How representative is the demo of the actual game

[MaChao]

To those who played the console version:
How representative is it to the general game?
Because not gonna lie, this demo is a pretty dysmal experience...
The sheer amount of drawn out cutscenes that really don't tell anything paired with combat that's pretty uninspired isn't a great first impression.

I know that the game was received rather luke warm overall, but man...
I heard horror stories of its side quests...if the main story keeps this pace, paired with dull sidequests...i can't see myself sticking with it...

[The Guy]

Publicado originalmente por Sindex:

The enemies also become way more annoying as you spend an absurd amount of time fighting trash mobs. They have way too much HP so even with auto battle you spend like 5 minutes watching some bird get kicked in the beak.

Huh? Way too much HP? What? Are you insane?? The biggest issue with FF16 is the fact that literally every enemy, trash mobs and bosses, fold in microseconds. You usually can't get through a third of your rotation before they die. It's awful because the combat is very good, and you can't really ever experience it.

[Sindex]

Publicado originalmente por The Guy:

Publicado originalmente por Sindex:

The enemies also become way more annoying as you spend an absurd amount of time fighting trash mobs. They have way too much HP so even with auto battle you spend like 5 minutes watching some bird get kicked in the beak.

Huh? Way too much HP? What? Are you insane?? The biggest issue with FF16 is the fact that literally every enemy, trash mobs and bosses, fold in microseconds. You usually can't get through a third of your rotation before they die. It's awful because the combat is very good, and you can't really ever experience it.

I may have worded it incorrectly.
The enemies take too long to die compared proper action games like DMC, but you don't get to use all of the fun combos for sure.

As I said in another thread, the game feels like it was made by someone who never played a spectacle fighter, but really wanted to make one.

Hell the RPG part of the game is a joke. Almost no build variety and no weapon choices. Even FFXV allowed you to switch party members in combat.

[PrzZz]

The demo is the game but drawn out for about like 80 hours.
Only a few sidequests are good but the rest of them are boring (talk, kill something, talk back to quest giver, end)

Overall i like the game, it's worth experiencing, the story is good (i didn't like the final 3rd of the story much) all boss fights are good, the soundtrack is awesome and the combat is fun but quite limited (limited to 6 abilities at a given time).
Not a perfect game, but it's worth playing

[FlyingFettucine]

Aint no one in this thread talking about the Eikonic challenge, which gives you three Eikons and their moves, lmao, just a bunch of haters in this thread that are saying "Thats all the game is TBH" and didnt even MENTION that there's an entire extra part with more combat in it. Get real.

[The Guy]

Publicado originalmente por Sindex:

I may have worded it incorrectly.
The enemies take too long to die compared proper action games like DMC, but you don't get to use all of the fun combos for sure.

As I said in another thread, the game feels like it was made by someone who never played a spectacle fighter, but really wanted to make one. .

What enemies are you talking about? I have completely completed the game on FF mode, and I don't agree with that thought at all, the enemies have unreasonably low health, and the game as a whole is far too easy. That is to say, I would prefer if the enemies actually did take longer to die: dying instantly like a Warriors style game makes combat less meaningful because the power fantasy is not earned. The final hunt hardly takes 4 minutes in FF mode, he can't even finish showing you his attacks. The only fights that feel even slightly long have scripted health barriers.

[MaChao]

Publicado originalmente por Sindex:

As I said in another thread, the game feels like it was made by someone who never played a spectacle fighter, but really wanted to make one.

Which is baffling, considering they had Ryota Suzuki as their Combat director, who previously worked on DMC5.
The Morbol fight from the demo is already a good indicator of my issues with the combat system:
The single, linear attack string doesn't feel satisfying. The magic combo gimmick, which extrends your hit string from 4 to 8 has a horribly inconsistent timing window and just felt off.
Cooldown skills really don't break up the monotony of the core gameplay nearly enough.
Again, baffling coming from a guy that showed he knew how to make a character action game, with three very distinct characters no less.

It certainly isn't a complete trainwreck, don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly servicable system.
But it feels catared towards people who never played a character action game before.
So it ends up being unsatisfying for seasoned action RPG and character action players.

[MaChao]

Publicado originalmente por FlyingFettucine:

Aint no one in this thread talking about the Eikonic challenge, which gives you three Eikons and their moves, lmao, just a bunch of haters in this thread that are saying "Thats all the game is TBH" and didnt even MENTION that there's an entire extra part with more combat in it. Get real.

People don't talk about it, because that wasn't my question.
I asked about the pacing and flow of the main game.
It's fine that the demo has an unlockable combat focused portion to it, i just don't care about that.

[The Guy]

Publicado originalmente por MaChao:

The single, linear attack string doesn't feel satisfying. The magic combo gimmick, which extrends your hit string from 4 to 8 has a horribly inconsistent timing window and just felt off.

