Square Enix released the Final Fantasy XV demo worldwide. People in different countries think, well, differently! Gamers are no exception. And the reaction to Episode Duscae is proof positive of that.
Square Enix has a survey for players to give feedback on the demo. In the most recent Final Fantasy XV Active Time Report, FFXV director Hajime Tabata and Square Enix marketing man Akio Ofuji took at look at the results collected between its March release and April 3. Since the survey is still being collected until the end of next month, these results are bound to change.
However, the data that Square Enix crunched so far provides a good look at the impressions from players in North America, Europe and Japan. The demo was well received internationally, but reactions vary slightly. For example, out of the three regions, North America liked the demo best, and Japan was the most critical. Delving further, more Japanese players didn’t like the characters in the demo, found the game too difficult, and didn’t understand the goals.
There’s more in the slides, and the breakdown is quite fascinating (the subtitles show comments from Tabata and Ofuji).
[thanks, omeanizot]
Comments
12 responses to “The Final Fantasy XV Demo Reveals Cultural Differences”
I’m glad I wasn’t alone thinking the combat was the weakest part of the demo. That said, maybe I’ve misunderstood but it’s not like they’re doing much with the information? Are they actually going to do something in the final game?
I too agree. I thought I was the only one. I got excited for this year for Final Fantasy and got Type-0 and played 4 hours and thought the characters were real weak and not giving me a decent playable story. Then I played the FF15 demo and thought the battle system was just weak and the game was designed with the premise ‘oh but it looks pretty’ which is a shame because I was a huge fan as a kid.
Nevermind! Saw your other FFXV articles. Yay that they’re actually going to do something with all that feedback! I’m still concerned about boring fights though, looks like they were talking about changing difficulties, but the fights them selves just didn’t have me doing much outside of holding square to attack…
Strengthening the block/dodge system could help considerably. I found it almost impossible to successfully block, but with the block marker that comes up, the three lines that come up could move to overlap each other, letting you know WHEN the hit is going to strike so you have better representation of when to react. You could also change the blocks effectiveness depending on how close you were. Perfect accuracy – No damage, off by a bit, reduced damage, horribly off, normal or increased damage since you would open yourself up to attack worse.
With something like that, you aren’t just mashing the attack, defense and parry get used more often and rewards you for being good at it with less damage. Different enemies have different block windows to keep variety up.
Yeah, I get what your saying there, I’d almost say they should take some inspiration from tales of, and give noctis some combos if only to mix it up a bit. Your suggestion to give varieties of defence would work too, maybe short term buffs for pulling off a perfect parry or something
I only played the demo once, but it was an interesting experience.
First I listened to men groan for a few minutes. Once it finally let me actually control the game, I was excited to jump and swing swords at nothing. Then I killed some oxen (or something). I tried to go swimming, but it wouldn’t let me. Then I quit the demo (not because it was bad, I just had other things to do).
I swear I’ll go back to it again one day…
To me the whole thing smells like the star wars prequels. They know the older FF’s are popular but they don’t *actually* know what it was about them that resonated with people because its difficult to define as something you can just throw money at to replicate.
Of course the Japanese didn’t like it. It’s not 400 hours of using one button that they are used to.
I enjoyed that
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You, sir, are a master troll
i loled you win my upvote for the day.
I really disliked the combat.
It wasn’t intuitive to me, the delays between executing a jump/teleport attack and actually getting there frequently meant that enemies had already moved elsewhere and it just felt clunky overall.
Give me something like Castlevania, God of War etc. and it would have been perfect.
Training up at a campfire wasn’t fun as it felt like a mandatory exercise just for the sake of it.
The sound was a little jarring at times – some things sounded far louder than they needed to be. e.g. the Chocobo ranch part was practically blaring on approach and was almost overwhelming when there.
Just about everything else was great, the relatively open world, the visuals etc. but gawd I hope they re-jig the combat / controls because I personally felt it was the weakest / most frustrating part.