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.