Gameplay

[Jinx]

Can someone who has played the demo explain to me what they do and don't like about the gameplay? I've seen a lot of critique on it, but no actual specifics of what it's like.

[Spawn of Sephiroth]

I only played the original demo, I havent really bothered with 2.0 but it felt like kingdom hearts and little havk and slash like god of war. I know they changed a bit with the update and maybe Ill get around to doing it but thats how id describe it. Didnt care for the lock tho it was more irritating then helpful not to mention way too many missed attacks due to it.

[Pheesh]

This is all from memory, I played Duscae 1.0 for about a week, and Duscae 2.0 for maybe half a day before I rage quit, so the details aren't fresh in my mind. I'm going to be doing a lot of KH comparing because they're both arpg's and KH is the shining golden beacon by which I compare all games.

There's three stages of 'lock on' and not one of them allows you to accurately switch to another enemy. In Kingdom Hearts you would click lock on and it would stay locked on to that enemy, from there you used your bumpers to cycle through all available enemies if you wanted to switch targets, this method was so simple that it even worked in KH1 which had a notoriously bad camera system. In FFXV you have a 'soft' lock on which is very easy to lose track of the enemy you're targeting, this isn't so much locking on as it is facing the enemy. The second tier is locked to one enemy but if you very deliberately tear the camera away from that enemy it will target someone else, this is the one that I have the biggest gripe with. Not only does the camera have trouble keeping up with certain enemies in this lock on state, but changing targets to something specific is a NIGHTMARE. You just tilt your right stick in the direction of the enemy you want to target and hope for the best. Basically what it forces you to do is unlock, get the enemy in your sights and re-lock on (remember, in KH you press the lock on button ONCE and then cycle through enemies from there). This is an even bigger problem because in FFXV there are so many goddamn enemies, and in Duscae there is not enough variety to make finding a specific target easy.

Allow me to put forward a hypothetical: you have engaged a group of enemies, let's say they're those big ram things, all is going well. A drop ship comes along and now you're fighting soldiers on top of the rams, it's a little cluttered but no big deal. You dispatch the soldiers and focus down on the rams again, trying to lower the health of the last remaining alpha. Another drop ship comes, annoying but you begin fighting it. It has now been a while since you began this encounter and it turns night. This is where it gets ridiculous, you're descended on by the camera breaking dog things, and those little goblin guys. Now there's close to 15 enemies on the field where just a moment ago you had 1 left. You try to find that ram again so you can focus him down and then haul ass out of there, but locking on is an absolute pain with 15 ene- no wait, 20 enemies, another drop ship just came. You take higher ground to find the ram and hard lock to him (this is the third tier of lock in, it sticks to one enemy like glue, and can really freak out the camera if it's a fast moving enemy type that jumps behind you), now you re-engage but lo and behold you last 20 seconds before you have to unlock from the ram because you need to perform a counter attack on a charging soldier. You finish off the soldier and now you have to find the smurfing ram again.

That actually happened to me, and the encounter lasted so long that the alpha ram actually smurfing disappeared, I kid you not. I can't remember raging so hard at a game before. I was actually lenient in my explanation of that scenario as well, during night time you will be forced to counter attack much more than once every 20 seconds, which will disengage your targeting system, you will have to rush to revive your party, which will disengage your targeting system, and once disengaged good luck finding the soldier you whittled down to 20% health amidst the 7 other identical soldiers out there. By contrast, in Kingdom Hearts you would click lock on, then cycle through all the enemies while looking at the health bar at the top of the screen until you found one that was low, that was how you found an enemy you were previously fighting.

Not only that, but there is something inherently boring about just holding down a button to attack. I don't know what it is because it's not that different to a button mash style, but for me it feels lazy and it disconnects you from the game.

TL;DR The targeting/lock-on system is absolute garbage, unless they fix it you should just wait for KHIII to come out.

EDIT: Oh, and you lock on with two damn buttons, one of which is the smurfing R3!!! Meanwhile both the R2 and L2 bumpers are sitting there unused.

[Mirage]

the continuous stream of new enemies was probably the most off-putting thing in the entire demo. it was just fucking ridiculous

[Jinx]

Very informative post, Pheesh! Thanks for typing all of that up. I agree, that sounds really awful.

[Tyson]

the continuous stream of new enemies was probably the most off-putting thing in the entire demo. it was just smurfing ridiculous

Agreed, that is game breaking in my opinion, I've put atleast 20 hours or so in the demo. I completely avoid the Garula's now, don't even attempt to fight them. It's like they coded it in as soon as you fight them a drop ship will come drop off soldiers every 5 minutes hahaha.

I have to imagine this was just a demo thing to show off the mechanics tho? (I Hope) would of been pretty boring if all the fights were like the wolf things and you could just decimate them in under 60 seconds.

I agree with Pheesh about the lock on system, it's still seriously flawed compared to KH which is so weird. Just copy it! :S

I never hold the attack button down tho, (didn't even realize that was an option until months after it came out) The game actually rewards you for tapping it instead so I do that exclusively.

I would also suggest selecting the small swords as your CRUSH and RAVAGER weapons, one of my biggest issues when I played the demo was how slow the combat felt (I'm used to stuff like Devil May Cry) once you equip these it speeds up like crazy, made the combat 10x more satisfying.

In the end the gameplay has some issues but it's still fun, I'm sure once we have access to magic and even faster weapons (I hope) it'll be great fun!

[Del Murder]

Like Pheesh mentioned, the lock on was unusable in the demo, but I expect them to fix that or that we'll get used to it.

My main issue is with the simplicity of the battling. 'Hold button to attack' seemed like 90% of the battle. Swapping around your weapons was the only way to vary your attacks and that had an overall minor impact. The skills are cool but you use the same AP for skills, defending, and teleporting so I was always sitting at 0 AP after a few seconds (because just attacking was boring). The lack of any magic in the demo was detrimental.

Another concern was the AI companions. I know that is the norm for RPGs these days but at least in most other series (Dragon Age) you could swap between controlled party member and fully customize the companions' equipment and skills. Maybe that second part is coming in the full game but without it the demo was boring. The only thing you could change in the demo was Noctis's weapons and even those you could only swap the order. Regardless of what comes, it's been made clear that Noctis is the only playable character which concerns me if he ends up being not so fun to play.

[fat_moogle]

I agree with the above comments; the camera and lock on needs serious tweaking. There were slight improvements in Episode Duscae Version 2.0, though, so hopefully they will build upon it further in the final game.

And yes, those drop ships are annoying >.>

Other than that I thought the gameplay was quite fun. Sure, there is a lot of holding down square, but thats not all there is to it. There are three techniques available in the demo, and if you don't make use of them then you might find yourself in trouble. Low on health? There's a technique to absorb. Surrounded by enemies? There's a technique to deal sweeping AOE damage. There's also a dragoon jump technique but I found this the least useful in the demo, but I guess it's a good way of temporarily avoiding damage. When you consider that the final game will have more strategic techniques, magic etc then there is potential for a great battle system!