Beyond excited to see the next chapter of such a beloved series! Being father’s day weekend, I was stoked to get my hands on a few hours of time to myself so I could give this demo a try.
And boy, was this a demo.
The graphics are beautiful, and the gameplay was smooth with minimal learning curve to the controls. The story wraps in the from the beginning and doesn’t let you go. It is captivating and magical but doesn’t get too involved in the story we can expect from the full release. We get to take a small adventure of a younger Clive who is trying to prove himself as a shield and get to see a bit of his family dynamics in this demo that may shape the storyline in the game.
But let me just say this for a minute, the demo you think you are playing, isn’t the real demo. There is far too much dialogue and cinematic cutscenes to really get into the game play for me. Was it good, absolutely! But I would have much prefer to scene a movie release like they did with Final Fantasy 15 Kingsglaive. That would have been perfectly fine by me. You’ll spend most of your time watching cutscenes or skipping you through them if you are short on time.
After the short gameplay you get and background story for our hero, you unlock another mode in the demo. Enter “Eikonic Challenge.”
That’s right, after the prologue demo you get a new mode unlocked that feels like a true demo. We get to see the Clive from the beginning of the game with his full powers unlocked and ready to thrash some baddies.
The Eikonic Challenge is worth the gameplay and there are dozens of ways to get through it. Even if the Eikonic Challenge is just a fraction of what we can expect, we are already off to a great start.
Final Fantasy 16 releases on June 22nd, 2023.