Final Fantasy XV Platinum Demo: Combat Analysis
Apr. 6, 2016Final Fantasy XV Platinum Demo: Combat Analysis
Today I’m going to talk about the Final Fantasy XV demo. Now, there’s probably already tons of videos talking about the content, both obvious and secret as well as walkthroughs and Let’s plays, so what I’m going to talk about is the combat system
Unfortunately the demo itself explains nothing of the nuance of the systems, or even gives you enough tools to help you understand those systems, at least starting out. So really quick, just in case you don’t know, the first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you get 100 of the floating yellow crystals. This will unlock the Silver plates which is needed for a specific weapon that will absolutely help your opinion of the game. There’s a bunch of them in the demo, and you just need to make sure you have the 100 before entering the fourth area.
Now, once you have the 100 crystals, go to the fourth area and fight the Iron Giant. Starting this fight turns you into the older Noctis and after a few minutes the Carbuncle will unlock the ability to warp to warp points. This allows you to scale the large citadel building to pick up the Hero’s Shield from a silver plate. Beating him unlocks Platinum plates, one of which re-summons the Iron Giant, but stronger, and another of which is back up the building and unlocks the Cross Shuriken. So go to the furthest end of the level, past the Carbuncle to resummon the stronger Iron Giant, putting you back in adult form. Re-scale the building and pick up the Cross Shuriken.
And with this, you are now ready to see what the combat system truly has in store.
First off note that the Attack command works simply by holding the attack button, you don’t need to keep pressing it. There are however, special attacks for some weapons. They are performed a few different ways, some are by holding a direction while attacking and another is, when attacking, let go of the attack button, wait for Noct to recover from his animation, then press Attack again. When you do this you’ll actually see an “Attack” prompt onscreen, but you can actually press the attack button again sooner than the prompt shows up. Note that you can actually switch to a different weapon just before pressing attack again to get THAT weapon’s follow up instead. For now I’ll call this type of special attack the “delay attack”. I’ll cover the details of these special moves a bit later.
So, just like you can hold the attack command same goes for the Defend command. Note also that the auto Defend takes MP relative to how long you’ve been holding the defend button before any attack reaches you, so holding the defense button closer to the attack takes less MP. Additionally, with auto dodge you can’t dodge some attacks, so for those you need to just TAP the defend command with the right timing. Tapping dodge consumes no MP. This is very important as the Iron Giant has several moves that cannot be defended against easily with out the dodge. It should be noted that the dodge does have invulnerability but it starts a few moments after activating it, so you have to dodge a little before it hits, not just before or during. If you dodge too late you’ll get hit.
Next, you cannot enter defense mode or input a dodge WHILE attacking, so if you see the enemy getting ready to strike, immediately stop attacking and hold or get ready to tap the defend button.
As long as you keep that in mind you should be able to take the Iron Giant down, although not very efficiently, with just the Airstep Sword, the one-handed sword.
Next is the warp strike, which can be used at the cost of MP to warp to whatever targeted enemy. It actually has some invulnerability and can be used as an alternate but much more MP expensive way to dodge enemy attacks and/or to completely disengage from them. Also, it does more damage and causes more hit stun on an enemy the further away from them you initiate it. You’ll notice that while doing it close it says “WARP STRIKE times 1.0”, but if you go to the top of the building and warp attack from that high up, it will say up to as high as “times 7.2” dealing much higher damage and almost always4 stunning the enemy. So yeah, useful to know. Note that hanging from a warp point doesn’t grant invincibility from attacks or anything so if you say hang from a lamppost warp point, the Iron Giant can still hit you with some attacks.
Lastly for the basics, L1 and R1, or LB and RB together will activate Armiger which increases your general attack power, attack speed, and gives you some unique animations. It might have some other effects that I’m not currently aware of, but just see it as a power up mode for now.
