Demo Impressions Thread

So, I beat the demo and defeated the dragon at the oasis and was awarded all the bonuses for all the upcoming retail release. However, I street passed using Starbucks network and I couldn't import any of those characters to help me build my city... which was a huge bummer.

@l4wd0g: You have to Streetpass with someone who has played the Bravely Default demo. If you didn't get any new people to help rebuild the village, I can only assume that the people you got through the Starbucks Nintendo Zone thing don't have Streetpass data for the demo.

If you want help rebuilding the town and you're finished most of the quests, go talk to all the citizens of Ancheim again. One of them offers to help, and you get a free villager from that. So at the very least, you'll have 2 (yourself and the free one). If you want, earlier in this thread people explain how you can cheese it, but it's really not necessary. Even 2 villagers dramatically cuts down a lot of the rebuild times.

Also, there is a little bit more to the demo after you beat the dragon at the oasis, so feel free to load up your save again and talk to the king or mayor or whoever that guy is.

@bisonhero: You press left on the..circle pad I believe, or the other thing, to see enemy family and weaknesses (also press right to watch buffs and things on your characters). It also shows the enemy's HP but only on enemies you've examined. That is, even if you've already examined an enemy type it will only show you their weakness and family, not their HP, unless you examine them again, and if there are multiple enemies of the same type you still only see the hp of the one you examined. It kinda sucks, but maybe there's another, more powerful, spell later.

I couldn't tell you about those Hermes Sandals specifically or whether or not they are useful, but if you don't know what a specific stat does for you , you can go into the "Equip" menu screen. On the bottom screen is a bunch of your different stats and pressing any one of them will tell you about them. While Evasion predictably only handles being able to evade attacks and enemy hit count*, it says that Agility affects physical attack evasion, hit count, speed, as well as first strike rate. Probably pretty useful to have as much as that on a Ninja as you can get but I dunno, I only played a bit of the demo and am saving myself for the full game.

*not sure what that actually means, if it reduces the number of times an enemy will strike you or only the number of times they hit.

@jacksukeru: Ah ok, that's how you see their weaknesses. Now that you say that, I think I remember some one-time tooltip telling me about that. I still thinks it's weird how you move around the world with the circle pad, but a bunch of the menu stuff is d-pad only. Not being able to see any indication of HP bar is kind of a pain, but I guess it makes boss fights more tense.

And yeah, I probably should've read the Agility tooltip instead of assuming. Now that I realize how many things Agility affects, I guess it makes more sense that a ~10 point bump might be significant.

@bisonhero: To be perfectly clear when you "Examine" an enemy it lists their HP and from then on you can check their HP (both in number form and as a bar) on the same screen as their weaknesses and other stuff, the problem is that this only applies to that one enemy for that one battle. It makes it so, if you were to fight groups of 3 or more enemies every battle, using Examine on every one of them would be a huge waste of turns. Instead, you sort of have to keep in mind how much HP an enemy starts with (I sort of wish it would at least keep listing their max HP) and how much damage you've done to which enemies.

The good news is that, because of the nature of bosses often being a single enemy, it's easy to just start bossfights with an "Examine" and be able to check their HP level for the rest of the encounter. It's certainly nice to know when you can just Brave everyone and burst damage their last few hundred HP down :)

So is there anyway to delete your progress in the demo and start over? I completed the demo once, but didn't take advantage of the villager exploit and I want that extra boost for when I start the retail version.

Downloaded the demo a couple days ago and have put what free time I have left of college break into clearing it. I really liked what I saw.

I think the demo played things right with its standalone ministory and the small benefits to the main game for accomplishing things in it. That early-game boost seems like it'll save a little grinding and gold, so I'm cool with how they handled it. The characters seem pretty standard for RPG fare, but maybe that's just because of how light the demo story was.

I like the class designs and the wordplay in the names of characters and skills. The Swordmaster skills seem to derive their names from various proverbs, for example, so it feels like recent Dragon Quest games but not as blatantly "HEY LOOK AT THIS PUN."

On the topic of the classes, I really liked the selection available in the demo but there were ones I've heard about I really want to try out. I looked up what this game's summons are like and they have a really neat aesthetic to them. Swordmaster and Valkyrie appealed to me most out of the ones in the demo, though, and Edea's Jump did most of the work against the last two bosses.

I think the most telling factor of demo success is that, though I'm done with it I still want to keep playing it. There's nothing else I can do with it now - everyone is max level and mastered every job, and Norende is fully restored - but I still feel like there's so much left and I really want to get back to this game. The full release can't come soon enough for me.

I haven't been this excited for a Final Fantasy game in a long time.

Is it not possible to just use one of the other save files? The demo has three slots.

@hailinel: It doesn't let you pick the other slots. At least not when I tried.

Ah. I hadn't tried, either. If that's the case, then never mind.

Just go delete the save data off the 3DS, should be an option in the settings menu of the 3DS.

Been playing with the demo for a while now and been enjoying it. It was a tough start since it start you at a low level and was doing some advice techniques too quickly (Been watching let plays of people playing the full game). I instead just use brave points right from the start of battle and have my ninjas attack with their dual wield ability. As I level up I was able to switch classes and start trying them out now that I wasn't dying too quickly from the start. It really awesome to use different class skills in other classes. Really liking my swordmen with ninja skill combo and having a mage with both white and black magic is awesome.

Anyone have an answer for this cause I'm wondering too.

@someguyjohnson: I resolved to just keep the demo installed until I get the game. No idea if that's necessary.

Sounds like Brad is playing the game, based on the Demon Souls videos. Said it seems cool, but some things are "ehhhhhh"...wonder what he's referring to. Regardless I hope we get a quick look of it, though I imagine the comments will be filled with people yelling at him for not playing the game right.