Okay, been checking out the FF XV: Windows Edition Demo on Steam. Some thoughts incoming.
So, combat feels way different from any major FF game that I've ever played. For the most part, it feels like almost everything here is in real-time and it feels like an action game. Honestly, it's a lot of fun, if you are into real-time combat and action games. What's interesting w/ your party of 4 here is you can actually hit the gamepad (or keyboard/mouse); call up their own special techniques; and it feels like you're doing old-school FF menus to let the game do the special skill, spell, or something. You can call up menus for weapons, items, hot-key them, and also switch b/t those when in combat. Of course, you can call up Inventory and all of that stuff too.
This game feels like also Skyrim and Final Fantasy had a baby, more or less. You have pretty much an open-world for you to explore and side-quests and treasures and things to find on your way, as the game-world resembles a road-trip across America. You can drive the car, once you get it and it rides just fine. Also, you can have one of the others drive during the day if you like, as well. At night, though - you have to manually drive it yourself (as Noctis).
I don't know much about these characters, as not much has really developed here in the hour or so that I played w/ the demo - but I do like the banter that seems to be going on quite often with them. It always seems fun, light-hearted, and interesting. The 4 of them seem to be the best friends and play well off each others' remarks, lines, and whatnot.
Questing seems, at least early on, like fetch quests here and there. Kill X this and/or that. Go to Y area(s). And they might even give you challenges to get extra EXP to do certain skills, moves, techniques, or whatever when doing a quest. So, that's cool - the challenges make things a bit more interesting here on these type of MMO-type of quests. You can save in some areas, but not all. You can save during some quests, but not at all times. You basically level-up at hotels/motels, outposts, and other safe-areas. You also can get extra EXP boosts and bonuses, depending on where you save, which is interesting.
So, performance...this is the next story. I'm running an i7 950 Bloomfield; 16 GB DDR3 RAM; GTX 970; and Windows 7 64-bit. With almost everything on Average and like 2 settings on High (for filtering) at 1440p, it runs all over the place - anywhere from like 33 frames to 60 frames. It's all over the place at 1440p. So, I locked it to 30fps and it runs smooth as silk now. Even at Average settings, the game just looks great; they really seem to have the look and feel for a road-trip out in America down very well. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to run that great. It runs okay here basically, so far. I might mess around w/ some other settings and stuff - but there's a fair amount of settings and customization in the menus for graphics, so that's good.
So, there's my thoughts...so far. A lot to like so far, but I just wish it performed better on my PC.
it a few months ago. It's basically to reinforce bad habits like never leaving my bed on my days off.
