Final Fantasy XV’s multiplayer beta went live today, and in it, you can hack-and-slash through a few short quests. You can also spend hours creating your very own avatar, adjusting everything from facial tattoos to, uh, lower jaw width.
There’s a lot of detail in this thing, to the point where you can actually choose two parents for your character, who will look like a hybrid of their faces.
As for the main contents of the beta, well, if you’ve played Final Fantasy XV’s combat, you know what you’re getting. You work with a team of three other people (either AIs or other players) and select from a handful of quests like “defeat the Naga” or “escort this train without letting it get killed.” You and your party are all members of the Kingsglaive, Final Fantasy XV’s elite fighting force, which means you all have access to Noctis’s warp strike and magical spells. You can also summon many of his weapons, like katanas, glaives, and shurikens.
You can no doubt picture the loop here: every time you finish a quest, you’ll get some experience and items. The beta doesn’t keep track of your progress very well, but presumably the main game will let you keep unlocking cooler quests the more you play. Hopefully some of those quests ask you and your party to do more than just fight monsters. (Maybe some cooperative puzzles?)
The beta has some connection issues—it’s a beta!—and if you do give it a spin, you might have to try a few times before you actually get into a game. But it’s fun. Final Fantasy XV’s combat is still good. And, most importantly, you can adjust your character’s lower jaw width.
You can download this right now as a standalone called FFXV Comrades.
its about a 13 GB download and you dont need the main game atm. When you first launch it you have to create your avatar/character. The creation tools looks like you could spend alot of time. Many choices are limited due the ‘beta’ nature of the game.
After you toon creation, you get launched into your own personal area that has a few text based tutorials to make sure you understand the controls. When you finally get into the quest selection…you get 3 options:
Quick Play
Custom
Solo
Quick Play - it look like this just throws you into a random party already going. I could not get this selection to work.
Custom - Lets you either create a camp or join into another players camp. In order for me to get into a game i had to choose a camp with 2/4 or lower. So you are limited to a 4 player group.
Solo - This was greyed out so I couldnt try it even though I think this is self explantory.
So getting into a custom game…it was me and 1 other player. The other 2 slots were filled by NPCs. We selected our mission/quest, which was to hunt some creatures. The gameplay was pretty smooth and fun. Very similar to the actual game, just with other players.
After the quest completion, you return to camp with the other players, everyone is awarded the quest rewards. At camp you can continue onto another quest, switch out gear, chat, etc. I didnt see an option to leave the camp…I actually had to close the game out to do so.
Overall, I am excited for this. Doesn’t look like the MP component of FF XV will have any effect on your SP game. But a really cool way to play FF game with friends without having to go the MMO subscription route.