Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae

Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae is the playable demo of Final Fantasy XV for the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. It included as a downloadable voucher with purchased copies of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, which released worldwide in March, 2015. The demo is available for a limited time, included only with the first print versions of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD.

The premise of the demo is that the party must make enough money to pay for their car to be fixed. It was created around a sequence in the full game where the party loses its car, but the main story is masked within the demo, so players will not be able to experience that.

Specifications
The demo became available on the day Final Fantasy Type-0 HD released in all regions, and it has dual audio and various language options. It is 5.27 GB in size and use the full processing memory of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The download code for the demo is available in the first print of the physical launch edition of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, and it is also available with the digital edition "for a limited time." The code will be valid until March 20, 2016, one year after the release of the European edition of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. Players can keep the demo for as long as they choose to keep it on their consoles.

While the final game is intended to run at a resolution of 1080p, the demo runs at 900p on PlayStation 4 and somewhere between 720p and 800p on Xbox One. Additionally, Shareplay is not usable. The demo is seamless, although the full game will likely have some load times for important scenes.

No data will carry over to the main game. The player can save in the demo and there might be some perks to players whose systems recognize an Episode Duscae save game for the final game.

Story
Stranded in Duscae without their car, Noctis and his party set out on foot to find a way to procure the gil needed for repairs. An opportunity presents itself as a bounty: a half-blind Behemoth named Deadeye has been terrorizing the area, and the locals have put a price of 25,000 gil on the beast's head. To kill Deadeye and earn the rewards, the party must hunt the beast down.

After locating clues from the tracks Deadeye has left behind, the party tails the beast to its habitat in the local ruins. They attempt to fell Deadeye using a diversionary strategy, but Deadeye survives and the party is forced to flee the area after a futile attempt at fighting it. Deciding to ask the locals for more clues, the party learns from the Stablemaster at Wiz Chocobo Post about a cavern filled with goblins. At its end, Noctis is granted with the power to summon Ramuh when he is weakened, which guarantees the defeat of Deadeye when the party confronts it a second time. The party sells the behemoth's horn for the gil needed to pay the mechanic Cindy, and before heading back out on the road, they promise to visit her and her father, Cid, soon.

The demo ends with a show of artwork and audio connected to the core story: Noctis learns of the fall of Insomnia from Ignis and Gladiolus, while an official broadcast reports the deaths of King Regis, Prince Noctis, and Lunafreya Nox Fleuret from Tenebrae. Regis tells his son to never back down from what he has begun, and as one who carries the royal blood and name, to always carry his head high.

Controls

 * Battle Controls
 * Camera - Right stick
 * Movement - Left stick
 * Jump - /
 * Dash (free run) - L3 button / Left stick button
 * / - Lock onto enemy when held.
 * R3 button / Right stick button - Lock onto enemy "permanently"
 * Attack - /
 * Combos - Continue holding down the attack button or tap repeatedly.
 * Shift (Warp) and Shift Break - /  – Warp towards the locked-on enemy/warp point and attack (if warping to an enemy). This consumes MP.
 * Guard - /  – Avoid normal enemy attacks at the cost of MP. It's a matter of timing. The blue light that shines when evading is the MP being spent.
 * Ability - /  – Each weapon has its own pre-set abilities. By using button and left/right sticks, the player can change the ability without stopping the attack. MP is consumed when using abilities. The player can shuffle the attacks with.
 * Summon - Hold /  when in 0 HP
 * Armiger - and  /  and  when on full MP.


 * Pressing the touchpad opens the battle menu. The battle is paused while in menu.


 * Field Controls
 * Battle Controls
 * Camera - Right stick
 * Movement - Left stick
 * Jump - /
 * Sprint - /

The controls cannot be customized in the demo, but it is planned for the final version. As this is an action game, the developers want to know what type of customization players want to see. The control scheme is the same worldwide, except the usual inversion validation and cancellation keys for Japan and some parts of Asia ( swapped with ).

Scenario
According to Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata, players get two hours of gameplay out of Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae; this can be increased to three or four hours if they really dive into it. The demo takes place in the Duscae region near the beginning of the game, which has been showcased in the E3 2014 trailers. The area includes roads, a gas station, a chocobo outpost, and wilderness with wild animals, grassy plains, and marshes and forests, as well as mountainous areas overflowing with trees and remote a cave. The demo doesn't have towns. Chocobos are in the demo but the player won't be able to ride them.

Episode Duscae limits open world aspects, but is still wide-ranging. Players can fight monsters and explore dungeons, although dungeons are optional. The passage of time (a day being 45 minutes long) and camping will be present in the demo. Night time is dangerous and different monsters lurk during in the dark. The demo focuses on battle. Noctis's Armiger is be usable.

The demo has a prototype summon system and an Eidolon, Ramuh, to show players how to tame and use one. One quest in the demo is finding phantom swords for Noctis's Armiger. The party members point out details from the environment to uncover the quests. After beating the main scenario there is an ending and more things are unlocked for the player to go back and do.

