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In the latest Active Time Report, Hajime Tabata revealed that "There's no difficulty option currently in the works for the final release" of Final Fantasy XV but due to mix player feedback in regards to being it too easy and too hard they will include them. Tabata made it clear in the end, that "We will." include difficulty options.

HexaDrive, the co-developer behind Square Enix's The 3rd Birthday and Final Fantasy Type-0 HD both directed by Hajime Tabata is assisting with the development of Final Fantasy XV.

Read a new interview with Hajime Tabata here.

I've been hearing that Cindy,the female "Cid" for FFXV,is the daughter of the actual Cid. Can someone please explain that to me? Because we have a lot of Cids and I don't know which one is the father of that fine lady

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2015/03/31/final-fantasy-xv-may-female-party-members-guests/#5bYyVYFo1fL7WPlh.99

FINAL FANTASY XV -EPISODE DUSCAE- begins with a short tutorial explaining how to move around and then an optional combat tutorial. After completing these you're given free roam of the entire demo area. Your overall objective is to make the gil needed to get Cindy to fix your car, pretty simple. To do this your friends say they need to defeat a Behemoth and get its horn in order to sell it for the needed gil. There are other items you can sell for large amounts of gil but I had already collected the Behemoth's horn by the time I realized this. You'll need to search the Duscae region for clues as to where the Behemoth is. Along the way you'll find a Chocobo Ranch with yellow Chocobos however you can't ride them sadly. There's also black Chocobos in the wild but you can't rid them either. There's also a couple of massive monsters in the water but you can't reach them. Throughout the demo you'll fight the same few monsters, and even have robotic soldiers drop down on your in open areas. Early on it can get a little hectic but some levelling up helps a lot. Speaking of levelling up, you'll need to go to the camp sites around the Duscae region and rest there by eating a meal and sleeping, as this will give you buffs for the next day if you collected the needed items which are very easily found and level up according to all the experience points you gained throughout the day via quests and battles. You can also camp during the day. Combat will take a little time to get used to, but there is a lot of fun to had with this battle system, however I would have loved to be able to control our friends. Usually in a FINAL FANTASY game if you die you'll need to use a Phoenix Down to revive your party member, this time around though you'll be able to walk up to your friends or have them walk up to you to restore some of you HP, you can also use a Potion to do this. The Goblins in this demo which appear at night and in the demo's dungeon will also poison you which might give a little stress but if you're strong enough this demo is very easy. I'm left wondering if this is the game's normal difficulty. Oh and you'll also hear the same battle cries a bit too much. Getting to the required locations is also very easy with very good markers in place and a handy map. However I would have liked to be able to keep moving while the map is open. Hunting down the Behemoth is quite a bit of fun, with stealth elements thrown in and a couple of interesting fights. Back to the demo's dungeon, it's dark but thankfully you have flashlights and Goblins just keep coming from everywhere. There's also tight gaps to get through, but be careful because Goblins might come out of them when you're going in them. The demo also contains a very impressive summon. To be honest I actually enjoyed the voice acting. The music is as expected top notch. Graphically the game is very nice, but it's not pushing the PlayStation 4. However the demo is only running at 900p and it is only a demo so expect to see the game look quite a bit better when it's finally finished. Frame rate drops occur every once in awhile but thankfully they don't ruin the experience. There's also a few small parts of the demo where movement can be a little stiff. I had trouble getting onto the platform for the Chocobo Ranch's shop. The addition of dual-audio is a nice touch. When you complete the demo a couple of things are revealed and you will also get a little teaser at FFXV. Overall FINAL FANTASY XV -EPISODE DUSCAE- is a very good demo but the team has a lot of work still to do. 8/10

I started with Type-0 because the demo needed time to download... Type-0 was really fun! It kinda throws you in there without really giving you much warning.... it gives you game-play controls then throws you right into the fight, and it is fun and easy enough to understand, however it did grade me at the end which pissed me off... I never liked being graded in a game... especially for time... like if you don't want me to go around and explore and look for items... don't make so many paths and shiny items.... If I get a D in time it is because I looked at every dead body for a Knowing Tag, so sorry for getting into the lore...(Also this isn't a real complaint, I understand that you are a cadet that should be graded at the end and this was just a preference) . Then you go to the Academy, and I spent about an hour talking to everyone and visiting every room I could before going back out into the missions. The game asked if I wanted extra help

Read Hajime Tabata's Active Launch Report for Final Fantasy Type-0 HD here.

