Dans un pays isolé, dirigé par une ancienne lignée de rois, vit une civilisation moderne protégée par un ordre de guerriers et de magiciens obéissants au Cristal. Ce royaume solitaire se bat pour empêcher l'autre monde d'imposer sa loi hérétique. Le combat pour le dernier Cristal n'est que le prologue aux histoires d'une nouvelle ère.

This is a fantasy based on reality.

" Il n'y a de bien et de mal que selon l'opinion qu'on a." William Shakespeare

Controls: (PS4)
Left Stick: Movement
Right Stick: Camera
L3: Dash (Characters will auto climb obstacles in dash mode)

X: Jump
|_|: Attack (hold or mash for combo)
O: Warp
/\: Weapon Ability

L1: Guard (Consumes MP, signified by blue light)
R1: Lock on

L1+R1: Initiate Phantom Sword
R1+O: Shift Break (Ex Ability)
L1+X: Shift Avoid (Ex Ability)

Dpad Left/Right: Switch between main weapon special abilities

Unused so far:
R2:
L2:

White HP bar: The white bar shows default HP for the characters.
Red HP bar: The red bar shows HP that will recover automatically via idling/cover (unless you are on 0 HP).
Black HP bar: The black bar shows the HP that cannot be recovered (unless you use potions).

Battle Menu:
The battle menu can be opened at any time (even during a battle). This allows the player to use items, equip weapons for Noctis and the party, etc.

Guard:
Guarding works by pressing or holding down the Guard button. This lets Noctis automatically evade enemy attacks, but it consumes MP. MP, however, only gets consumed when an attack is evaded. This means one can hold down Guard while idling to avoid blindside attacks.

Idling and Cover:
When not performing any actions, Noctis's HP and MP recover at a slow rate. HP and MP will recover while the player is standing still, moving, dashing, or even holding down guard.


If Noctis is really struggling though, he can take cover behind objects (rocks, trees etc) and this will highly speed up HP and MP recovery. The cover mode can be started by walking up to a rock, and pressing the L1 (guard) button. Also, the HP and MP will recover at a similar rate when Noctis is warped to a high location and out of enemies' range.

Warp:
Warping involves locking on to enemies or terrain based points and then warping to them via the Circle button. Warping costs 25 MP per warp. The examples of warps can be seen below:


There is also another type of warp that can be performed when you don't have any target selected. This short warp lets you travel a small distance in front quickly. This can be useful to reach an ally that is in critical condition, or to just get away from a group of enemies.

Attack:
Pressing the attack button lets Noctis execute a single sword strike. Holding down the button or pressing the button multiple times will execute a basic combo. You can also jump and press attack to perform aerial attacks.

When enemies are in a weaker state, attacks start doing more damage (critical hits).

Weapons:
Noctis being a weapon summoner, the game has lots of weapons that can be obtained and set up in menu to perform various actions. These are the weapons available in the demo that we know so far - Avenger, Blood Sword, Partisan, Wyvern Spear and Zweihander. Most of these weapon have special abilities and support abilities. For example, Blood Sword comes with HP drain special ability, along with MP Recovery Attack++ and Automatic Recovery+ support abilities.

In the demo, you can set different weapons for: Break, Rush, Slash, Counter and Raid. The weapons in this game change automatically. So, if you press the Attack button, depending on factors, a suitable weapon will get used.

BREAK: An enemy stance breaking first strike. The Break weapon gets automatically used when Noctis starts a combo. In the video, the player has Avenger set as the Break weapon. Avenger has no abilities, but is a quick weapon and has balanced stats.

RUSH: Rapid fire strikes in the middle of the combo. You can continue your Rush weapon hits indefinitely until your enemy reaches low enough health to be finished off with a finisher (Slash). The player in the video has the Blood Sword set as the Rush weapon. It has the special ability of HP drain (gif below shows it in action).

SLASH: The last hit of the combo, which deals a significant amount of damage. When the enemy reaches low enough HP that it can be killed in one hit, then your Slash Weapon will get used. The player has the Partizan set as the Slash weapon. Partizan has Heavy Thrust as the special ability (shown in gif below). Tabata highly recommends using heavy weapons as the finisher, like the Partizan. Heavy weapon on Finishers will stagger even slightly larger enemies.

COUNTER: The weapon set here will get used when Noctis counterattacks. This can be after successfully evading an enemy attack with Guard and pressing Attack right after. Noctis can also counterattack after successful parries. The player has the Wyvern Sword set as the Counter weapon, which has Jump as the special ability (show in gif below).

RAID: The weapon set here will get used when the player jumps and presses attack in mid air. The player has the Zweihander set as the Raid weapon, which has the special ability called Tempest (see gif below). Tabata clarified that Aerial Attacks are moved to the last part of development since they are among the easiest so the demo wont include too much aerial combat.

Different weapons have different speeds, weight, range etc, and so it is important to think about which weapon works better where.

Parries and Co-op Attacks:
Some enemy attacks can be parried and countered. In the gif below, the UI element that shows a small arc with three lines signifies that an attack can be parried. The guard button (L1) is used to initiate the parry, and then the Attack button (Square) has to be timed when the counter prompt comes up.

Parries can also chain into Co-Op Attacks. Notice that Square gets pressed twice, first to initiate Prompto's/Ignis's hit, and then for Noctis's swipe.

The co op attacks can only be performed if an ally character is close by when you parry an enemy. Tabata has shared that the co-op moves are really strong and that there is only one co-op move in the demo. It disrupts the balance because they are gradually learned through growth.

Phantom Sword:
This is a special ability that Noctis can activate at max MP with the press of L1+R1. This ability allows Noctis to summon all his Phantom Sword weapons at the same time. When activated, MP starts depleting at a constant rate until it reaches 0. During this time, all abilities cost 0 MP, so they can be spammed.

Comment peuvent-ils avoir de si beaux graphismes dans un monde aussi ouvert et dire ensuite "On n'est qu'à 70% ou 80% de la qualité graphique recherchée" ?