for a killing blow is pretty cool, although you just hold square to make all of this happen there is an element of strategy where you might need to make the short sword the ongoing assault for a smaller, faster enemy. To aid in the sluggishness of the battles you can throw your sword and teleport to it to enter or leave combat fairly quickly. You defend by holding a button to sort of "auto-dodge" but it's not infinite as most actions take MP. Lastly the triangle button is mapped to different abilities that you switch with the D-pad, these may be thrusts, drains, or dragoon jumps depending on what weapons you have equipped.

The camera is terrible. It should at least stay focused on what you are locked on to.

XV feels like an off shoot Final Fantasy game and probably would have fared better as just another part of Fabula Nova Crystallis series thing that went way over scope. I don't know how much different/better/bigger the main game will be, but I think I'll wait for the reviews and opinions of my friends to come in before I pull the trigger here.

I guess the best recent "FF" experience was Bravely Default. A next gen game with that feel would be incredible.