Oh c'mon now! The free game looks just as good!

Why is the background to the big gif in gaussian blur?

Looks awful

#TeamXenoblade

Looking closer at the gif.... wtf is happening? The guy with the sword, tosses his sword up in the air to kick it at the enemy. Only a ****** would do this. The other guy runs forward, slides on his back to shoot, only he's not actually dodging anything. The guy with no weapon just shimmys about doing nothing and the guy with the big sword just paces up an down doing nothing.

Seriously, why does that guy run forward, slide and shoot? There is no reason to!

travo said:

Why does half the shit happen in videogames?  It looks cool.

Take a closer look. If it looked cool I wouldn't have brought it up. The sword kick, my god.

travo said:

It certainly looks beautiful, but I can't help but think of those guys as a boy band on a road trip.  I'll be checking out reviews for this demo.

This is actually the only thing I find at all interesting about the game. I hope it has a yaoi subplot.

gamingeek said:

If it was Bayonetta doing it I probably wouldn't mind, but in this situation it just seems weird. What happens when the sword is gone? Do you go to retrieve it? Does it magically boomerang back? Does the character have many of them? Are they like throwing stars to him?

Why does the other guy risk grass stains on his fancy leather waistcoat by sliding for no reason? We need a gaming logic thread, would be so funny.

Do it

travo said:

Heh, why do bad guys always stand next to explosive barrels?

Because they intend to roll them towards you, but you always blow them up first, ruining their plans.

Hmm I did not expect this, I am not feeling the demo. Now I did not finish it so this can turn around but my first impressions are not great. The first shocking thing to me is that the graphics aren't that great. There was something about the gifs and trailers that made it look crazy but when you get it there is noticeable frame rate issues, the models are not that sharp, there are last gen textures and elements all over. It's still very pretty but not wow pretty.

That isn't a big deal, what is really bumming me out is the combat. I love FF battle systems, I think they are always unqiue and fun to mess with. I can't find the hook of this games battle system, maybe it's not there because of the demo. So to fight you move in the direction of your opponent and hold square. Just hold it... Your guy does the rest. You can dodge by holding L1, this sucks up MP. So alternating between dodges and attacks is key. There are also skills which cost MP, I have 5 skills, one absorbs HP from the enemy, one is a tornado spin, etc. you can party some attacks of enemies. The camera is horrendous, there is some lock on but it doesn't work the best and most of the time you want to be zoomed out to see the whole battle but you can't. I have zero clue what my teammates are doing, I have no control over them.

Again super early and a demo so who knows if I am missing loads of battle systems that get introduced later, but for the sake of this demo so far it's boring to fight. So I find myself running around a big world and not really wanting to fight stuff which is all there is to do. There were these huge beasts I'm water that you can't reach cause you can't swim, so it's not like Xenoblade where level 80 beasts are wandering around.

The main quest revolves around killing a behemoth to earn money to repair your car (classic FF story I know). So first you track it by going to waypoiny markers. Then you do a bad mini follow game, like AC follow except this thing is the size of a dinosaur and losing track of it is impossible but the game still forces you to stay close but not too close. Then you reach this run down warehouse with a giant red fuel tank and the smart guy (I'll call him Donatello) of the group comes up with a plan. All of a sudden the voice acting is gone and now there is text, it tells you to lure the behemoth where the big tough guy (Raphael) will stab it into the gas tank and the jokester dude (michaelangelo) will shoot it, then you the leader (leonardo) will warp stab (you can warp to enemies and some towers to heal). So you do this which plays out more like a scripted action game than an RPG and the behemoth does not die, a boss battle begins. But you can't kill it so you need to escape to regroup and come up with another plan.

I'm normally a fan of different kinds of gameplay scenarios but I don't think the one above plays out that well. Oh and the leveling up system is weird, you don't get to level up until you sleep at night, then it tallies up all the exp you earned during the day and you quickly level up like 3 or 4 levels. I see no stats or anything, again probably due to the demo. When you camp you eat food that you find or kill for and that gives you buffs for the next day. Oh and the UI is so bland, it's mostky plain white text.

Again all this could change if the rest of the demo has more game systems to be revealed. From what I played this was weird and underwhelming.

When do you think Square will bring Sakaguchi in as a consultant?

...bad news is: I have a feeling the free game that came with the demo is probably where the concepts came from for the combat in XV.