But I should say, there does seem to be skill involved in the combat. There’s a “last-second evade” timing window that gives you a strong counterattack if you pull it off. That feels really good to do. It’s not super tough but it does take some skill. There’s also a parry mechanic that seems a bit harder; I haven’t gotten a feel for it yet.
The combat starts simple but snappy, and then there’s a skill tree that allows you to unlock and upgrade different moves, some of which require multi-button inputs. That whole big-toolbox-of-complex-moves sort of thing turns me off in character action games, but some people might like it. It seems like there’s potential for a high skill ceiling.
The boss fight also did have telegraphed moves you could predict and react to, so it’s not total babytime buttonmashing type of stuff. I haven’t had any particularly difficult fights yet, but I just started the game. Maybe the final game has like a hard difficulty too? Not sure. I could see this combat system scaling well with higher difficulty levels as long as they don’t just crank up boss HP.
Ok, I finished the demo. This game is trying to do Dark HBO Fantasy so hard, it’s the prestige TV Final Fantasy all the way. Somehow, that’s not as bad as it sounds but sometimes it is just gratuitously edgy. I do wish it would lighten up, but who knows, maybe it does later on.
I did a boss fight against a dragoon that was sick as hell. No damage sponging there, just a really solid, fun fight against an extremely cool and very Final Fantasy opponent.
After you finish the demo, the game gives you a bonus mode where you can play a slice of the later game so you can get a feel for the fully developed combat system. I didn’t play through that whole bit because I didn’t want to spoil the story, but I tried it out. The combat is still solid. You get a bunch of different “eikons” you can switch between that each have their own set of powers. Each one has two special abilities on cooldowns. Basically, you end up constantly switching between them to use all the powers, and the cooldowns are short enough that you’re almost always able to switch to another one. It feels a little gratuitous, makes combat feel perilously closer to like a Kingdom Hearts kind of thing where you’re just constantly doing flashy moves. I noticed that my character had some of the special “easy mode” rings equipped though, so maybe one of those shortened the cooldowns or something.
One of the bosses in that later game mode had… FFXIV attack-incoming floor patterns! Couldn’t believe my eyes.
Tbh I’m not sure whether that boss arena had lines on the floor. It was just in like a naturalistic room in a castle so maybe not. The attack floor pattern was more subtle than they usually are in FFXIV too. I didn’t even notice them at first. But they are there and they work the same way!
Remember when you had to look up on google what happened at the FF16 demo and then read that the final battle in the demo was actually you turning into Ifrit and killing your baby brother like a cop from Minnesota?
I can’t play right away cuz I need to wait a week and a half for my gf to get back from England so we can play together. Darnit! I’m looking forward to hearing how it is though.
this is so funny after having played the player run brothel final fantasy for so long. some of the characters do NOTHING but fuck. I’m primed for this shit
Yeah, even aside from the stuff players get up to in Final Fantasy XIV, there’s a minor hero whose whole personality is how much she likes sleeping with these two brothers. It’s not subtle.
