Rawr, the EU PSN update this week was quite fruitful in demo versions. Actually, only 2 of all those got my interest, Asura’s Wrath and Final Fantasy XII-2. Both could be completed in a bit above an hour, so go ahead and test them for yourself if you own a PS3.

   At first I thought Asura’s Wrath was your typical fighting game like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. That’s what I expected at least. What I got was an action packed Heavy Rain. The demo contains episode 5 and 11, but despite going so far, I wouldn’t call them spoilers. The only thing I’ve learned was that Asura was trying to save his daughter Mithra, but you could probably learn that from previews by now. I’m not exactly impressed, since demo versions usually contain the best scenes that could hook you up, and I didn’t get convinced at all.

   For starters, the first episode is a one big boss battle filled with cinematic scenes where you have to press the buttons that appear on screen, a’la Heavy Rain. Though I gotta admit, the scale was quite epic, fighting a gigantic Buddha like monster, that a flying flagship, and finally the same Buddha-like monster, but this time the size of a Moon. Yeah, I’m not gonna mention how a sudden appearance of such a huge object next to Earth would influence the planet.

   Episode 11 was also centred on a boss battle, but this time you had to first get near him, land couple punches and get through the cinematic scene. Yeah, sorry, but I don’t see it. The design is the best party, the graphics will do for characters alone, but the gameplay is not that exciting. Bayonetta did it better. Heavy Rain did it better. And I felt like playing an awkward mix of both. I will give the story a try though. By watching the whole playthrough on youtube, rawr~

   Final Fantasy XIII-2 demo was, hmmm, good I think. For those who have played XIII that is. If I haven’t played FFXIII before and I didn’t know what was going on, I’d think it’s just a Pokemon and puzzle game where the fighting limits itself to pressing X. I’ll be honest though, no jRPG looks fascinating to me after I’ve played Skyrim. In the demo you start in Act II of the game, which I presume is the very beginning of the game. After quickly switching to Sarah as the leader, I went into the semi linear dungeon (semi, because this time you have TWO parallel corridors), encountered first monsters, and the first disappointment came. THEY WEREN’T VISIBLE ON THE MAP! They just appeared next to me out of nowhere because of some “time paradox.” And they just keep reappearing in the same spots over and over whenever I walked through. Luckily it’s easy to run past through them in FFXIII-2, and even easier to get first strike. You just have to attack them on the world map by pressing X.

   Then we had the Pokemon part, which I must say, I feared it would have been worse. It was quite ok, I almost didn’t pay attention to them, just a fifth third wheel to do an extra job. They were like allies to which you don’t get emotionally attached to. After going through the dungeon and molesting Atlas, the demo ends with some trailers of Lighting. You know what would make this game truly awesome? Erase the existence of Sarah and Noel and focus only on Claire instead. She’s fabifantastic, and I know I’m going to buy that game only for her~… And maybe Chocolina.

My conclusion? 2 cheers for FF XIII-2 and 2 nays for Asura’s Wrath.