I hope you’re ready for Soul Sacrifice — the demo will be available this afternoon on PSN!

Your first reaction to the demo might be, “Holy moly, this is a LOT of demo!” …And you’d be right! The entire first chapter of the full game is included, all of which is playable with up to three other friends via online or ad-hoc multiplayer. Inafune-san made it a special point for the demo to be quite substantial, as you can read in his comments below:

“The number one reason for the Soul Sacrifice demo to have a lot of content was to show the users the full attraction of Soul Sacrifice. We knew that cutting out a small section of the game and saying, ‘Isn’t this part fun?’ would not show the users the full potential of the game. We figured that it wouldn’t make sense if the users could not have the ‘I want to play more’ feeling.

“So, we decided we want to provide, ‘at the very least,’ this amount of the game for the users. That is why, if you compare it to a standard demo, this became such a substantial piece. But we are confident that this will not become something negative where the users will feel like, ‘We played enough.’ After we released the demo version in Japan we received many voices, saying ‘[I] want to play more’ and ‘I want to get more hooked on this game.’ That is why we believe making this demo with this amount of volume and detail was a success.”

Soul Sacrifice is a long adventure, with dozens of hours of gameplay. The demo is not only a great way to sample the full experience, but also to let you get a head start on that adventure before the game releases. To that end — this part is important, pay attention! — the save data will carry over to the full game! Not only that, if you do carry over demo save data to the full game, you will receive an exclusive bonus item: “Spirits’ Heart”! It summons a powerful stone golem that will fight for you!

Trying the demo and carrying over your save data is the ONLY way to get “Spirits’ Heart,” so why not give it a shot if you’re already interested in the game?

The Soul Sacrifice demo offers a single player mode AND a multi-player mode. Multi-player can be played via both ad-hoc and online, but please be aware that multi-player and all online features for the demo will be terminated and will no longer be available on April 30th, 2013. After this date, you will still be able to play the demo offline and ad-hoc. Of course, that’s not a problem, since you’ll all be picking up the full game when it launches on April 30th, right? *wink*

Don’t forget to pre-order! Not only do you get three exclusive Magic Offerings and two exclusive costumes, but you’ll also get the Japanese voice-over audio pack for free!