Fabula Nova Crystallis - Ring any bells? It was this new universe of sorts who's flagship titles were Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Vs XIII and Agito XIII. Of course we know now that Final Fantasy XIII was split into 3 releases, Agito became Type-0 and finally Vs XIII became Final Fantasy XV. Since it's debut as a new sequel doing it's own thing, there have been some really cool things shown off and some really odd steps taken.Final Fantasy XV has been looking pretty great for a while. It's big unveiling under it's new name was dazzling and all the new footage was impressive. When Type-0 released they had their first demo come along for the ride and it was our first take on where this game was headed.
When I first gave it a go, I was pretty happy with what I was seeing. This was a very new type of Final Fantasy when it came to systems and how it played, but they were welcome. I always thought that XIII would have been very fitting as an action RPG, and XV is taking strides in that direction to some degree. It will feel more like Kingdom Hearts at first and maybe a bit of how Type-0 treated some of the action, yet something still kind felt off. It's not a true action game of course, and it lacks some of the speed of Kingdom Hearts, but my biggest gripe was how they handled skills. It was interesting to have 4 slots for different weapons; it was basically situational where if you jumped and attacked, that would be one weapon, but normal attacks would be another, or lunging would be a different one, it makes sense when you saw it in the demo. So those were basically just how you wanted your basic attack to feel in a way. However, when you add in skills, those are mapped only to one button while you cycle through them on the D-pad. With so many of the buttons unused in this demo, I just kept wondering why that was a thing. Why not hold a shoulder and button map it like a hot key? Something more intuitive to keep you focused on the action. When a game wants you to worry about dodges and timed blocks for parry, you don't want to be looking at a single item at a time menu trying to find the skill you need to.. ooop, that sping attack is useless now because you took to long and the enemies dispersed.
It was an odd choice to me, but I was wondering how they combat that with the feedback they were getting as they seem to be taking it to heart. They would update the demo with that feedback and change things here and there showing they were listening.
I saw it later that year at my work conference, and it was the same demo I had at home, so I was a little discouraged. But let's jump ahead a bit. They eventually had their big reveal with Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV. It was a huge event where they unveiled 15 big things about the game including features, anime, movies, and of course the release date. This really got people excited again, and it looked incredible. One of the big things to come out of this even though was the new Platinum Demo. This was the first open public demo that anyone could download right when the show ended.
It was odd. The mechanics finally changed, which I was excited for, but there was nothing in the game to showcase the important things. This felt like a tech demo to show of their graphics and engine more than anything else. While it was really cool to see them change how the weapons worked and it play more simple without those 4 weapon slots, the D-pad was now regulated to hot swapping between either weapons or spells. This made me think that I could say... have a sword equipped for basic attacks, and maybe 3 spells at a time, but the demo only offered maybe 2 fireworks (acting as your spells as you were playing as baby Noctis) that were limited uses and not a MP system, and 2 weapons you swapped between. It still felt not right. The biggest thing for me though was that none of the team element was in this game. In the demo we got from Type-0, we were shown how your team can utilize combined attacks to deal out massive damage and we were hoping to see more of how that could be used.
The reason I get into all of this is because of how it's all so different and confusing. You have a demo that doesn't play like how it apparently does now being the better demo to showcase your game on many levels, yet your demo that everyone plays gives you this kiddy, Kingdom Hearts Alice in Wonderland thing that shows none of the strengths of the combat as it's too busy to show you the engine. It's even got things you step on to see how the day/night cycle works or how Leviathan looks bursting out of the water. You have them sell you on an amazing looking game, give you a demo that they were tinkering with because of fan feedback, a big reveal event and a demo that seems to do the game a disservice.
Now, they have been out there talking about FFXV being a do or die situation for the series. They are taking a big risk with it. So when they show it off at E3 this year and they have such a poor showcase of the demo during Microsofts Event, it can be weird. They started with a lot of opportunity and momentum and they lost their footing somewhere along the way where people are starting to feel like maybe the game is not going to live up to it's potential. And that's a bummer (but maybe don't have a demo that intentionally has you look like your losing the whole time??).
At the end of all of this, it hasn't wavered my excitement for the game. They have shown some amazing stuff with how this game is shaping up, and that has be sold. I think they have something there mechanically, but they are having a really hard time showing it off for some reason. It doesn't really make any sense, but it's not helping. Hopefully they can just kinda sit back a bit and give it one last big push before it's September 30th release date.
-Eddie
No comments:
Post a Comment