Tried a bunch of demos out that have been collecting dust on my PS5, spent roughly an hour on each one. Here are my thoughts as someone who has gotten pretty jaded with modern video gaming and hadn't played any of these yet:
Star Ocean: The Second Story Remake: Interesting story with different planets in the mix, reminds me of Phantasy Star a bit. Both protagonists are likeable and the setting is charming. Can really tell this is a PS1 game; it's got that late 90's PS1 RPG vibe. Only downside to it is the character sprites. Much like Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, the character sprites kinda bring the game down and I'm not sure what they were thinking. The character sprites are pixel-art and look like washed-out plastic cutouts superimposed over the rest of the game, which looks high-def and colorful. It's super weird, like they remade the backgrounds in HD but left the character sprites in their PS1 state. They lack animation too, and some of the running looks stiff and bizarre.
Octopath Traveller 2: Played the hot female thief's chapter. Easily the most gorgeous game out of this entire lot. This one was the most conducive to relaxing EXP grinding, something I like to do but don't get to very often in 1P games. Only complaint here is that the boss fight I did took an incredibly long time, even with me storing up power, unleashing big moves, using up MP, etc. I went through about 5 full MP restores and about 12 full HP restores over the course of the fight which seems absurd in duration for a first boss. Never felt like I was in danger of getting killed, but it just dragged on and on. When my items got low I thought I might actually lose from attrition. If all of the bosses are "epic" like that then I don't know about this one.
Trails Through Daybreak: Liked how "adult" this one was compared to the others, made it more unpredictable. The title screen music here was my favorite theme out of all the demos I tried. Good combat, likeable characters (the main girl wasn't an insufferable harpy and the main guy wasn't a clueless dork, and they actually interacted like real people, so it's already better than 90% of the anime couplings out there). Interesting game, but it feels kind of small scale with it revolving around a police investigation, so I'm wondering if it's like a minor spinoff in the overall series or if this is normal for the series.
Metaphor: Not sure how I feel about this one, it was mostly just...weird? The good guy is super bland and the villain is probably a Donald Trump allegory (I can explain why if anybody really wants to know). The music is super odd, or at least some of it is. The battle system has appeal and I liked the gameplay in the Persona games. This was the only demo I played where I wasn't all that sure what just happened after I was done. It's just that weird. Willing to try more of it though.
Ys X: Action RPG with Souls-ish combat which I'm getting pretty tired of encountering so much of. Way way way way too much talking, especially for a demo. Not sure how much action I even got to see because it was SO. MUCH. TALKING. This series hasn't floated my boat for a while (didn't really like Ys 8 or 9, spent most of both games lost, while I loved 1-7 and Origin so IDK). Out of all the demos I tried, this one probably made the least impact. It was just...a lot of nothing. When making a demo, it's a good idea to put a strong foot forward and have the demo cover a dungeon / a diverse range of gameplay and action to draw you in. I can't comprehend making a demo with almost no fighting in it where it feels like 90% of the time you're listening to people yapping at Adol about things I don't have any framing for yet.
Valkyrie Elysium: Not sure if this is a sequel to Valkyrie Profile back in the day, which if so I'm significantly more interested. Really liked the art direction here and how stormy everything was. Just an outstanding sense of atmosphere that almost reminded me of Elden Ring at times. Unfortunately it's yet another action RPG that plays Souls-ish without the weight or challenge, and it got redundant quick as a result. It's too bad it doesn't take risks with the gameplay to set itself apart.
Visions of Mana: Another game with spectacular art direction. Music was good too. Definitely playing this in the future. Combat is Souls-ish action RPG #800 but at least it's flashy and colorful. Absolutely feels like old-school Mana while being modernized, like Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 / Trials of Mana both led directly into this one. Only thing I didn't like (besides the combat being like every other action RPG at this point) was that all the characters had tails and animal ears and weird shit like that. The characters seem alright otherwise, so it's too bad the devs had to lame them up with weird furry nonsense.
Skyward Sword: Not a demo, but I finally tried out the game that holds the record for longest time spent sitting on my shelf without being played through. Got it on Black Friday 2011 and here we are 13 years later with it still on my shelf not played. I think the second-place record is Dragon Quest 7 which I got at the end of 2001 and played at the end of 2004, so it's a pretty substantial gulf. Been looking forward to Skyward for ages because I want to play another Ocarina-style Zelda game that isn't open world or 2D, and it's the only one left that fits that mold that I haven't played. Well, I didn't really like it in the hour and a half that I played.
There's WAY too much talking. Just constant cutscenes and constant talking. If you've seen Sequelitis, this is basically "MEGAMAN MEGAMAN" The Game. To be an hour and a half into a Zelda game and nowhere near doing a dungeon yet is kinda absurd. The motion controls are cool in theory but kind of hard to use in practice, and often the sword just doesn't do what I want. The worst part is the flying bird minigame though. It's so hard to control and I spent most of it flying in circles or plummeting toward the clouds. After a few minutes of wrestling the controls like an alligator I damn near turned the game off forever. However I eventually got it and I'd like to see what the game has to offer. But yeah, motion controls for every goddamn thing...is this really necessary? I'm glad this game was kind of the end of Nintendo's obsession with motion control shit, though they really cockslapped us in the face with motion controls one last time before they moved on.
So did I actually like any of these things? Yeah, I liked most of them to varying extents, but only a couple of them actually grabbed my attention in a way that I'm guaranteed to play them later: Octopath Traveler 2 and Visions of Mana. I'll give a strong maybe to Star Ocean 2 and Metaphor. I'll play Skyward Sword whether I like it or not because after 14 years on the shelf I pretty much have to. And I like a lot of things about it, just not the constant forced motion controls for every minigame and the endless constant yapping that goes on and on.
Thanks for reading my dissertation on a bunch of things I tried.
