Some gameplay courtesy of IGN from Gamescom, not sure if this is PS4 or PC (or if it matters, really, in terms of graphical fidelity and performance), but it looks to be from the beginning of the game and then a bit later an early (ish?) area of the game. I skipped past all the talking/city exploration and watched them explore the game world from horseback and get into some fights.
One thing I don’t recall being discussed much, is there are two cameras. The game is fully turn based, but one change from previous DQ games is instead of everyone selecting an action, and then watching the round play out, each character has an initiative score in the round, and goes (takes an action, which is then immediately played out) until one side is dead (hopefully the enemies). I prefer this way of handling turn-based combat, so I appreciate the change, personally.
Classic Battle Camera
Free-Form Battle Camera
What this also means is the free-form camera simply means you can walk the character you have control of around the battle field… really just for fun. The AI will control your team mates based on the tactics you set up, or you can still control them one at a time (I’m nearly positive of this - I’ve seen other videos where the party members were having their abilities chosen manually), with control shifting over to a party member when their turn comes up. I think this is really just to give you the illusion of doing something while you watch the combat unfold, which is pretty cool.
I will likely just stick with classic combat though, myself, and will likely turn Tactics off. At least unless I’m grinding I guess, while I watch Netflix or something.
In any case, later we get a look at crafting, which seems neat (about 13min in). Listening to a JP video some one was explaining crafting a little, and it seems cool. I guess most of your party equipment will really come from crafting and upgrading at the crafting station, and it’s a pretty interesting looking mini-game of trying to keep the forge temperature at specific ranges while also spending “points” on different types of strikes to try and get higher bonuses on the equipment you are crafting.
Thankfully, this video is in English so it’s a little less like guesswork with the video I watched a few weeks back. :) You will unlock more ways to strike the forge than simple “bash” though, like softer blows to try and get into the sweet spot easier, or a strike that let’s you increase two bars at once.
There is quite a bit more but I stopped watching there, at least for now. It comes out in just over two weeks (annoyingly, the day after the US has a 3 day weekend…)!