Wednesday night, Square-Enix announced that there would be a second demo for Final Fantasy XV, titled Platinum Demo, and that it would be made available immediately. In it, you play as the FFXV protagonist, Noctis, but he’s been knocked out, and is being led through a dreamscape by the Carbuncle summon spell…
The first area is a forest/ lagoon, with large bronze discs on the ground the player can step on. Each disc has a different function, some change the time of day, some change the weather between sunny, cloudy and rainy, and some create ripples in the dreamscape, which basically means a gigantic summon spell is going to briefly appear off in the distance. They are colossal! There are glowing flames to collect, which presumably unlock the discs, but don’t seem to serve much of a purpose. I got 302 by the time I was finished the demo, and have no idea why.
The player can equip different weapons to the d-pad. The first area provides a toy sword and squeaky hammer; the sword attacks smoothly, and the hammer deals more damage. It was interesting to vary attacks with the d-pad, instead of the usual “square is light attack, triangle is heavy attack” found in action games. The player holds circle to attack, and holds square to block. Ex is jump, and pushing a direction on the joystick while running, then square, is a dodge roll. Striking and dodging definitely happen at a slower pace than I expected. It was much closer to the deliberate striking of Dark Souls, as opposed to the fast-paced action of Bayonetta.
Carbuncle leads you to a second area, where Noctis is now tiny (like ant-sized) and inside a house. This was a very cool, very different environment, which totally reminded me of Kingdom Hearts. So did the music, which was very classical, and had some lovely violin melody. In this area, Noctis gets his first spells, which are equipped like weapons, but have to be aimed like throwing a grenade in an action game. There are also bronze discs that turn Noctis into old trucks, and silver discs which turn him into old-timey (but faster) cars. I couldn’t use the silver discs at first, but at some point I was able to use them, I believe after collecting 150 or so flames (I could be totally wrong about what unlocked them). The house features some gorgeous lighting effects of window pane shadows on the wooden floor. The graphics are pretty fantastic in general, featuring little touches like flushed cheeks, and bouncy hair. The camera was very jarring when driving as a car, it just didn’t ever seem to be where I wanted it, and it was a pretty big chore keeping the car in frame. It also took me a bit to realize that I had to push L2 as second time after coming to a stop, in order to reverse. Some parts of the environment are made of wooden toy blocks, and I was shocked to find out, after accidentally driving into some, that the structures they made could fall apart. So then I had a good time messing around with the giant block structures.
The third area is a much larger city space, and provides a bit more of an opportunity to explore. This area features discs which can turn Noctis into one of three different monsters: a tusked hippo yak, an antlered giraffe, and a bat-winged crocodile. It was fun to battle with each of the monsters, although not very practical.
The fourth and final area features child Noctis turning into adult Noctis to battle a level 3 iron giant. The combat system becomes a little more complex, as adult Noctis can now dodge much better, as well as warp around the battlefield, using the triangle button. After the battle, there is an optional second disc to stand on, which creates a second iron giant to fight, this time on level 15. At the end of the demo you get to name Carbuncle, and there’s not much story finale.
All in all I’m very excited to see the final version of this combat system. Platinum Demo is very different from Episode Duscae (the first FFXV demo). With the whimsical music and child version of Noctis, this felt a lot like Kingdom Hearts, as opposed to Duscae which felt more like Xenoblade Chronicles X. The entire demo only took me an hour to beat, and I stretched my exploration time to the max. For comparison, Episode Duscae took me about 4 hours. This one was also very linear, with little exploration to do in each area; it functioned a lot more like a tech demo. Platinum Demo is totally free, and at the end you get the Carbuncle summon spell to use in the main game (apparently the only way to get it). It’s gotten me totally re-hyped for Final Fantasy XV, which I can now safely say is my most anticipated game of 2016.