It’s not something I found in Next Fest, but if we’re talking demos, Trails in the Sky is something I’ve been having fun playing recently. The demo is surprisingly long too.
I love those demo’s, but it’s on purpose! They want you to play enough so you get hooked enough to want to buy it once it ends. A few hours into an rpg is nothing, but once you invested that much, there’s probably a higher chance you buy it to continue playing.
But only relatively recently have demos started allowing you to play through a long demo and allow you to use that save and continue playing the full game if you purchase it. They wouldn’t be that long if that wasn’t an option since you dont want people to get too far only to make them start over.
I feel like demos have become longer recently than they used to be. It used to be that you could only get through the equivalent of a level or two, now it’s more like they last up to 2 hours - the same period you might play and steam refund a game to demo it that way.
I’m glad it has a demo because I know a lot of people don’t enjoy characters like that; there’s some great heartfelt conversations once you get to know the characters, but you have to be able to stand 20+ narmy and overly polite banter sequences to get to the moments where each of them surprises you. If you get that far, you usually get invested.
I REALLY like what they’ve done with the combat in this one. Even on normal, I was losing early boss fights for playing without consideration and using nothing but the enemy’s elemental weakness. I just finished Chapter 1, and I especially liked having moments where half the party was dead, and attacking was actually a good option to give my team a moment to revive each other, thanks to the stun/delay systems.
I also really enjoy the combat. I like how you can chain the quick combat into the turn-based combat to start with an advantage by stunning enemies. And since you want to abuse weaknesses in turn-based combat, neither forms of combat overshadow or weaken the other despite quick combat being inherently easier and safer. It feels very fluid and well designed, to the point where I was surprised to learn quick combat wasn’t a thing in the original game.
So far the only thing I don’t enjoy is missions where you need to protect people. Like one of the first few missions where you need to protect the kids as you fight off the group of cats, I’ve lost many a battle purely because of bad RNG where they just all beat up the kid three turns in a row and there’s nothing I can do about it. And since you can’t use quick combat to get an advantage on story encounters like that, it really is all down to luck. And good fucking luck if you run into an enemy that explodes on death later down the line.
Admittedly I’m (stupidly) playing on the hardest difficulty despite not being great at turned-based combat, so that’s probably mostly a me issue lol.
For some of the cases where enemies are getting multiple turns in a row, using an S-Break (RT+D-pad) can be a good way to get yourself back on positive ground. If you get a turn, it also helps to give defensive buffs to the VIP before the enemy attacks them.
That said, I have heard that while Nightmare difficulty poses a great challenge to some masochists and optimizers, it’s not a difficulty level the developers really balanced around.
It’s not something I found in Next Fest, but if we’re talking demos, Trails in the Sky is something I’ve been having fun playing recently. The demo is surprisingly long too.
I love those demo’s, but it’s on purpose! They want you to play enough so you get hooked enough to want to buy it once it ends. A few hours into an rpg is nothing, but once you invested that much, there’s probably a higher chance you buy it to continue playing.
That’s literally the entire purpose of a demo
But only relatively recently have demos started allowing you to play through a long demo and allow you to use that save and continue playing the full game if you purchase it. They wouldn’t be that long if that wasn’t an option since you dont want people to get too far only to make them start over.
I feel like demos have become longer recently than they used to be. It used to be that you could only get through the equivalent of a level or two, now it’s more like they last up to 2 hours - the same period you might play and steam refund a game to demo it that way.
Seems like a very healthy development in gaming.
I’m glad it has a demo because I know a lot of people don’t enjoy characters like that; there’s some great heartfelt conversations once you get to know the characters, but you have to be able to stand 20+ narmy and overly polite banter sequences to get to the moments where each of them surprises you. If you get that far, you usually get invested.
I REALLY like what they’ve done with the combat in this one. Even on normal, I was losing early boss fights for playing without consideration and using nothing but the enemy’s elemental weakness. I just finished Chapter 1, and I especially liked having moments where half the party was dead, and attacking was actually a good option to give my team a moment to revive each other, thanks to the stun/delay systems.
I also really enjoy the combat. I like how you can chain the quick combat into the turn-based combat to start with an advantage by stunning enemies. And since you want to abuse weaknesses in turn-based combat, neither forms of combat overshadow or weaken the other despite quick combat being inherently easier and safer. It feels very fluid and well designed, to the point where I was surprised to learn quick combat wasn’t a thing in the original game.
So far the only thing I don’t enjoy is missions where you need to protect people. Like one of the first few missions where you need to protect the kids as you fight off the group of cats, I’ve lost many a battle purely because of bad RNG where they just all beat up the kid three turns in a row and there’s nothing I can do about it. And since you can’t use quick combat to get an advantage on story encounters like that, it really is all down to luck. And good fucking luck if you run into an enemy that explodes on death later down the line.
Admittedly I’m (stupidly) playing on the hardest difficulty despite not being great at turned-based combat, so that’s probably mostly a me issue lol.
For some of the cases where enemies are getting multiple turns in a row, using an S-Break (RT+D-pad) can be a good way to get yourself back on positive ground. If you get a turn, it also helps to give defensive buffs to the VIP before the enemy attacks them.
That said, I have heard that while Nightmare difficulty poses a great challenge to some masochists and optimizers, it’s not a difficulty level the developers really balanced around.