Final Fantasy XV demo is live!

Why hasn't the store updated yet?

Ahhhh they said tonight! Maybe it'll be the same as the collectors edition preorders? 9pm?

Maybe! 24 minutes to go!

I'm playing the demo right now Although it's more so a prequel!

Downloading this on Xbox One as soon as I get home! And of course I will be downloading it on PS4 as soon as I get it back from Sony! (will be buying the PS4 version)

Tell me about it guys! I don't have a ps4 or xbone. But please put stuff in spoilers so if anyone who wants to play but doesn't want to be spoiled comes in here

I'm feeling really fortunate my older brother sold me his PS4 for £100. It was an absolute steal.

I played the demo. Although really it was more of a thematic tech demo. You know all of the mechanics at play here except the magic from Duscae, and they were more interesting in Duscae because you could do more. It's cute to play as young Noct summoning a squeaky toy hammer, but it's not exactly a thrilling combat experience. People are worried about button mashing your way to victory in this game - bear in mind you don't mash, you just hold and it auto attacks!

It picks up at the end with a cool fight with some better stuff and some extra abilities (and an enemy that actually attacks you, which finally means using the defend button). Personally I'm still not sold on the hold for auto attack stuff, but with a good enemy I had fun warping around the place and got close to death a couple of times.

The magic is cool to; you select it like a weapon and have to aim where it goes. It's pretty nice. Not how I would have done it personally, but this isn't a bad alternative. I would have liked to have been able to adjust the strength of the magic though.

I wonder if you'll tactically have to use magic then. Like you'll need to cast the ice spell over some water to get across to a island or something. That kinda thing.

Yeah, we never got to play Duscae so we have nothing to compare to, but the combat was neat, but this really was all just a tech demo. Which is fine, because we never got to experience the earlier demo, and I suppose it's fine for a fully available demo to pretty much be "this is how the game will handle and here are the basics of combat".

Speaking of handling, the vehicles handle like ass.

That was the most whimsical smurfing thing I've ever played.

It was fun enough, the combat definitely feels more refined over Episode Duscae although the re-match with the (SPOILER)lv15 version of the Iron Giant seriously had me wondering why they have a Dodge-Roll as I felt like I was never dodging anything with it, at least it's not choreographed enough when to use it.

At times though, especially in the 2nd area with the environment and the music (felt very Alice in Wonderland), I wasn't even sure if I was playing FFXV or Kingdom Hearts III.

Curious how whimsical it was though, especially as this will be the first impression for people who didn't play Episode Duscae.

Actually got a chance to play this thanks to a friend today. It was actually a really clever demo because it's a bit more focused on showing off technical aspects of the game and gives you a taste of the refined battle system of the original.

The first cool thing is that the game is separate from the real game, so none of the story or events will show up in the game, so it's less of a slice of the game like the previous demo. The Carbuncle design is adorable and the game has a cool and whimsical KH feel to it. Kid Noctis uses a toy hammer and sword to fight and party favor versions of four different magic spells (Fire, Blizzard, Lightning, and Meteor) and the story of young Noctis being guided by Carbuncle through his dream is pretty sweet. You also get a jump button!

You can collect little gold shards in the various stages which grant you access to various panels throughout the stages which grant various effects but two in particular show up in all four locations and do the same thing, which is change the time of day or the weather effect. It's a neat way to see the game engine in action to watch how these effect the areas looks and lighting design so for the more techy fans, it's a cool treat.

The demo is split between four stages: The first area is a mountainous outdoor region that is largely a linear corridor not too different from what is seen in XIII's design but features environments you can actually climb on which is demonstrated with the item collecting aspect as you need to jump up to some ledges and take small side roads to find all of them. The cool effect in this stage is you can get a glimpse of both Titan and Leviathan in this area. This area largely serves as a tutorial for combat and moving around environments.

The second area looks to be a library in Noctis' home except Noctis is the size of a mouse. The room is massive with various toys and books stacked in way for you to climb around on or travel inside to find some goodies. This area also has more enemies to fight and introduces magic. The cool gimmick in this area is unlocking the use of toy cars you can drive around the massive room to get to the areas you can actually climb around on. There a few car types to see such as a truck and a cool classy numbers straight out of a 30s gangsters flick. Anyone who has played MGSV will feel right at home with the controls for the cars.

The third stage is a city filled with enemies which have a nice mix of back alleys and open spaces to fight, and has several ties you can jump down to and really get a bit of a minor platforming groove going for you. The gimmick of this stage is being able to transform into various monsters in the game which you can use to move around the environment and even fight enemies with. There was a giraffe/gazelle type creature and a winged crocodile enemy I got to use in the demo. You also get access to Meteorain in this stage which is overpowered as all hell for being the kid friendly version of the Meteor spell.

The final area is the courtyard in front of the Citadel where most of the games trailer have shown. You mainly get to use adult Noctis and fight an Iron Giant in this stage. Finishing this section grabs you Carbuncle who will be unlocked for the main game for anyone who downloaded the free demo.

