 DEMO REVIEW/WALKTHROUGH If you purchase Brave Fencer Musashi you will get a Demo/Trial Version of Final Fantasy VIII entitled "Escape From Dollet." This game is meant to be a tiny taste of the Final Fantasy VIII experience, and man is it a mouthful. According to the Demo, Final Fantasy VIII supports the Dual Shock Controller and the Vibration Function. The first screen you see gives you some brief background information about the events transpiring. The Dollet Dukedom,at war with the Galbadia Army have requested 'Garden' to dispatch 'SeeD. The world renowned special team 'SeeD' The high speed vessel on which they ride are about to land on Dollet Dukedom We then are introduced to Final Fantasy VIII's Introductory cinema. Seven Jets (What is it with the number *seven* that everybody likes hmm...) fly across a full moon. This image becomes rippled in a pool of water that fades to group of sea going attack vessels. The wind blows in Squall's hair as he rides atop one of these black-iron Giger-esqe attack ships. Squall places a transparancy over an image of the Dollet seaport. As the vessels approach the fireworks of bombs and ammunion is visible. The vessels carreen through an outer seawall and land at the shore. The transition from FMV cinema to gameplay environment is flawlessly executed. You can see other soldiers behind Seifer, Squall, Rinoa, and Zell. The characters "game in progress" appearances have been vastly improved from FF7, along the lines of Parasite Eve's Aya Brea, with human characters actually looking like humans rather that cartoony dwarfs. Still a little polygonified and jaggy-edged though, but PSX2 will fix that one, I'm sure. One advantage this game has over it's predecessor is the fact that all characters are visible at all times, rather than just the "lead" character. The other characters follow Squall in real time as the player controls them. The four characters exit the infiltration vessel and walk upon the sandy shore of Dollet beach. Squall asks, "Seifer, what are the orders?" Seifer replies outstretching is arm toward Dollet, "We, the B squad, are to secure the Central Square." He turns back to the group and Zell makes his remark. "How many enemies?" asks Zell. Seifer rests his hand disparigingly upon his hip and looks sardonically at Zell. "Huh? A whole lot obviously!" He gloats, "With too few enemies, I'll die of boredom." Squall breaks in putting focus back on the mission, "To secure the Central Square...Is that it?" "Enemy reinforcements are close by. That means more battles for us." Seifer is stoked for action and sees that Squall is ready. Not so sure about Zell he turns to him and scathes, "Too bad for those who are scared." Zell gives him a hard staredown, "What do you mean?!" "Who knows..." Seifer remarks. He turns to face Dollet, "The Central Square..." he says. "Come on." Squall, Zell, and Rinoa follow Seifer across the beach to the stairway leading to the entrance of the streets of Dollet. There is a pile of smoldering debris from where a mortar shell made impact. As you walk past this two Dollet soldiers attack. Right out of the box the battle system is easy to pick up, and the command window has been streamlined for maximum efficiency. When battle begins each player's "turn bar" grows to maximum and the command window for that player becomes operable. (This takes all of about a second more or less to happen) The Command Window allows for battle abilities like, Attack, Magic, Draw, Guardian Force, and Item, to be used. In the Demo, only Rinoa has the capability of Guardian Force, in her case it's Leviathan. If you Attack, your character will perform that action i.e. for Squall it would be to attack with the Gunblade. If you press R1 while Squall is attacking he will cause a small amount of extra damage to an enemy. The Magic Command allows you to cast a stored spell or ability enhancer that has been previously drawn and stocked or came with the character in the Demo. The Draw Command allows you to extract potential spells from enemies and either store them for later use, or use them immediately upon the enemy or the party. I kind of like when Squall "draws" or learns a spell he looks like he is concentrating. When a spell is drawn you can see energy transfer from the enemy to the character. One thing I soon noticed about Final Fantasy VIII is the fact that the enemies don't sit there like idiots and wait for you to select commands in the Command Window. If you stand there and don't do anything they will continue to attack and drain your HP no matter if it's your turn or not. Rinoa is the only character with Guardian Force from the start of the Demo. When she casts Leviathan her "turn bar" will be blue and her HP will turn to 200, (I believe this is the Guardian Force's HP), the "turn bar" will decrease in the opposite direction then Leviathan will be summoned. The Environments in which characters fight enemies are improved over Final Fantasy VII, with each distict battle area matching the environment from the main game sequence. The transitions from exploration environment to battle environment are very well done. While battling the first easy enemies in the game, I recommend that you Draw and Stock many Cure spells for later use When you encounter Dollet soldiers (The blue guys) it is best to draw and stock as much cure and fire spells from them as possible they will come in handy later in the demo when you must face harder bosses. They will attack you with a regular attack and a Fire magic attack. After you first battle you will enter the streets of Dollet. Two Dollet Soldiers will drop down from a crosswalk above you and you will enguage in another battle. Simply Draw and Stock like before then kill these losers. It seems that you can keep Drawing spells from enemies as many times as you want. I found the best strategy to be to Draw about 20 cure spells for both Squall and Zell so that you don't have to waste time Drawing these from other enemies later in the Demo. In Final Fantasy VII, individual spells were classified in the order of degree of strength, for example, "Spell1", "Spell2", and "Spell3" and these stronger level spells were only obtained when a specific Materia related to that spell leveled up. In the Demo of Final Fantasy VIII, you don't need to wait for leveling to get the second level magic spells, they can simply be Drawn from enemies. This aspect of the game will more than likely be repeated in the full version. In the demo you will notice that spells of higher strength end in the letter "a". This may somehow be similar to the Final Fantasy VII "Spell2" classification. Whether this remains the same in the final game, I don't know. THESE ARE THE SPELLS OF THE DEMO
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