So, that’s all the basic system level stuff, now let’s talk about the weapons
First off is the Airstep Sword. This sword has a unique ability to let you sidestep, frontflip, or backflip into the air. While holding the attack button simply hold the analog stick in any direction and Noctis will flip in one of those four directions while attacking. Every flip done in the air takes MP. This is not however a dodge move. There is no invulnerability on them from what I can tell and the ability isn’t used that way. What it does do is allow you to reposition yourself quickly while attacking. So you could keep holding left or right to get to the Iron Giant’s side or back, thereby making some of his attacks miss simply because you’re out of the way. You can also get up to his head this way making certain other attacks whiff. Downside is if you can’t get into a good position you’ll get smacked, and it takes MP so you can’t keep it up forever anyway. Still it’s a fast weapon and one of only two in this demo that lets you warp to warp points. It’s delay attack has him charge back in quickly with two strikes, stronger than normal. May have other properties but hard to test since there is only one enemy type you get to fight as adult Noctis in the demo.
Second is the Broadsword. This is you main damage dealer, a slow but very powerful weapon that also restores chunks of MP for every hit landed, and even has special moves that give you hyper armor. Meaning, while doing certain moves, if the enemy hits you, you will take damage, but they won’t knock you away, you’ll continue to do your move. Very useful vs big enemies. It’s regular combo is a very slow side to side repeating sweep attack, it’s forward attack closes distance fairly well, and it’s back special attack is a wide area spin attack with hyper armor that hits multiple times and executes very quickly. Lastly, it’s delay attack is actually a charge slash that increases in power relative to how long you hold the attack button down. At it’s strongest it goes from around 360 damage for a normal swing to around 2400 damage, so it is a massive power boost but it takes quite a long time to reach that level of power. Very useful to use the Airstep sword to attack quickly once, then during the delay attack window, switch to broadsword immediately and press and hold attack to charge it up ASAP. The charge attack ALSO has hyper armor, even if you do it uncharged, so it’s very useful in a lot of ways.
Third is the Hero’s Shield. This weapon is extremely useful. It’s actually a shield and dagger and it’s special ability is that, unlike the dodge, you can cancel most attacks into defense while attacking with this weapon just by pressing and or holding the defend button normally. Additionally, as soon as you press it your guard is up right then, so it requires less timing than the dodge. But if you do time it well, you actually can make the enemy’s attack bounce off, stunning them for just a moment and giving you time to get your own attacks in. It’s forward special attack is a quick multi hitting dagger and shield combo, it’s back special attack is a slow but very high hitstun spin bash attack that I’ve seen actually stop the Iron Giant while it’s starting it’s own attack, the delay attack is a stronger shield bash but without much range, and finally it has a special really far lunging shield bash initiated by pressing attack after blocking any attack. Additionally, unlike the normal defense, there are no attacks that the shield cannot block, but it should be noted that you can’t block attacks coming from behind you so if your positioning is weird or if he hits you with his ground pound attack and you’re too close, it’ll actually be behind you and therefore you won’t be able to block it.
Last is the Cross Shuriken which on the ground is a very simple projectile attack where every attack consumes a tiny bit of MP. However, in the air it functions the same as the Airstep sword, with every attack taking a larger chunk of MP but allowing you to freely reposition yourself while attacking. It also doesn’t have any invulnerability but can still be useful to stay away from an enemy while attacking. I imagine this weapon would be especially useful vs small fast enemies since they home in, but it has only certain limited, but useful, uses against the Iron Giant. It is also the second weapon that allows you to warp to warp points
So yeah as you can see, Noctis really has a very wide range of offensive and defensive abilities but several of them are tied to weapons so I think most people have not gotten to see how strong you can be in battle since one of the most important ones, the shield, is hidden. I encourage you all to try the demo again, armed with this knowledge and see how fun it is to fight in this demo.
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Gasarocky
The gameplay in Duscae is already outdated, it doesn’t play like this demo much at all and this one is much more tightened up.
Not to say that they’re COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, but different nonetheless
Really wish they would release that Episode Duscase or whatever it was to the general populace.
But this demo was actually kinda fun, after I figured out all the different combos and stuff. Been a while since I played a Final Fantasy game, and this might be worth getting.
Thanks for the info!! I’m still on the fence about this game so I will take your tips & try the demo again.
