E3 2010: Hands on with Square Enix's Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

Trying to get across the detail and subtlety of a huge role playing game such as Square Enix's Final Fantasy series in the loud and pressurised conditions of the E3 game show isn't easy.

Congratulations then to the team behind Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light who took the trouble to craft a dedicated 20 minute demo of their game, enabling you to get a good overview of how it will play whilst not complicating you with too many details.

Starting off in the same way as the final release, you're placed into the shoes of Brandt, on his 14th birthday.

As tends to happen in Final Fantasy games, he goes to the castle to see the king, only to be given a dangerous task.

In the final game you’ll have to find the princess who's been abducted by the Witch of the North. In the demo, you're limited to killing a minotaur who lives in a cave.

The first thing to notice is the game's beautiful graphics, which use a low key palette of pastel colours in what Square Enix is calling 'a storybook come to life' style. It's like cell-shading but without the harsh outlines.

In terms of gameplay, The 4 Heroes of Light is a squad-based game with the demo automatically setting up Brandt with three other characters, Jusqua, Unita and Aire. The king also provided some crowns (or funny hats), which are the way the game's job system works.

Old Final Fantasy favourites such as black and white mages, freelancer, thief and wayfarer were available, with each crown coming with specific abilities and magic spells. The crowns can also be enhanced as you collect gems, of which there are eight types. Gems can be used to enhance armour and weapons, or sold for money too.

The demo didn't enable this however, so it was just a case of setting up action such as fire, cure, steal etc.

Each character is also defined by six stats - strength, intellect, spirit, attack, defense and magic defense.

So after wandering around the village, talking to people, and then making our way to castle, our group was dropped on to the usual Final Fantasy world map - big characters walking around a small world - to make its way to the cave.

Various random battles were triggered along the way, with the view then switching to a battle screen. Battles are a bit different compared to previous Final Fantasy games in that you set up each characters' moves at the start of a turn so there's no active battle system and no targeting of specific enemies either.

According to the demonstrator from Square Enix, there are rules about how this auto targeting system works that you'll learn as the game progresses. In this way, you will be able to use the system tactically.

Another difference is the use of action points. Each character gets one action point at the start of each turn, and each action available to a character requires a certain number of action points before it can be triggered.

In this way, depending on their class, some characters could pull off a fire spell using up one action point, while for others it required two points, meaning they would have to miss an action - or boost - in order to gain the two points required.

Each character can hold up to five action points and unused points are carried over between battles.

Making its way through the cave, my group used a torch to light its way, battling various nasties.

The minotaur himself proved to be easy picking as he was vulnerable to fire, which were the only elemental spells the characters had equiped. Obviously the demo was set up so players wouldn't lose.

Neatly though, the minotaur was taken out by a combo attack, which is what happens when you select the same magic attack, effectively combining multiple characters' actions to great impact.

All-in-all then, as a taster to the complete game, which is said to be almost complete and due for release on October 5 in North America (European release TBA), Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light seems to be shaping up to be another very high quality DS RPG release.