SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Your history and experience with video games may very well be defined by the acronyms you hold near and dear. All-caps letter slams like WASD, LFG, GLHF, QTE, and HPB represent a lot for certain gaming genres or eras (and probably read like gobbledygook to outsiders), but in the console gaming space, one acronym may very well count as the longest lasting of them all: ATB.

That stands for the Active-Time Battle system from Final Fantasy, which debuted in its fifth game and has remained a constant in a series that otherwise revels in full memory-slate wipes with its every sequel. Sure, the games share constants like Chocobos, mechanics named Cid, and elemental magic mixed with giant-monster summons, but the RPG series is probably best known for, and identified by, its meter-charging twist on turn-based combat.

The upcoming release of Final Fantasy XV is interesting in a lot of ways, from its enormity to its car-cruising "band of bros" premise. But after being given full room to roam in the game's entire first chapter, the largest takeaway by far is its battle-system shift. Forget the teases and dances with real-time active combat in games like FFXIII; Square Enix has finally, truly pushed its golden child into the real-time combat realm.

What the publisher hasn't yet done, however, is instill confidence in early players that this move is the right one.

Pushing a car into Final Fantasy's biggest world yet









Square Enix













Our session began with what appeared to be the cold open that players will encounter when launching the game's first chapter, though Square Enix didn't confirm whether the game will be introduced by one of the series' usual cinematic sequences. We imagine it will, because the opening was a starkly modest setup, seen in the game's released trailers thus far: FFXV protagonist Noctis and his three male friends pushing their sleek black car along a desert highway in search of a mechanic. Lucky for Noctis, he and his royalty-entourage buddies soon stumble upon a gas station outpost, complete with a mechanic-slash-diner owner named Cid. His helpful daughter Cindy asks for some monster-killing favors in exchange for fixing our car, and thus our quest begins.

In good news, I covered a ton of ground in my two-hour session, which mostly left me hungry to go back and see all of the content I skipped. The opening quests had me running toward mountains and abandoned factories surrounding that gas station, and after repairs were done, my four-man party drove through and past a giant mountainous pass. I had to run to a few specific points in that landmass to complete some required quests, but it wasn't hard to see monsters and other cool-looking content in the distance, out of the way from my main-quest requirements. Along the way, I encountered three "towns" replete with shops and restaurants, all of which were full of bounty request boards that would pay out for any adventurers who found and destroyed particular monster requirements.

I very quickly felt overwhelmed by the variety in world geometry, buildings, structures, and textures in what might seem like an ill-fitting comparison. Square Enix's starting zone looked more awe-inspiring and required more draw-distance horsepower out of the preview build's PC than anything Bethesda had mustered in last year's Fallout 4. You may argue that those series target different kinds of players, but if Final Fantasy is really taking this big of an open-world turn, then the comparison is fair game. I criticized the last Fallout's copy-paste aesthetic, which made its enormity feel hollow. By contrast, this is what an incredible open-world RPG should look like. As a result, I was charmed.

Devil may cry... because of a mixed battle system

Where Final Fantasy XV left me wanting, however, was in its combat. The event began with a producer announcing that the game's combat system was "finalized" and "fluid and easily accessible," but by the end of my demo, I had been assured multiple times that certain fighting-system elements were still being "polished" and ironed out.

Final Fantasy XV's battle system splits the difference between a Kingdom Hearts-styled active-ish battle system and the more active slash-and-dodge systems found in games like Devil May Cry. Meters charge over the span of a battle to enable Noctis' super attacks, along with assist moves from other members of your party, but most of the beat-by-beat action comes in the form of targeting foes, running up to them, laying down attacks, and attempting to parry and dodge their responses in real time.

Dodging and parrying felt like the worst of both worlds. I was somewhat in control, as opposed to being at the mercy of character stats and dice-roll results, but my ability to dodge and parry was very stilted and hinged upon some lousy timing issues with both maneuvers. Try as I might, I never found a way to consistently parry my foes' attacks, and I had a long enough session to feel like this was more than a "get used to it with practice" problem.

You cannot really manage your other three compatriots' actions in battle, let alone take control of them. That sucks, because they will get knocked down, at which point any further damage they take will reduce their maximum HP. Managing stupid teammates' AI mistakes felt incredibly last-gen to me, and unless Square Enix is about to surprise-unveil a total redo of its squadmate system, I imagine that complaint will carry over to the final game.

In spite of those complaints, some encounters still managed to sing. After the demo's third town, I was forced to hop out of my car and take on the game's first veritable "dungeon," which was actually a run through some grassy paths just off the game's highway to find and tear through waves of enemy forces that had overtaken a royal outpost (much to our hero Prince Noctis' chagrin). This mission's pace and sense of scale felt pretty exciting, and my ability to insta-warp toward foes or towering lookout points helped me feel supernaturally powerful.

This was also a good scene for me to try out the game's magic-synthesis system, which allows players to take magical energies gathered in the game and split them up into mixes of different elements to create new twists on standard spells. More electricity in a standard fireball would allow it to chain the attack to hit other nearby enemies, for example, while other boosts added team healing and slow-down effects to attacks. I didn't get a good tutorial or explainer for this magic-synthesis system, but I am hopeful that its final version enables a lot of player-preference customization so gamers can make the game feel the way they want it to feel.

Listing image by Square Enix