We Played Through Final Fantasy XV Judgment Disc Demo – Here Are Our First Impressions
Final Fantasy XV Judgement Disc has been out in Japan for a few days already and we decided to give it a go. It is a playable demo that gives a taste of the open world aspect of the game. So what are our first impressions. Read on to find out!
The first demo came out in March 2015 and shortly after Squre Enix released a second, called the Platinum Demo. Now after a long wait we got the third and final demo called the Judgment Disc. Everyone with a Japanese PlayStation 4 or Xbox One store account can check out the demo. However you’ll have to wait for the massive 13.4 GB download to finish. And of course, it will be all in Japanese, but it’s still worth checking out if you can’t wait for the full game to release.
You can pretty much breeze through the demo in about two hours, but that is if you go around just by car and not stopping to do everything there is to do. The demo starts off with a detailed tutorial of sorts, with Gladiolus as your guinea pig. Yeah, Noctis practically beats the crap out of him for his own enjoyment. Or that’s what we thought when we played through the section. At the end you throw a powerful fire magic and the whole room light up in a blaze. Poor, poor Gladiolus.
Driving is really fun and you can choose to drive yourself or just set back and relax while Ignis takes the wheel. It gives you an opportunity to really soak up the beautiful scenery. Also while you drive your team mates will be chit chatting, but also discussing important plot points. Each character in the main party has their special “survival” skill they can upgrade. Noctis can fish, Ignis excels at cooking, Gladiolus is good with survival skills and Prompto is always taking photos.
There are a lot of small, but really interesting details, like when you stand in one place everyone figgets and moves around, and while driving they will be constantly switching up what they are doing. Sometimes Gladiolus would be reading a book, while Noctis might stand up and try to look cool. Each character has their own little quirks and it makes them seem so lifelike.
The really cool thing is you can customize your car at the station. Give it a paint job and add some mad grills at your liking. But of course your car runs on gas so you should refuel often. The good thing is unlike in real life fuel in Final Fantasy is really, really cheap. Of course, there will be Cid at the first stop you go to and she is every bit of fanservicy as she was the first time she was introduced.
Mobs were plentiful and some of them were pretty challenging. There are a few well hidden mini bosses and really tough enemies, so we’re really excited to check them out when the full game comes out. Most locations offer you someone who will give you a typical “kill x amount of specific enemies” to clear their quest and reap some most needed rewards. How can a prince go on a road trip without any gils in his pocket?
There are a few locations you can visit, while the others are blocked off in the demo; like dungeons and caves. The story content is about one hour long and you can really breeze through fast. But you can extend the play time significantly if you fool around and try to find hidden crystals and fight various mobs.
Some players have experienced quite a bit of glitches, but thankfully we haven’t come across any of them. Only issue we had was with framerate drops while playing on the original PlayStation 4, but this should be less of an issue on the PlayStation 4 Pro. The graphics look really good on the base console, so they are more crisp on the Pro as there are more options for visual fidelity.
Here is a small selection of snapshots we managed to take in our adventure.
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