A Look At the Final Fantasy XIII Demo, Early Analysis

A demo for the PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIII was released in Japan this week, and people have had a chance to try it out and report back. In fact, video footage of the demo in its entirety was streamed and then posted on YouTube shortly after finding its way into customers' hands. Eurogamer got a chance to give the demo a test-drive, and they had this to say: "The characters are likeable — Lightning for her mysteriousness, the members of NORA for their banter and camaraderie — the setting is compelling, and the whole thing is as sumptuous visually as you'd expect of a next-generation Square-Enix title. The plot's the only thing that I couldn't get a definite feel for from the demo, beyond the basic set-up of an oppressive regime, a resistance fighting against it and a character with mysterious powers brought to aid them in a twist of fate. But forty minutes with Final Fantasy XIII have left me with nothing but anticipation for what else it has in store."

Comments

Hmm

[Haiyadragon]

"The characters are likeable -- Lightning for her mysteriousness, the members of NORA for their banter and camaraderie --"

I don't know why, but this gives me a bad feeling about the game. It sounds very contrived.

Let's hope the game's storyline will at least be somewhat compelling this time.

Re:Hmm

[SpottedKuh]

Let's hope the game's storyline will at least be somewhat compelling this time.

If they want my money, how about making the game fun -- that seems like a good goal. FF4-FF7 were incredibly fun, but they seriously lost their way with later games. FF8 was an exercise in redundancy (draw, draw, draw...). FF10 had a painful level dynamic (having to bring every character into every fight, in order to actually level up your party). FF12 lost me the moment I realized that if I opened the wrong treasure chest at the beginning of the game, I'd be screwed out of something much later in the game.

Focus on pure fun, the way FF5 did (the job system was great); or, tell an amazing story in a fashion that is enjoyable to play, as FF7 did. If they can't fix this horrifically paced, guidebook-requiring style of game that FF has become, I'll spend my money on a different game.

Re:Hmm

[bigstrat2003]

Even in FF VII you had to bring every char in your party to level them (as in most FF's!)

Not true. In FF7, characters not in your party level up with your party, but are held back. They'll be usually 3 or 4 levels behind the party members. It makes it so that you aren't screwed over if you want to switch party members, but you still have some incentive to pick a party and stick with it.

Re:Hmm

[bigstrat2003]

I dunno, I found FF8, FFX, FFX-2, and FF12 to be quite fun. For example, drawing spells is annoying in FF8, but it usually stops being something you need to focus on after the early game, and the junction system overall gives you an unparalleled amount of control over your characters. All those games were rather fun to me, even though they had some drawbacks.

Re:Hmm

[brkello]

I actually really liked FF8's story and thought it was fun. The ones since haven't had as much impact, but all solid titles that I have finished (except x-2 which I try not to remember). I am looking forward to the next one apart from the fact it will force be to buy a PS3.

Re:Lightening Dies.

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it, it's just not funny.

Re:Last video 9:40

[hellfish006]

men are not the only ones who play video games, and I would assume the RPG genre has one of the bigger followings of female gamers. grow up?

Re:What?

[Spatial]

That's actually pretty interesting, I didn't know about those differences in the drives at all. So although you're a bit of a cunt, hopefully you'll get modded +5 informative. I had assumed the 12x read rate was for dual layer discs and that BDRs were read with CAV. My bad.

No need to become paranoid-delusional over it though; I just looked it up as you should expect any reasonable person to do and happened to miss a few things. Relax.