I have a lot of opinions on this FFXV demo. I mean, I *do* know what the final game is exactly like, ever since I went to the future in my time machine and played it (hence my ability to review it in the past, as some of you may remember), but forgetting what I said in that review, let me just speak my thoughts assuming I hadn't already beaten the whole game. So, this demo. Long story short, I liked it, but it's not perfect. Let me just start by putting a bunch of positives and negatives on the table and having us talking about them. Positives: Graphics look solid. Idk what people were moaning about during PAX and stuff. I mean sure, the graphics may have been downgraded *slightly* but they still look quite good. On top of that, Square confirmed that they will look even better in the final game. Frame rate is mostly good. Now again, Square said that it's going to be better in the final game. I personally find this pretty impressive. Even as it stands now, the demo is, for the most part, more consistent with its frame rate than a lot of full games I've played in the past! I mean sure, there are some chuggy moments, but any of them that I would call "unplayable" were few and far between. Phantom swords are frickin' sweet. However, I'm not sure how they're going to implement them into the story, considering they're just random swords you find wherever (might be different in the final game). If their description speaks for anything though, I would guess that the reason Noctis can use them is his ability to communicate with the dead, and each of those swords are described (in their inventory descriptions) as having the soul of someone from long ago. The summon animation is fantastic. It reminds me of the days when I played FF7 and 8 for the first time, and getting that "whoaaaaa duuude" feeling I got when I first used a summon that I hadn't used before. (and then subsequently having that feeling diminish as I saw those animations 59342983 more times. Seriously though, did I ever tell y'all about the time I linked Bahamut Zero to Quadra Magic and then mimed it, totalling 8 times watching that animation, during the final Jenova fight? Fun stuff.) The voice acting was a little bit better than I expected. Just a little. By the time I beat it, I was fine with Ignis's voice (which I had hated when I first heard after TGS), I liked Prompto's voice (which I was always fine with tbh), I liked Gladiolus' voice alright (no real change in opinion there), but Noctis' voice still didn't grow on me too much. It was weird- like he had some good lines that were well-delivered that made him seem like, idk, a human being, but other ones just seemed like they over-emphasized the moody generic too-cool-for-you main character that we see so much nowadays. Cindy's voice was good though. (and cindy iz h@wt lululululul) Combat was fun, for the most part, and I liked how it really managed to switch up all the weapons you used. Even with just five weapons, I found it fun to experiment a little bit. It's all very flashy too- it's fun to watch, just like KH is. I didn't really mind the lack of magic, since there was enough to keep me preoccupied for a few hours. But on the flipside... Negatives: The combat only stayed fun for a couple hours. I found the button configuration just a bit too wonky, and it wasn't as responsive as I would have liked. For example, if I was in the middle of a combo and hit triangle (or Y for you XButts), I would have liked it to flow into that attack semi-seamlessly. instead I would hit triangle, have nothing happen, then have to mash it a couple more times to get my attack off. Also, I feel like the HUD would benefit from the way they did it in Birth By Sleep, where you would see the previous and next command. I kinda took that element for granted in BBS, but when I didn't have it here, I found myself forgetting which command was after which after just a couple minutes. Maybe I'm just stupid. The control scheme is wack. Like straight up wack, yo. But this is fine, since they're letting you customize it in the final game. But seriously though, who thought that having square be attack but not having X be jump was a good idea? That seems like a rule of thumb in pretty much every other game I've ever played. If they made the button config more KH-esque, I'd be happy. (i.e: x = attack, circle = jump, square = defend, triangle stays the same, L1 is warp, R1 is lock on, command menu uses up and down instead of left and right. like that would be legit perfect, as long as you could change the button combo for warp-dodging.) Also who thought the lock on was a good idea? I figured it out soon enough, but to even temporarily lock onto an enemy, you need to HOLD R1 for a good second, and even then it can just move around to other enemies unless you click the right analog stick. like, wut. Sorry I keep comparing it to KH here, but why not have an auto- target that can switch between enemies, then have the lock-on button... i don't know, lock on? The amounts of HP you and the enemies had just seems really... unbalanced, I guess. And this only made it more annoying than actually difficult. Like, my party's HP just drops like your mom's rolls of fat when their support beams break under the weight. But if I went into critical status, I just high-tailed it out of there or waited for a party member to heal me, and I never once died. I think Ignis died once, but that's about it. On the flipside, the enemies HP seemed like just a bit too much. I don't think it would be too much HP for them if you fought a reasonable number at a time, but when you have a whole crowd of goblins, doges, giant brown marshmallows, and Robocops attacking you all at once with enough reinforcements coming in to make the fight literally last 18 minutes in real time, it just seems like too much HP for each of them to individually have. Eventually I just said "forget it" and summoned the summon. I didn't feel like the Defend system flowed naturally enough. I can't really explain why, so idk how to propose a fix for it. I just didn't find it very easy to balance attack and defense like I do with the KH series for example. Summons need a major nerf. I know they probably will get a nerf, but I just found the one in the demo to be massively overpowered. I mean sure, it doesn't let you level up or get items, but it kept me from feeling like I was ever in any real danger of dying after I obtained it. I didn't like how the grass looked. idk why, I just found it gross. (yeah gr8 reasoning there jim) Regardless, none of these negatives made me walk away from the demo with a bad taste in my mouth overall. They just make me that much happier that Square is specifically calling out for fan feedback, since Tabata is willing to fix the game's potential mistakes which we already saw him do with every other thing he's gotten backlash about!! Now that's something you'd never see from a crap director like Toriyama. Long story short: This is a good demo, but not without flaws. Square is definitely on the right track though, so I have faith that they can make an amazing game when Final Fantasy XV does come out. At least, that's what I would say, if it weren't for the fact that I've already played and beaten it when I traveled to the future.

Square Enix has confirmed FFXV: Episode Duscae will have: English and Japanese Voice-Over: Enjoy English or Japanese audio with English, French, German, Italian, Japanese or Spanish text.

Read an interview with FFXV art director, Yosuke Naroa here.

Isamu Kamikokuryo, the Art Director of the FFXIII trilogy is now the World Art Director on FFXV.

Thanks to IGN.

Thanks to IGN.

Hajime Tabata says there is now about 400 people currently working on FFXV both internally and outsourced.

The head of division 2 and director of Final Fantasy XV, Hajime Tabata has revealed tonight that Final Fantasy XV is now roughly 60% complete.

Square Enix has released some new screenshots for Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae. Check them out here.