Anyone played the Final Fantasy XVI demo?

I think this is the big one we've been waiting for. Only tiny gripe is that the QTEs freeze framing is a little silly in the year 2023. I feel like Asura's Wrath solved QTEs a decade ago.

God, Asura's Wrath was such a great game.

Is the combat like FF15 or the Remake?

It's been too long since I played 15 to remember the distinction. It's action based, so maybe closer to 7 remake. I think much more action based than either though, there are combos and no ATB bars. The demo is the prologue of the game though so no idea how it develops
It's closer to FF7 but there are no menus in combat. I really enjoyed the combat
Devil May Cry is probably the closest comparison

Haven't tried the demo but can't wait to play it on pc. Love everything about it

Yeah, I am hyped for the PC version too! Any idea how long it will take until it's available for PC?
- I'm thinking in about a year: it's PS5 exlclusive for six months, but iirc they said they will need more than six months to optimize the game for pc. Luckily I have a lot too play (and not so much time to do so) so I'll definitely manage to keep me entertained in the meantime

I played it and my general thought about it it, that it's quite good so far. The Eikon battles feel nice and mostly on a technical side it's good. Enjoy the Morbol battle as well. I think the movement is a bit slow or you got interrupted in movement, but it's fine so far. And the scenery when we hunt goblins looks quite good. But i don't like that this game looks like a generic fantasy setting. Sure there are chocobos, but it's not as edgy as ffVII. Just usual knights and worker are in the castle, no special race, no mogry. As a long Final fantasy Fan i often don't see it as a final fantasy game. I hope that get at least a bit better. I will get this game day 1 and hope I enjoy it.

I mean, there's a lot of the game that you're not going to see in a 2 hour demo. A lot of FF games don't have special races but this one does feature beastmen (we've seen goblins so far, and "beastmen" in other FF games can be quite varied so I'm sure there are more to come), and we already know Moogles are going to be in the game.

As for me, the return to the fantasy setting is something I've been waiting for for a long time. I mean, I like the modern/futuristic settings of games like FFVII, but there have been a lot of those recently (VII, VIII, XIII, XV, not to mention the VII remake). The more fantasy setting is like a return to the series' roots.
- I don't watch the trailer, i just know what's inside the demo. I think the goblins are boring, because goblins are so generic fantasy creatures. I like the morbol. I'm fine wie non futuristic fantasy setting, but ff4/9/12 are better examples for me than this 3h demo. Beastman later sound nice. I will for sure have a different opninion after 10h or after completing the game.

Planning on downloading it tonight!

Overall, I really enjoyed it, can't wait for the full game.

The only issue I had with it was that all facial animations are synced to English voice actors. For me, this means that I'm forced to either play in English with proper lipsync, but a (presumably) heavily Koji Fox influenced localization (which I already know is not really my cup of tea), or play in Japanese and just put up with janky cutscenes for the whole game. Kind of lose-lose scenario, but oh well.

Don't those animations change for the different languages nowadays? I don't know about this game in particular, but for other games, they just have animations for the different sounds and syllables, and it gets essentially "generated" on the fly for whatever text is fed into it.

Pre-rendered cutscenes sometimes just have multiple versions for the different languages, and I think FF has done it this way in the past.
Ah, what else has Koji Fox done? The localisation feels a little like the archaic language of 12, but less so. I quite like it.

Though I'm not sure why it's a Marborl and not Marlboro. Also I'm going to assume Syr Tyler and Syr Wade at some point were called Syr Biggs and Syr Wedge.
- He did a lot of work on FFXIV, and in that game, I felt like a lot of the characters were changed in subtle ways in the localization, and not in ways that I personally enjoyed.
  
  This is purely my speculation, so I may have the complete wrong idea about how he approaches localization, but I get the feeling that he believes western audiences would find wholesome characters boring (which may very well be true). I say this because I remember noticing so many times that characters were nice to each other in Japanese, but randomly made mean comments in the English subtitles. There were some other quirks as well about the localization that didn't sit well with me.
  
  I think at the end of the day, I'm just the kind of guy who prefers a straight up translation over a localization. I'm aware that I'm probably in the minority with this opinion, though.

I really enjoyed it! The story is intriguing so far, and a lot more mature that standard FF fare, which was jarring (but in a good way). Definitely a lot darker than previous installments. Love the return to the more classic fantasy setting. Combat was fun, I'm curious how it expands with the additional Eikons, but it flows nicely. Music was excellent as expected and the world looks really cool. Voice acting is really well done too. Interesting to hear Lorath from D4 so soon, that guy's getting into a lot of games recently lol. My main complaint is the motion blur when moving the camera, it is a bit dizzying and I hope it isn't as bad in the final version. Pretty minor though, I really enjoyed the demo as a whole and am excited for release in 9 days.

Combat was a little dull and I think that any media these days that follows a medieval and political themes will be related to GoT but really I don't see much resemblance.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it though. Might actually pick it up!

I haven't played it yet, but I want to on the weekend. How long is it approximately?

I won't pre-order the game, but I will buy it on thursday next week - I already took some time off from work. :D (I had to many hours and I needed to take some time off sometime in June, so I figured why not for XVI release? ^^)

I think it took a couple of hours, maybe a bit less
- Thanks! :)

I'm so excited for this game but I'm still not done with Zelda!