Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae 2.0 — Buckle Up, Boys

Scour the internet, and you’ll see a wide variety of positive and negative opinions for Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae. And that’s hardly surprising giving the game’s unique (for better or worse) approach for a new Final Fantasy title, and the intense desire for it. Prolonged development times can curiously increase anticipation levels among fanbases, and since Final Fantasy XV (originally Final Fantasy Versus XIII) was announced around nine-and-a-half years ago, it represents the most extreme example of this phenomenon thus far. Those fans were bound to judge its progress on this demo, regardless of how RPG demos overall tend to be unrepresentative of the final product.

Yet outside Square Enix giving fans a potential taste of what lies ahead, it was clearly Episode Duscae’s purpose to gauge opinions on what the team has developed. It’s why the updated Episode Duscae 2.0 was quickly released to provide an even greater impression of the development team’s progress, and show how efficient they are at making quick fixes. Fortunately, I had the pleasure of starting with 2.0, so my impressions are more positive than some you’ll find across the internet. But that’s not to say I ran into some issues that should be ironed out.

The story here begins with the car the crew travels in needing repairs, and though trusted friend Cindy can be relied on to fix it (who’s every bit of a blatant male gaze magnet as you’ve heard, by the way), they have nowhere near the amount of Gil required to pay her. To obtain what they need, the crew decides to…no, not sell their stylish designer threads, but topple a fearsome Behemoth. As part of the story, the party will stroll around the field to gather clues regarding its whereabouts, and encounter enemies that attack them of varying difficulty.

With how quickly the demo throws you into its world, Episode Duscae seems desperate to establish how FFXV is the anti-Final Fantasy XIII, especially for those who didn’t play that title’s two sequels. The setup is similar to many other open world games, pitting protagonist Noctis and his three accomplices in an open field with main and side missions available for the player to complete. What’s partly unique about the small word for this demo are its camp sites, places where your boys can rest, spar, and eat to regain strength and temporarily increase stats. Also welcome is the option to quick travel to the nearest camp site through a menu option, a necessity for any open world games.

But Episode Duscae represents FFXV in an evidently experimental state, especially in its combat, easily the demo’s focus. It immediately lets you know how complex it will be when the first instance of gameplay is a tutorial that acclimates players to its controls. But that actually teaches you very little of what you’ll need to know, which you’ll soon learn upon encountering a moderately difficult horde. If you watched videos of the game in action, you could have gotten the impression that FFXV’s combat was similar to Kingdom Hearts’. But while it takes cues from those titles, it’s actually its own complex beast, and that’s good and bad.

It’s enjoyable after getting the hang of it, but that period of adjustment is longer than you’d expect from an action-based FF game. Heck, it takes practice to even land hits on your opponents, thanks to its overcomplicated lock-on system, despite the adjustments made in 2.0. Tapping the DualShock 4’s R1 trigger will activate an extremely temporary enemy lock-on, while holding R1 longer will activate a more permanent one. But the completely permanent one requires pressing R3 while locked on. Hell of a process, and that’s not even getting into how the camera can chuck around wildly if you’re locked onto a fast-moving target, Kingdom Hearts I style.

At the very least, 2.0 fixed an earlier issue with dodging. Some felt it was too difficult to time L1 presses with enemy attacks or blocking and countering, especially when some attacks are difficult to see coming. The circle button is typically reserved for jumping, but pressing it in tandem with L1 will have Noctis execute a rolling maneuver. It’s very useful, but balanced well enough to not make the player feel too powerful.

Despite being updated, battles seriously show where this game needs serious polish — far more than the hitches that occur during exploration. Having your party of four attack hordes of enemies simultaneously is often enough to tank the performance, which can throw off the player’s rhythm and make incoming attacks harder to dodge. There’s also the comparatively minor issue with characters clipping through even the smallest enemies during team attacks, and though it doesn’t affect the gameplay, it’s jarring to see in a title where lavish detail has been given to its graphics. If the final game can fix these issues and run at a consistent 30fps, this aspect should be good at least.

Despite the problems I laid out above, I enjoyed plenty of what the demo offered. One of my favorite aspects of open world games is stumbling upon locations no marked on the map, and the demo offers a few involving gorgeous environments and rest stops with humans wandering about. That’s despite some locations being too difficult to see at night. Though Noctis’ walking and running speed is a little slow, demo makes it clear that Chocobos will make travelling even easier. It would have been nice to try that here, considering they’re in the demo.

Quests offered weren’t a hassle to complete, and never made me want to stop playing the game in frustration. Though that’s unlike MMORPG-style quests in other games, they could become repetitive if the player is inundated with too many. The beautiful locations and excellent attention to detail is enough to show anyone playing precisely why this game has been in development for so long, but at least they’ve done something with all that time. If elements the demo presents come together in the final product, it could make for the kind of special experience Final Fantasy desperately needs right now.

But I can’t emphasize “if” hard enough in that last sentence, given how development hell-laden games rarely turn out well in the end. With this being an RPG, they’ll have a plethora of elements to polish and fine tune, and the demo only provides a modicum of that. Considering how quickly the development team released the enhanced 2.0 version after the original, I’m actually confident the team can have this out by the end of 2016. Let’s hope it comes together, for the sake of everyone involved.