If the player uses a glitch to venture too far outside the intended demo area they get an error message and a Game Over.

Battle System
Gladiolus hosts a tutorial to give the player a handle on the combat system. When encountering an enemy, a red gauge appears when an enemy is targeting the player. The party can escape before the gauge is filled to avoid the battle. The battle background music generally doesn't play when roaming the field, but when the red gauge is activated the battle music begins.

The battle style is attacking, avoiding enemy attacks by guarding, and then attacking again. If the player runs out of MP they can recover by taking shelter in cover points. Sometimes the enemy will shine according to the timing, giving an opportunity to counterattack with parry. Players can change Noctis's equipment and use items but in the demo, the rest of the party's equipment is locked.

Equipment has "Crush," "Ravage," "Vanquish," "Counter," and "Raid" labels. Break weapons are used to strike with first, while Rush weapons can be set for continuous attacks after the initial strike. Speed, among other things, is an important factor when fighting evasive enemies. The player can change their equipment on the fly according to the enemy they are fighting.

The normal weapons are different from the "Phantom Sword" summon weapons. When starting the demo, the player has a set of regular weapons and will not find new ones, but players can obtain the phantom swords scattered around the map. There is only one co-op move in the demo as co-op moves are strong and could disrupt the balance, because they are gradually learned during the full game as the party levels up.

It is a game over when Noctis is unable to battle. If the player's HP drops to 0 they enter a "critical condition" where a red gauge is displayed, and if that gauge runs out it is a game over. Before the gauge depletes the player can use items or be healed by party members to recover from the state.

Navigation and Camping
When not in battle players can open the Travel Menu to check the map and determine their next location by changing the position of the marker on the map. The blue points indicate safe havens where the player can set up camp. Obtained items can be sold for gil. At camp, Ignis can cook and different dishes give different status buffs. In the demo Ignis chooses what to make, but in the final game the player will be able to choose the dish. The status effects weaken as the number of days elapses, until expiring and the player must set up camp again if they want to regain the buffs. Players accumulate experience by camping, and level up if they meet the requirements. It is not possible to level up outside of camp. The level cap is the maximum LV99 in the demo. If the player is knocked out in battle, they lose the accrued EXP.

After camping the game will auto-save, and it will be morning. After camping at a location once, the player can return to it at any time from the Travel Menu.

The player can also rest at a caravan at Wiz Chocobo Post, or at the gas station. If the party stays at the caravan, Ignis will not cook, but sleeping at the caravan levels the party up faster than sleeping at a camp site. Caravans cost money to stay in.

Musical Themes
An instrumental version of "Somnus" plays in the title screen.

Development
The reason for releasing the demo is because Tabata wants to let players see the portion of the game currently available, and for them to understand Final Fantasy XV is deep in development despite the long wait. The main point is not to gather feedback, but Tabata has said his staff will try to respond to any feedback on the demo. Square Enix wants to avoid releasing two Final Fantasy games simultaneously as standalone titles as not to damage each others' sales, and decided to release the demo packaged with Final Fantasy Type-0.

After the Tokyo Game Show 2014, the systems going into the demo were slightly changed as a result of fan feedback. The demo's volume was exceeded from what was originally expected and the team needed more time to implement that.

With Episode Duscae, the team avoids having players play through the main story; the concrete demo is designed around playability and enjoyment on its own. The part of the game featured in the demo is related to the main story and thus may feel unnatural to players who miss out on the larger context, but these portions were included so that players would easily be able to provide feedback on them.

The party's car was planned to be included in the demo, but it was removed. Hajime Tabata explained that he did not want the demo to deviate too far from what the fans expect from a Final Fantasy game by making it driving-focused. Originally, the plan for the demo was to let players drive in a vast world and get off every now and then to explore the vicinity. However, the developers felt it was important to show the battles, given Final Fantasy XV is the first action-oriented game in the numbered series. Thus, rather than driving long distances, exploration on foot was made the priority.

While the team was considering a driving demo, there was to be about an hour of normal gameplay. After altering the structure of the demo so players could walk freely in the field and battle monsters, the demo's length extended to approximately two hours of content.

The biggest aspect of Final Fantasy XV that is not included in the demo is magic, for developmental reasons. The combat system in the full game has magic, but the graphics are not polished yet. When choosing to polish either the magic system or the summon system for the demo, the developers chose the latter. The developers wanted to put the weather system in to the demo, but couldn't as the different types of rain weren't finished in time. Many other features, like equip-able armor, are intentionally withheld from the demo to not overwhelm players and give everyone a fair chance to explore everything about Episode Duscae and form their opinions on the base game.

The slowdown effect when weapons strike enemies was tweaked due to fan feedback.

Trivia

 * Titan can be found in the demo.
 * The bill for Deadeye the Behemoth in the demo describes it as "one-eyed, one-horned, purple, people-eating". This alludes to "", a novelty song written and performed by Sheb Wooley, which reached #1 in the Billboard pop charts in 1958.