The timing is very consistent, you just need more experience with it. There's a practice mode that actually has an option to visualize it. Sometimes it's not optimal to do this, but magic bursting is more or less how you animation cancel.

Publicado originalmente por MaChao:

Cooldown skills really don't break up the monotony of the core gameplay nearly enough.
Again, baffling coming from a guy that showed he knew how to make a character action game, with three very distinct characters no less.

The core gameplay is more or less using eikonic abilities to create wacky combos. If you think that the core combat is mashing the basic attack and weaving in magic bursts, your fault with the gameplay is yourself.

[MaChao]

Publicado originalmente por The Guy:

The core gameplay is more or less using eikonic abilities to create wacky combos. If you think that the core combat is mashing the basic attack and weaving in magic bursts, your fault with the gameplay is yourself.

Give a man a bowl of soup and a fork and blame him for not using a spoon...
I fail to see "my" part in the game not giving me anything to do in the aforementioned scenario.

Also, adding active abilities is all well and good, but they don't change the fundamentals, and those are what i'm talking about.
You can have all those funky abilities that you leave out of your first impression *and* have engaging and varied fundamentals to give the very core of your fighting system some meat.

[The Guy]

Publicado originalmente por MaChao:

Also, adding active abilities is all well and good, but they don't change the fundamentals, and those are what i'm talking about.
You can have all those funky abilities that you leave out of your first impression *and* have engaging and varied fundamentals to give the very core of your fighting system some meat.

Publicado originalmente por MaChao:

Publicado originalmente por FlyingFettucine:

Aint no one in this thread talking about the Eikonic challenge, which gives you three Eikons and their moves, lmao, just a bunch of haters in this thread that are saying "Thats all the game is TBH" and didnt even MENTION that there's an entire extra part with more combat in it. Get real.

People don't talk about it, because that wasn't my question.
I asked about the pacing and flow of the main game.
It's fine that the demo has an unlockable combat focused portion to it, i just don't care about that.

Try the Eikonic challenge. It's very short and easy, and gives you a taste of what most of the game plays like.
I do agree that I think the player should get the Eikons much sooner in the game (you don't have all of them until near the very end,) but you're complaining about not having your full kit in the first hour of the game.

[MaChao]

Publicado originalmente por The Guy:

I do agree that I think the player should get the Eikons much sooner in the game (you don't have all of them until near the very end,) but you're complaining about not having your full kit in the first hour of the game.

No, i'm not.
You're completely misunderstanding my point, maybe you don't know what i mean with "fundamentals".

Let's try another RPG with action combat for comparison. Let's take the "Tales of" series.
Even before you add any other layer to the combat system, like active skills, Tales basic attack string offers a small degree of variety to it.
With directional inputs, you change your basic attack string, offering the player more agency and variety.

Tales of's main gimmick are its skills as well. They cancel and combo into each other, they have some synergies, yadda yadda.
But even its very fundamentals offer a degree of expression.

That's what i'm talking about, nothing more, nothing less.
The fact that your very fundamentals in FF16 is a linear 4/8 string combo without any variety or player agency.
Again, that is what makes Ryota Suzuki's involvement so baffling, as the man showed he clearly understands the appeal of varied fundamentals that lead into flashy special moves.

So my "complaint" is not that you're not starting out with all special moves.
It's quite the opposite really. It's that the fundamentals without them should be able to satisfy already, putting the "special" back into special moves.

[The Guy]

Publicado originalmente por MaChao:

You're completely misunderstanding my point, maybe you don't know what i mean with "fundamentals".

Let's try another RPG with action combat for comparison. Let's take the "Tales of" series.
Even before you add any other layer to the combat system, like active skills, Tales basic attack string offers a small degree of variety to it.
With directional inputs, you change your basic attack string, offering the player more agency and variety.

Tales of's main gimmick are its skills as well. They cancel and combo into each other, they have some synergies, yadda yadda.
But even its very fundamentals offer a degree of expression.

That's what i'm talking about, nothing more, nothing less.
The fact that your very fundamentals in FF16 is a linear 4/8 string combo without any variety or player agency.

The combo you're talking about has a significant amount of player agency though. Assuming the combo truly only has 4 attacks, and you can burst after each attack, you already have over 400 ways to choose to use this attack combo. Besides that, you're forgetting that there is an entirely separate combo you can do in the air, and most attacks can be extended with a magic burst. Not to mention you can string lunges, and charge both your basic and magic attack.
Most spectacle fighters have basic combos that work like this, though if your thoughts were instead that fighting larger enemies with the basic attacks isn't satisfying, I would agree. The feedback when attacking strong enemies is not very good.

[dlux]

If you like the demo, buy it. If not, then stay away.

Anyway, the game does get much better as your progress through the story. The game has some really fun quests and epic eikon battles.