Best the demo in about 40 minutes, smoked everything moving with ease including the boss. It's...OK. Easy as pie, kind of lifeless overall. Some cool animations but combat *doesn't* have a good sense of impact except when parrying and getting that visual/haptic feedback, plenty of games over the past couple of years that have had better feeling action including Khazan, Yotei, Lies of P, Nioh 3, First Light and CAPCOM's very own Requiem and Pragmata just this year just to make a few.
Visually it looks like a PS4 game more often than not. Again, this is jarring because both RE9 and Pragmata had some of the best visuals this entire gen, both looked stunning on my Pro + OLED TV. While most of the animations are cool I noticed only 1 animation for stealth kills? Using objects in the environment is fine though coming directly from First Light it feels rather basic. Best part of the demo was near the end when you had about 10 different enemies around you at once but even that was easy as pie.
Ultimately the demo convinced me this isn't a day 1. I was looking forward to the return of this series and genuinely thought it would complete a 2026 hat trick for CAPCOM alongside RE9 and Pragmata. Of course this is only a demo but my sense is this will be the weakest of the 3 games, both critically and in general amongst gamers. It also releases during a fully stacked month where people are spoiled for choice. I will definitely play the game at some point, just not buying it at launch (unlike both RE9 and Pragmata which were day 1).
In conclusion I'll point out that Phantom Blade 0 releases a month later. Both are "Eastern" games with a focus on action, mostly linear, swordplay, cool finishers/animations etc. I predict 0 will blow it out of the water in every way, visuals, action, game feel, boss battles, everything. Let's see what happens.
