Final Fantasy 12 Demo
 

Just got done playing it... and damn, this is gonna be an awesome game! I found it on newsgroups, but I believe it comes packaged with Dragon Warrior 8 (Dragon Quest 8?), not 100% sure on that.

The best way to describe the feel of the map & battle system is a single player FF11 - you actually see your enemies on the map (no random battles), and it's free roaming with party members following behind you. It even has Mandragoras!

The other members are on auto - and with each action (attacking, casting, etc) there's a timer.. so if you realize you screwed up and did the wrong thing, you can change your attack before the timer goes down (although the timer will reset).

When you kill enemies, you get *gasp* EXPERIENCE POINTS, thank GOD. Personally I hate when they toy with the ability/experience system (ie junctioning or sphere grid), so this feels a lot like traditional leveling (although I'm sure you can customize abilities too)

When enemies drop items, they pop out of their corpses and you simply walk over the item to pick it up. Enemies also have a life meter above them so you can see how close they are to dying.

Summons... seem to be disabled, but they are espers.

White, Black, Green (protect/shell), and Time magic is in the game.

Running away is pretty neat - all you have to do is hold down R1 and you go into "flee" mode where you can just run past mobs, but you can easily pull a train of em behind you if you aren't careful, just like in FF11!

The demo is short and sweet with two scenarios to play through. One you are on a beach and you need to kill 3 types of enemies to summon a T-Rex looking thing, and the other scenario is inside a castle where you need to find a key to open a door to fight a Ryng Wyrm (HUGE dragon).

[edit]
..and I left out the FMV - but it is what you expect from Final Fantasy: beautiful and f'n amazing!

I haven't heard anything about FF12 - is it PC, PS2, PS3? Singleplayer or MMO? And where'd you get the demo?

PS2 - I found the demo on alt.binaries.the-terminal, but I believe it comes packaged with Dragon Quest 8, which just came out yesterday.

It's single player, but with an MMO feel to it (FF11).

I am so looking forward to this game, I also keep hearing great things (review wise) of Dragon Quest VIII

Some things I've read about it have turned me off (was a long time FFXI player, and have come to hate it) and some things really interest me about it (takes place in Ivalice). But all in all, I think it's going to be another good game.

BTW, according to Gamespot.com's hands on of the demo, summons are available to Vaan and Ashe in the demo and replace your other two party members while it follows you around.

Sounds awesome. No more "hammer x repeatedly until it's there turn and wait your turn again to hammer x"? Sounds good to me.

And since it's for the PS2. I'll probably pick it up

Yes, that's definitely a plus!

The chars that have white magic will automatically heal when needed, and there was even a point where I wasn't paying attention to the game - I didn't touch a single button and they were off fighting on their own. Very nice.

I assume there will be strategy settings (ie. "Heal only", "No magic", "Defensive/Offensive mode") to control these other characters in the event you REALLY don't wanna press anything.

I like how it's truly a 3D world. The past FF games have been more or less moving sprites on a static background, but nothing truly 3D. In this, you can actually rotate the camera all around and roam about as you will!

I'm surprised they didn't bring this out excussivley for the PS3. I thought it would have been a great marketing tool. It's good to hear that the gaming people aren't soo damn money hungry that they make you buy the new gaming system just to play the new game. (DAMN Microsoft for Halo3 only for X360!!!)

Sounds sweet!

Can anyone confirm that it comes with Dragon Quest 8? I am planning on buying Dragon Quest 8 but I will speed that process up if it comes with that demo.

According to this <a href="http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3145629&did=1">http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3145629&did=1</a>, it does ship w/ DQ8!

Awesome! I must go get it now!

I haven't played an FF game in ages. Not having a ps2 myself, I've had to rely on video of it. It has truly restored faith in the series. I wasn't really happy how 10, 10-2 and 11 turned out. Final fantasy 12 has got me all hyped up. I may even go as far as getting a ps2 just to play it. Seems like a great way to end the series on ps2.