Final Fantasy XV Details On The Battle System, Exploration, And The Demo

While we got plenty of new details on Final Fantasy XV from Square Enix’s Jump Festa 2015 presentation, this week’s issue of Famitsu magazine provides us with even more on the game’s town, battle system, and more. [Thanks, Hokanko-Alt]

The following details come from Square Enix’s staff working on Luminous Studio:

• The Luminous Engine is currently in its 1.40 version. The Final Fantasy XV demo will use 1.50, and the full release is expected to run on the 2.0 version.

• As far as polygon counts go, there are roughly 5 million polys per frame, up to 100,000 per character, and 20,000 for the inner parts of the hair (about five times more when compared to the previous generation).

• There are about 600 bones for the characters, about 10-12 times more than the previous generation.  [Note: Bones help govern how flexible a character can be during animation.]

• The engine’s capacity for textures has been greatly increased.

• Fights against giant enemies are the same as battles against regular enemies, but there will be special co-op moves and actions for some of the fights against big enemies.

• While it’s not a direct copy, the town of Lestarme [note: not “Lestarg,” as previously stated by Japanese sources] is based off the Bahamas islands.

• Besides fishing, there will be various other mini-games as well.

• You won’t get to ride the ropeway in Lestarme for now, but they might make it possible if they have enough time to add it.

Next, are details from Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata:

• Square Enix would like you to be able to “feel” the world of Final Fantasy XV not just from its appearance, but also from the characters.

• You can go shopping and stay in hotels in towns.

• The NPCs in towns are controlled by AI, and can also talk.

• Lestarme is set to be the main town for the first half of the game.

• Cindy will appear in different places. She doesn’t have much to do with the story, but she’ll take care of you as a mechanic.

• You’ll need to fight Summoned Beasts before being able to summon them. Summoned Beasts represent the power of the stars, and only Noctis will get to summon them.

• You can hold down a button to do combos, but cooperative moves with party members will involve timing your button presses.

• Parries will require you to time enemy attacks, an element added for advanced players.

• Magic doesn’t use up MP, but it’s also completely different from Final Fantasy VIII’s “Draw” system.

• Special actions such as dodging and warping is what uses MP.

• You can equip several weapons at once, with one being the main weapon. The main weapon is what will have its corresponding ability, but you’ll also get to change the main weapon in the midst of combat.

• Combos are determined by which weapons you have equipped.

• Abilities aren’t part of their own weapon categories, but rather part of individual weapons. There are weapons that don’t have any abilities as well. Think of it as something similar to the Captain Tsubasa 5 game they made a long time ago.

• Dungeons and suspicious areas that have rare weapons might have some hack-and-slash elements to them. The Phantom Swords that float in the air is also a specially acquired weapon.

• The demo is expected to have the game’s full battle system.

• The systems that will be in the demo have seen a slight change after feedback from Tokyo Game Show, including the option of allowing players to walk, battle, and camp, instead of just driving around for the most part.

• Feedback also influenced a mountainous area where a Behemoth can be seen walking around.

• There will be rentable Chocobos in the full version of the game.

• Camps can only be set at safe areas, so you’ll need to find those while exploring. Ignis will do the cooking.

• Buying ingredients from town will result in an extra bonus for tasty food. Ingredients can also be acquired from monsters found in the wild.

Final Fantasy XV is in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.