For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak, from developers Nihon Falcom. This is the most recent update of the DEMO. i don't know when it was updated, but it did update before i played it.
I have a couple of "The Legends Of..." games in my backlog that i haven't played and i know that the series has been going for a long time. So when a new game comes out, there's always the question if the new game can stand alone like a Final Fantasy game or if some knowledge is needed of previous entries.
I came away from this demo for The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak not any clearer. the is nothing saying it's a demo, nothing saying how long it is or if any changes were made, nor does it say at any point in this video if our save data will carry over. on the #PlayStation Store page it does say that save data will carry over to the final game, but i couldn't find a pre-order page for it or any release date for it on the page. There is a possibility that at the end of the demo we'll get this information, but i don't understand why it's not available from the start of the demo.
It felt like this really was the start of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak. it's an interesting start that's full of story. it's about 18 minutes before we take control of a character. But after the hour i had with the demo, i don't feel like the story has done enough to get it's hooks in me. so far, most of the focus has been on a stolen item.
What i did find interesting about The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak was it's combat mechanics. tho it was poorly introduced to us via a dense sheet on the screen, at a basic level it's manageable. The tutorials in the game are lazy and suck. there characters have phones and one of them has a school background. there were much better ways to teach the combat, but instead we get a memo on screen and that's it. there are a few things about this demo that feel cheap or that it's not a big budget title, the most glaring was that the voices don't match the lip movements or that it's not fully voiced.
It's possible the combat is something the series has done and not new. but for me i found it interesting. we're introduced to two different styles. the first style is the most complicated but also the most familiar to RPG players. there's a time line and actions we can do to attack enemies. some of them can be hit physically, whilst others need "magic" esque attacks. The second style is more akin to Devil May Cry or God of War in that you can just attack enemies on the map. this attack style is best suited for weaker enemies as whilst it's faster, it deals less damage. but what was truly interesting was how you can combine them both. a simple example i did was taking out the weaker enemies with the second style and then going into the first style to defeat the more dangerous ones. but there's another the game introduces us to where you can stun enemies in the second style, activate the first style and that'll do damage to them but as they're stunned you also get first attack.
so the demo for The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak is good and bad. i would still recommend checking it out, but with it's slow pace i'd suggest playing longer than an hour and maybe up to the end of the demo before deciding if it's something you want to continue when the game comes out.