Dispatches From E3: Final Fantasy XV

I went to E3 and got to play some games so I figured I'd share some first impressions.

Final Fantasy XV was available to play at E3. The demo was fairly short and featured a boss fight. The demo did not delve into story or characterization. Essentially players ran a character down a hallway into an open area where a boss was waiting. Then proceeded run away from said boss immediately followed by a fight with the boss, Titan.

The game looks amazing and the combat outside of the boss fight was pleasant. There were some problems witht the camera during fights, though and the boss fight shown in the demo was not that great. The fight consisted of learning a pattern of two Quick Time Events (QTE)  followed by an evasive technique once the pattern is learned it is repeated until a menu tip tells players the correct spell to use to disable the boss at which point the fight ends.

Overall the demo did not seem to play to the potential strengths of Final Fantasy XV so I’d advise withholding judgement until I get hands on a bigger piece of the game.

For Honor  was playable on the floor of E3. Announced at E3 2015 For Honor  is a Third Person action game based in a Fantasy universe where Medieval Knights, Samurai of Feudal Japan, and Vikings have been brought together and forced, or perhaps tricked, into fighting each other.

The Demo on the show floor is of tutorial for the single player campaign.

The tutorial does a fairly good job of introducing players to the superb combat of the Game. Players fight two enemy types, which could be classified as Grunts and Elites. Grunts are basically cannon fodder; dangerous only in large numbers if the player character is not moving or preoccupied with something else like fighting an Elite.

Players defend themselves from these Elite enemies by holding the left trigger and pointing the right stick in one of three directions Up, left or right. The three directions the stick can point correspond to three stances that the player character holde to both defend himself/herself and attack from. On defense players want to match their opponent and on attack they want to avoid the enemy’s defense. The whole process is similar to the often overlooked Bushido Blade except much more fluid and somewhat more forgiving in terms of the amount of damage players and enemies take.

Reading words on a page really can not do this combat system justice. It is easy to grasp but difficult to master, it is fast yet tactical, it is innovative and fluid, and finally a lot of fun. For Honor is my standout pick from my first day at E3 this year. This may be due in part to the fact that it was the only completely new game that I played today but my assertion stands.