Demos out!! Catherine & Students of the Round on XBL Marketplace

[LordMatrix]

1st impressions of Students of the Round:

You start off with a basic battle against a ghastly creature. Your choices are Attack, Guard, Items & Spell. Battles take place in a first person view. Just like an old school jrpg. After the battle you discover you are in a castle. Movement is controlled using the left thumbstick & also takes place in first person view.

After doing a little searching around the dungeon you run into a man with long white hair that resembles a knight. He ends up joining your party and soon after you get into another battle with even more ghastly creatures & a large stone creature. You can select which enemy to attack by moving the left thumbstick left or right. At this point you have 3 party members: A girl in a hood, a long-haired male knight & a purple haired girl that I imagine is a mage. Seemed to be some kind of mini boss fight.

After it was all over the stone-like creature went nuts and shattered into pieces it seemed. Thats basically where my demo ended...however, it had me pick one of two choices right after the fight and idk if that cut my demo short or not since I can`t understand japanese. Game seemed fairly basic but the art style and perhaps with a bit more understanding the story as well. To hard to gauge whether the gameplay is just easy or if this was a very early battle helping you get used to the basics. After you finish the demo you make a character that can then be used in the full retail game. choosing between 3 different male/female variations and adjust their stats to your liking. Wish more games did things like this.

Edit: I was wrong...after you make your character you get transfered to a different dungeon on a grassy plains. Imediately go into a battle against mice-like vermin. You now also have a new option available in battle; Escape. You are also fighting by yourself this time. After the battle a mysterious blue-haired girl girl appears. Wearing what looks to be a maids outfit. The young girl takes you to a village and you come across a young man who seems to be yelling at an elder.

The girl then talks to the elder briefly and I am not sure exactly what happens here...but you talk with the elder and the girl and earn some item of some sort. You then transport back to another grassy plains dungeon and run into that young man who was arguing with the elder earlier. He is being attacked by some flying insects. He joins up with you and you go into battle. After the fight you talk to the young man who seems grateful for your help. You then go off a few yards and coem across an elven mage. It appears that while having conversations with certain people, you get dialog options that can raise or lower what appears to be their stamina gauge.

You are now moving through an old wooden fort. You come across a large rat king and his minions. My demo ended here though because I died in battle and couldn`t figure out how to refill mana.

As of right now both Catherine and students of the Round are both still on my radar and were fun to try out.