Want the FFXIII demo early? It’ll cost you!

As far as hard-to-get demos are concerned, this one isn’t really up there with the manufacturer-specific releases for titles like Gran Turismo, but it does require the purchase of a rather expensive Blu-ray special edition of Final Fantasy – Advent Children. We’ve decided to cover the trial, despite it being a few months old already.

Packaging
Upon opening the seal you are instantly greeted by a loose piece of card (all too common on Japanese CD and DVD releases), which serves no purpose whatsoever. Within the plastic sleeve of the pack are separate cases for the Advent Children movie and the coveted FFXIII trial version, the latter featuring a cover image of Lightning sitting in a chair, one leg over the other. Oddly enough, the movie case’s cover bears the same design as the sleeve, only with the addition of Sephiroth in the background. We assume this is to give a 3d effect when inserted into the sleeve.

The disks themselves were neatly printed: another image of Lightning on the trial disk and a smattering of black feathers on the movie disk. The cover for the trial disk serves as a guide booklet (only 10 pages) for the game, offering basic information on control and combat. The movie disk’s cover only has two pages with information on the disk’s contents, as one might expect, such as cast and staff information. It does, however, come with a point card for use in the Square Enix member’s section (Japan only).

Final Fantasy XII Trial
Having loaded the trial version, you are presented with a simple menu allowing the selection of either the game or trailers. The trailers are for additional games and content from the developer, like Versus and Agito. But, since this article is focusing on the trial only, we will jump straight in.

When the trial begins, a beautifully rendered introduction runs and introduces the first two characters and their environment. Following that you are thrown directly into battle with a boss of sorts, but no worries here, this boss isn’t all that tough, it’s just being used to introduce the player to the menu and combat system.

The initial three options are Attack, Black magic (offensive), and White magic (defensive), which all lead to virtually the same menu. The exception is White magic, which you MUST select in order to use Cure, since it is normally disabled in both Attack and Black magic menus.

Additionally, a skill charge bar allows you to string together combinations: the number of skills used depends on your power level, but for the most part the trial allows just three. Triangle removes a skill from the chain, while the execute button executes a combo even if the bar is not full. (Note that being mindful of your power is crucial to maintaining a high ranking, as setting three skills and killing an enemy with just one will not only waste the others but will also count against you.)

Here is a translation of the menu for those who do not understand Japanese.

And below we’ve taken some high resolution shots from both cutscenes and in-game. Enjoy!