Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix’s Commitment to Demos Is Exemplary

There’s little agreement about whether Square Enix is a good company or not these days, and merely asking the question can incite miniature wars in communities that no one who values their time or energy should spend a minute reading, let alone participating in. Here is one agreeable point about them, though: They’ve been incredibly good at providing demos.

Video game demos are rarer than they used to be thanks to the sheer number of modern titles that publishers believe won’t demo well. Open world games that AAA game publishers still love to fund and developers make are slow burns until they open up and dispense with tutorials. It’s also always been difficult to demo RPGs without publishers wanting to provide too much content to the potential audience, the genre with games that have historically been slow burns. Rather than putting in the effort to make better demos that provide accurate representations of the games, several publishers instead abandoned the practice. Not Square Enix, though, which has been on a hot streak of providing robust demos for many of their recent games prior to release.

In honesty, they have little choice but to do this with how ridiculously busy their fall lineup is — they’re almost releasing one title a week here. But it’s nonetheless a trend worth commending.

Some of these games would have gone ignored even among gaming enthusiast circles and communities without demos. One is The DioField Chronicle, a real-time strategy title developed by Lancarse (of the first two Etrian Odyssey games and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey). The demo provides the game’s first chapter, more than enough stages and story content to get a feel for the game’s flow, with the option to carry progress to the full game. The story, from what’s in the demo, is reminiscent of those from other Strategy RPGs Square Enix has released in terms of aesthetics and voice acting, alongside its RTS battles. It appears to be far from the most difficult game in the genre from the sampling offered, but it’s a lot of fun.

Another one is the Valkyrie Elysium demo, a sampling of the action-based Valkyrie Profile spinoff developed by Soleil (comprised of ex-Valhalla Game Studio team members, most of whom are ex-Team Ninja staffers). The demo is long enough to get a feel for how the Valkyrie protagonist handles and what its levels will entail, with progress that carries over to the main game. The game has been criticized among enthusiast websites for getting repetitive, but it doesn’t get to that point in the demo. It’s perhaps not “spend $60 on it immediately good,” but it feels solid nonetheless.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force also received a demo, the first game in the franchise to receive one from my memory. It provides a sampling of its earliest hours, featuring the meeting between co-protagonists Raymond and Laeticia (and the latter’s assistant Albaird). Raymond is stranded on an underdeveloped planet, a classic recurring Star Ocean plot point, and seeks to discover what happened to his crew after it was attacked by unknown opposition, with planet inhabitants Laeticia and Albaird helping him.

The game handles well in exploration and battle. The combination of the free roaming and jetpack use makes traversing a joy, and the controls feel great in battle despite the enemies offering little challenge at such an early point. It’s a shame about the doll-faced character models, a tri-Ace tradition, the ridiculously small text size, and the performance on base PlayStation 4. It’s similarly unfortunate that progress for this one does not carry over to the full game, thanks to the demo’s prologue reportedly differing from what the main game will have. But it sure feels great to play. The fate of the developer is likely riding on how this game sells, so hopefully plenty of other fans feel as I do. No pressure.

Harvestella also received one, a farming RPG that’s more than just a “we have Rune Factory at home” project. The experience begins slowly as the game teaches the player how to utilize its many features and details its early story, but the pacing picks up after the player has received all the materials and knowledge they need to farm and hunt. It’s a shame that the game is evidently so low budget that it has less voicework than a Rune Factory game, which come from a publisher notably smaller than Square Enix, but it looks nice on Switch and has great music. Given all the early tutorials, this is the demo that needed save file transfer to the main game, which it fortunately has.

Square Enix has plenty more games releasing this holiday season, including Tactics Ogre Reborn, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion, and Dragon Quest Treasures. I’m sincerely hoping they’ll maintain this trend of providing demos for most of them — Treasures in particular needs one. The gameplay overview trailer elaborated on precisely what the game will offer, but that’s only second-best to letting the player get a feel for the experience themselves. I have my fingers crossed that they’ll offer one.

I’m not delusional enough to think that Square Enix will usher in a new age of demos. Publishers, largely (though not entirely) those responsible for funding and releasing AAA games, stopped the practice for largely cynical reasons. They don’t want to offer too much content for free. But they’re essential for an expensive hobby, and I’m glad at least one publisher realizes that. I hope they’ll, at least, maintain the trend.