Final Fantasy 15 Is Much Nicer On PC

Final Fantasy XV launched on PS4 and Xbox at the very end of November two years ago. Next week, the full game comes to PC – and it’s well worth the wait.

Available through Steam, Origin and the Windows Store, the demo clocks in at 21GB and includes all the necessary textures to run the early sections of the game at 4K.

The demo is also a much better indication of what you can expect performance wise than the benchmark, which had some well-documented issues with stuttering. I fired up the demo on a Ryzen 1800X with a GTX 1080 yesterday – better than average setup, I know – and save for a couple of noticeable hitches, it’s a greatly improved experience.

For those who played FF15 on the PS4, Square’s gargantuan RPG suffered from some frame pacing issues that made the game’s High mode less playable. After version 1.05, however, Square upped the frame rate cap to 60 FPS for PS4 Pro users.

But because FF15 couldn’t maintain a stable 60 FPS in most scenarios, the Lite version ended up running at between 30 and 50 FPS. The High mode, on the other hand, had a higher resolution but rough frame pacing issues. A “Stable” mode was later added towards the end of April last year, which made the game more palatable for those on the PS4 Pro.

FF15 is capable of a lot more than that, however. In the demo, you’ll have access to 30, 60 and 120 FPS caps and a range of options for tessellation, motion blur, two anti-aliasing settings (off, FXAA and TAA), lighting, a set of NVIDIA-specific settings including Hairworks, and whether or not to use the 4K assets:

The demo won’t have the crazy first-person mode that Square and NVIDIA demoed at Gamescom last year, but the PC version will have all of the DLC released since FF15‘s launch. That means you’ll get online co-op as well, which is a huge plus – and a great reason to replay the game.

Hajime Tabata told Kotaku Australia that Square might make a dedicated mod editor down the road, although enterprising users will probably find a way to get mods going regardless. NVIDIA users will also get to muck around with Photo Mode and Ansel, and keyboard and mouse users can remap everything (controller users get an option from one of three presets).

But all that aside, the demo will give you around 3 or 4 hours of content to playthrough. Given that the opening of FF15 is one of the better parts of the game (especially compared to that chapter), it’s a good place to start. And as someone who grew up playing lots of demos and shareware before buying the full product: it’s nice to have proper demos again.

[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/08/final-fantasy-15-in-first-person-is-bonkers/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/08/final-fantasy-15-what-are-you-doing-noct-410×231.jpg” title=”Final Fantasy 15 In First-Person Is Bonkers” excerpt=”Final Fantasy 15 is coming to PC. But the PC isn’t just getting the most recent Final Fantasy game. it’s also getting a first-person mode, which users were able to play at Gamescom. Put simply, it’s bonkers.”]


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