Demos!

Over the years, Square/Square-Enix have released a lot of Final Fantasy demos. Which ones have you played and which ones did you like the most? Did you notice any changes from the demo and the final version?

I read this as "Demons!" and got excited.

:(

I've only played the two FFXV demos - Episode Duscae and the Platinum Demo. The latter wasn't really a demo so much as its whole own self-contained minisode, which was a bit weird. I really liked Duscae though and it gave a good indication of what the gameplay for XV would be like.

I think the XV demos were the only ones I put any time into. I liked Duscae a good amount.

Did XIII-2 have a demo? I think I played a little of that one but decided I’d rather just wait for the full game. I would have ate up any of the demo discs from the ps1 era, but I never had any of those. I don’t even know if anything but VIII has a demo in that era, but I know I loved demo discs as a kid for some reason. Put way too much time into a demo of Metal Gear Solid I used to have.

I've played both the Aerith and Tifa demos fro FFVII, though I found the Aerith demo more interesting because it had a few more changes from the final product, whereas Tifa demo was released a few months before the game and is pretty close to the original. Sadly, I own the Tifa demo but the Aerith one is really hard to come by.

I own the PS1 demo of VIII from Brave Fencer Musashi, which is a pretty snazzy demo that takes some cues from the Aerith demo in that the main heroine is available in a part of the game she isn't suppose to be and you have access to Leviathan. I still play it from time to time because I still feel that Raid on Dollet is a superior track to The Landing.

I've played the FFX demo, which is not nearly as interesting as the above ones since it's more or less just the whole opening segment in Zanarkand and the sequence when you try to leave Besaid.

I had the X-2 demo as well, which again isn't too far from the original game anyway outside of really limited customization.

I totally missed the FFXII demo. My copy of DQVIII was used and the disc was conveniently missing, so I can't comment on it.

The XIII demo was Japan only, and I wasn't going to waste money on getting the Advent Children Complete it was bundled with anyway.

I did play the XIII-2 demo to see how much it differed from the original, but realized I had no desire to continue playing the series. As you can guess it, I skipped the Lightning Returns demo as well.

Played both of the FFXV demos, honestly liked Duscae far better than the Platinum demo in terms of how the battle system worked. Platinum demo did have a lot of interesting elements to it, but I never did see Carbuncle in the main game.

Only demo I got to play was the FFXII demo. It was fun because it was so different from previous installments, but it really sold itself short. You couldn't customize the gambits, which was the best part!