Finally got around to playing through this demo. Overall pretty good, but coming right off the Dragon Quest XI Switch demo, it's like I can see all the differences between Square and Enix right on display -- the differences between Dragon Quest (of which I've only played a bit of IX and that demo) and classic Final Fantasy.
First let me just say overall BDII looks really good. The art style in the town is pulled off amazingly, and it kinda feels like a logical evolution of not only the earlier games, but also of pre-rendered backgrounds from PS1 and PS2 RPGs. I always wondered why no JRPG developers in recent years have tried to do HD pre-rendered backgrounds like Pillars of Eternity and some other recent WRPGs. I think BDII is the closest Japanese example I've seen. Out in the field and in battles where everything is 3D it still looks good... but it also has sort of an... Unreal Engine look to it. Yeah it's on Unreal, but so is Dragon Quest and a bunch of other Japanese stuff. Everything outside the town in the BDII demo reminds me of how stereotypical Unreal Engine 3 games looked sort of. It has something to do with how it handles lighting and motion blur.
The only thing I didn't like here is how the bosses were balanced, and obviously that's not how they'll be in the full game. But still, all three bosses felt like unnecessarily long battles of attrition, and that actually describes a lot of Final Fantasy bosses too. I've reached the point where even after I've found the right strategy for beating a boss, I shouldn't have to spend another 30 minutes hacking at it only to get one run of bad luck in one turn and get my whole party wiped. Back in the day it was cool to see a boss with 50-bajillion HP or something, but that's just tiring now, and DQ's smaller numbers feel refreshing in comparison, even as that game's battle system is potentially just as strategic.
Another difference I noticed a bit from DQ is the presentation. The DQXI demo didn't really go out of its way to describe its setting. It just started with a brief cut scene showing what's happening to the characters, and then you start off in the village, and you find out about the world during gameplay. The BDII demo seemed to follow the trend of a few recent RPGs (I think Fire Emblem Three Houses was another one) where the opening cut scene takes a minute to describe what the setting is like and the kingdoms that exist in it, as if that's one of the game's main selling points. I gotta admit though the writing (or at least the localization) in BDII seems better than most similar JRPGs.
