Yesterday was the first Business Day at TGS! There were a ton of awesome things to see and do!

The first thing I set out to do was hit up the FFVII Remake Booth. I was able to play the game with ZERO wait time!!

The demo itself was really good, it gave you a nice taste of what to expect from the game. The visuals alone were enough to get my blood pumping! The amount of detail into the character models, even the in-game, non-rendered models, looked really good with such attention to detail. You can clearly see subtitle facial features change with movement, like the brow-line, the skin around their mouths, etc.

The controls were a bit tough at first, though. Since we’re only given 15 minutes to play, it might not be enough time for some people to really grasp. I’m not the best at action-based games, so it generally takes me longer to get used to the controls. I kept finding myself hitting the wrong button and opening up the command menu where you can choose special abilities and magic, but I think once you get used to what buttons do what, it should be much easier to control.

I’m really excited for this release, though! Cloud is hot as ever, and seeing those moments where he gets temporary Mako-induced headaches are really intense. It will be awesome to see exactly how much he suffers from that and the events surrounding Sephiroth throughout the course of the game.

Next up was the Falcom section at the Konami booth for Ys IX.

The wait for the Ys IX Demi was about an hour and a half. When you start playing, you get the choose of two areas to play: a sort of castle or dungeon type location. I chose the second dungeon area where you have the Crimson King Adol on your team along with the hawk and bull characters. The controls seemed pretty much the same as Ys VIII, but I always messed up the buttons in that as well… always pressing the button that switches between characters rather than the attack button.

There was one location in the demo that requires you to use the Hunter Glide ability but for whatever reason, I couldn’t reach the other side of a big expanse. I asked the staff what to do, and they couldn’t help me– they didn’t know what to do!! I would really hope that the staff would be familiar with the demo so they can help people experience as much of it as possible within the allotted time, but…

I still don’t know too much about the story, but the most curious thing to me right now is that Adol appears to have three different forms: his usual look with short, red hair, another with darker, almost black hair, and his “Crimson King” form with a long ponytail. What I’m guessing now is that at some point at the beginning of the game he will get involved with the Monstrum folk and cursed. His post-cursed “regular form” will be the dark-haired version, but during the night, he can access the “Crimson King” form. This might be completely inaccurate, but I’m trying to stay as unspoiled as possible.

As for the other booths around the area, there were a ton of areas where you can have your photo taken with props.

A couple other areas I visited included the Death Stranding booth, Atlus, Taito, Capcom, the PC Engine mini booth and a bunch more.

I took a ton of photos and will be adding them a little later, so stay tuned to that!