Combat is interesting, you hold one button to attack but you arrange your weapons onto the D-pad which can be pressed to switch between the weapons to build interesting a fluid combos. Magic is also equipped like this but magic has limited uses (when you get the Fireworks spell you have six uses) but the game gives you means to get more though I doubt it will work the same in the real game. Magic has you choose an area or target to use magic and as has been mentioned in an earlier showcase, things like fire will remain after use allowing you to build traps or barriers to use against enemies so you need to be more mindful of your environment. Spells also have different speeds and ranges, with Fireworks being slow but hitting a good area, Lightning being pretty fast but will likely only hit a single target, and Meteorain just murders everything on the screen. Also enemies will not just stupidly sit there and let you cast magic on them and some will actually get out of the way or move around fire traps and so forth though the A.I is not perfect in this regard.

Kid Noctis starts with a toy sword but will obtain a Toy hammer eventually and the four spells. If you collect enough of the shards, you can even get upgrades for the sword and hammer that glow. KN can't use Warp but can still block and dodge roll if need be. Adult Noctis is a bit more limited, he only has the small sword and great-sword. He can also only use fire magic but he has access to warp. He's only available for the boss battle with the Iron Giant and the battle has a special reaction ability element where Noctis can block the Iron Giant's sword and perform a special move afterwards if you time the button prompts correctly. The real fun part was using warp to get up onto a light pole and just hang there to recharge health only to watch in horror as the Iron Giant walked over and cut the pole down, in fact his stage has several destructible environments and event special explosives you can ignite with the fire sepll to cause severe damage to the beast. Also the Iron Giant has an amusing running animation.

Overall, I rather enjoyed the demo which had great music and displayed a lot of information about the game engine and the types of environments you'll get to see in the game.

Adult Noctis actually has two more weapons you can find somewhere in that last area if anyone hasn't found them yet and wants to spend some more time with the demo.

Carbuncle is adorable

Originally Posted by Aulayna

Curious how whimsical it was though, especially as this will be the first impression for people who didn't play Episode Duscae.

Yeah and it is one of the reasons why, even tho I did enjoy the demo, I don't think it is a good marketing tool for the full game. It would have been better if they updated Duscae once more, added some of the weather/time changing plates across the field (so that people can play with the engine) and also added the new combat and controls that we have in the Platinum demo. That would have been a much better experience as a first impression for first timers and people who are only casually aquianted with the series, it would also have been more representative of the final game.

The Platinum Demo doesn't even ends with a trailer for the game or a "things to come" segment like Duscae did; it just asks you if you want to pre-order the game and honeslty the regular person that was just browsing the PSN store, saw FFXV and clicked on "try free demo" to play Platinum, I am not convinced that the demo as is makes the game justice or hypes said person to want the game (like Duscae did).

The Platinum Demo is something that seems more aimed for fans that have been following the game for years. But for my part, I don't need to be sold on the game, I already am and I pre-ordered a Deluxe Edition as soon as they became available after the event and before I played this demo. But for the non-FF fan, which Greg Miller was representing in the event, I don't feel this demo does FFXV justice.

I have to disagree Egami, while the Duscae demo gives you a better idea of what FFXV will probably be about and how it will play (though the finished product may end up being radically different in that part as Tababta has hinted it may be) I feel the Platinum Demo did more to make one curious about the series. It basically makes you ask questions and gives you just enough information to keep you curious whereas the Duscae demo convinced enough people what to expect.

I feel a demo is really more of the interactive mediums version of the film trailer and basically the original demo gave away too much while the new demo is that cool teaser trailer that is just so weird and out there that you can't help but be curious about it.

I tried it last night. I still feel "meh" about this game.

The combat in the demo feels really boring. I know that the final version of the game is sure to have more variety and strategy, but the enemies in this are weak and boring. They didn't even seem to strike back at me, and preferred running away. I understand the limited selection of weapons, this is a demo after all, but there didn't seem to be a reason to use one instead of another. They could be different, but this was not even explained so I didn't see their unique purposes.

The dreamworld seemed whimsical, sure, but not particularly original.

And the visuals looked bad. Really bad. Isn't this on the PS4? A lot of things looked very blurry and the Noct's hair doesn't look right.

If this is more of a "tech demo" than a "gameplay demo" then I can forgive the combat... to a point. But if it's a tech demo then that makes the blurriness and bad visual quality even harder to forgive.

I can't even say I don't like it. It's just "meh" to me.

I have to say I found it a bit meh as well. I disagree about the visuals, I thought they were stunning, but it didn't really give much of a feel of what the game would be like. I don't know why Episode Duscae was such a limited release. Maybe the game wasn't finished enough? Or they really just wanted people to buy Type-0. I'm a little disappointed I haven't had the chance to play it but I'm not prepared to buy Type-0 yet. Maybe when it's super cheap.