FFXIII Demo Out Now

Today, the world ( Japan specifically ) will officially see the first playable demo of one of the most anticipated title in this gen’s console. But someone generously video taped an early leaked copy of the game. It’s still actually in debug mode (as windows menu sometimes pops out of the screen) so I assume that this is still a beta build and not something that should be compared to the final build. 

First Impression. Contrary to everyone’s expectation, I really love how they went back to the roots and incorporated the world to battle transition. I just hope they do the same to the world map because IMO that’s a quarter of the fun in an RPG. Art wise, I’m disappointed with the environment. Textures are not that clean and there is no normal map even when it’s so near the camera already. Contrary to my first statement, the character art were impressive. The previous trailer’s in game shots were nowhere near as impressive as the demo’s. New shaders were incorporated to the demo. Battle system is very old school. Menu based battle similar to Grandia but instead of just one action, they incorporated a Xenogears/Xenosaga battle system. I’m definitely buying this game.