Platinum Demo: Final Fantasy XV Review

A Platinum Insight

As of a few days ago, the demo for Final Fantasy XV titled “Platinum Demo: Final Fantasy XV” has made its way onto the Playstation and Xbox Live stores, free to download. After around 40 minutes, the special demo offers an unexpected and unique insight into the main games’ protagonist. Is it worth your time? Definitely.

The entirety of the Platinum demo is a dream sequence within the mind of Final Fantasy XV’s main character, Noct, as a young boy. Being guided via telepathic text message with a Carbuncle (adorable unicorn, rabbit, cat-thing), the demo takes you through four different levels. Each level has its own intriguing scenery, music and several gameplay elements added casually whilst journeying from one dream level to another.

Visuals

Awwww!

Whilst not a massive package of gameplay, the demo is more of an engaging showcase that tries to suck in the player to show what this world can be. Even though these levels are all parts of a dream, each one is beautiful and enchanting. Scenery; weather patterns, soundtracks and creatures, the Carbuncle included successfully sucks you into admiring your surroundings as you’re running through them and offers excitement to look forward to all of the environments the final game will offer.

Gameplay

Even though gameplay has taken a bit of backseat to offering a look into FFXV’s world, some interesting fighting mechanics and features are provided. As you are mostly fighting as a younger Noct, you are provided with toy weapons and some creatures to fight throughout the four levels. Though on the 4^th level, when the viewpoint into the combat becomes as that you’ll expect in the full game, the combat in the previous three levels may become a bit repetitive. As I was trying to explore as much as I could on the 2^nd level, I was beginning to exhaust my fighting options before my attention became a tad worn-out. However, there are some interesting environment/transformation panels which you can step on throughout the whole demo in between portions of combat. There are even transformation panels during the 3^rd level which reinvigorated my attitude towards fighting random creatures for the tenth time (I may have turned into a fighting alligator), before finally entering an enthralling final fight on the 4^th level.

Characters

Being able to see into this world through young Noct's perspective.

Alongside another sneak peek into the look of FFXV, the most prominent aspect of the demo is into the backstory and mind of the character, Noct, himself. Throughout levels of the demo and delivered with the narration of the Carbuncle; we’re offered an interesting and deeper understanding into Noct’s relationship with his father, Regis, involving both events in his childhood and how close they were prior to the main game. I definitely came away understanding Noct deeper as a human character and even enjoyed watching his bond with the Carbuncle during this dream sequence, that helped explore it all.

Verdict

Despite dragging on through some portions of the levels, the platinum demo for Final Fantasy 15 continuously showed off a decent variety in terms of the look and feel of this world, alongside a further look into understanding the character, Noct and how we might see the relationship with his father in the game. As a non-diehard fan of the Final Fantasy series, the demo certainly appeals as a gateway for new entrants into the franchise, with new characters and interesting creatures to engage with in this invigorated world. If you have a spare 45 minutes or so, it’s free to download and you have nothing to lose. Give it a go and see what you think. It’s short, sweet and a good bit of fun.

Rating: 8/10.

Final Fantasy XV graces our Ps4’s & XB1’s September 30^th, 2016.

By Ben Williams, Pineapple Carpet.