I enjoyed the Platinum demo for what it was but marketing wise it was an awful move, it's not representative of the game at all and seems to target the kind of players that probably don't even know the demo exists and will never play it, rather than the ones who do. It is specially bad for a majority of the players who will finish the demo when it asks you if you want to finish, as you'll experience even less than you should
Here's how the Platinum demo can be described as misrepresenting the game:
- Extremely linear. There may be one or two paths to collect additional gems but that's all there is in them. You simply run from point A to point B and can even do so without engaging in neither the crystal collecting (which also isn't in the game) nor fighting any of the enemies. Obviously the game is nothing like this.
- The demo's combat is not the game's combat, it is even simpler than when you first begin the full game. The demo teaches that square defends, but doesn't tell you that in the real thing it requires and costs MP. In fact, I don't think a lot of people realize that the system behind this somewhat resembles, in theory, the Health-regain in Bloodborne, except with MP instead of HP here. For all intents and purposes, dodging (as well warping) equates to being hit, except it's your MP bar that gets hit and you'll want to land attacks with heavy weapons to recover it. It does tell you that you can't block/dodge every move but strangely enough, as far as I could tell, that's only true (in the demo) for the final boss. It makes you use weapons (the "kid weapons") that are not in the game. It makes magic look clunkier and slower due to trying to make it a playful twist (fireworks and stuff), whereas real magic in the game can be used quicker and is more effective. Even after reaching the Iron Giant, it takes too long to introduce things like warping, making it look as if they wanted players to finish the fight (and demo) before more mechanics were introduced (*more on this later). Furthermore, it hides the possibility of fighting the Iron Giant (this time with his actual normal health instead of super nerfed) again with more mechanics/weapons by showing you the end before you reach the respawn plate.
In the worst case scenario, your average joe may very well play this demo from start to finish by thinking that the game:
- is very linear.
- combat is hold square to defend and circle to attack, with no real dangers to speak of to prevent this. They won't know about warping, ranged MP-weapons, the limitations of dodging/defending, Techniques/skills, linked attacks, etc. Partially because there is no party in this demo and you fight alone
- there is no point to magic or MP (that is if they even notice there's a MP bar at all)
*Continuing from that point, it seemed the idea was to present something as simple and accessible as possible that wouldn't turn away people that like things simple and drop games once something they don't understand is introduced. Even then it somehow doesn't work (maybe because the way they did it was a bit "too quirky"?) because I know one person (who's not a FF fan, and someone who loved Witcher 3) that tried the demo and stopped playing because he "didn't understand anything about it". These people were the target demographic... So it was made too simple for core gamers and too complicated for the casuals. If that's not a marketing fail, I don't know what is.
Here's some footage I recorded of the "hidden" iron giant fight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjK1ZhFlpa0
It's still simplified compared to the final game (and I didn't even use armitage, which is available here), but still a better representation of the combat than what most demo players experienced.
And there's higher level stuff (not recorded by me) from the ED demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WuqGTC6Z14
A new Episode Duscae version updated with the changes made to the game in the last year could go a long way to patch some of the damage done by the Platinum demo (or maybe it's irreversible, I don't know). Of course it's easier said than done, as now that we're in the final months the team is surely on crunch mode... doubt there's staff available to update it. but SE should get someone on it.
