I played the demo! AMA! I'm a HUGE fan of the final fantasy series and have completed most of them. I'm also the biggest critic of where the games have been going lately, ESPECIALLY with XV and its terrible combat and story. So now that you know where I'm coming from, you can assume I have incredibly sky-high expectations for this game, and would be incredibly disappointed if it didn't honestly feel like one of the best games I've ever played. So I played the demo, and...
It absolutely blew all of my sky-high expectations out of the fukking water.
THIS is the remake I've been looking for. THIS is the perfect melding of action and turn-based combat I've been saying they should try for years. THIS is the proper way to capture the feeling of commanding an entire party at once... not only is switching party members seamless and fun, but you can press l2/r2 at any time to assign commands to your party members that you're not controlling, and I felt 100% in control of the battles throughout the entire demo. THIS is possibly the best demo I have ever played at E3, and hands-down has become the most hyped I've ever been for a game, maybe ever.
To answer some of the questions I've seen and also some more of my observations:
- Victory music is not present after battles, EXCEPT for when, in my play through, Barret literally sang the victory theme after we killed some enemies, ala what Prompto from XV sometimes did. His surly voice singing it made me cringe and laugh.
- Speaking of battle music, the mako reactor theme seamlessly transitioned into a mako reactor BATTLE theme when fighting enemies, and it was awesome. I'm thinking each area may actually have its own battle theme based on the map theme. Hoping we get to hear the original battle theme too at some point.
- It was FUNNY. Jesse had extra dialogue when you go back to talk to her and she told me something along the lines of, I'm flattered you think I'm more interesting than a mako reactor.
- It was CHALLENGING. The boss fight required a sense of awareness that made it incredibly thrilling and satisfying when you succeeded. I had to use about 6 potions and a few cures.
- Party members are UNIQUE and control differently and feel great. I made the conscious decision to switch characters maybe 15+ times in the demo alone, just to take advantage of different situations. Examples are, flying enemies can't be hit by Cloud so you should switch to Barret, Cloud moves faster than Barret so I switched to Barret to get his ass under cover during the big laser attack, and other things that are materia set up dependent like you had to use Cloud to cure and Barret to lightning.
- Limit breaks are SUPER flashy and powerful. It felt soooo satisfying to use them.
- Relative basic strategy for boss fights will most likely be, stagger the boss using less powerful high-stagger abilities, wait to fully stagger until all of your limit breaks are full, then go full ham.
- The LORE is being further developed and I could tell just from the demo. I learned something new about what Barret was thinking about Cloud: after you plant the bomb and the alarm goes off, Barret immediately turns his gun on Cloud and says something about him double-crossing them, essentially cementing how little he trusts Cloud at that point, and it was masterfully done and fit perfectly with the character. If I felt that level of character development just from the demo, I am so incredibly excited about what else we will be learning about these characters we know and love already in the full game.
Phew. That's all I can think of at the moment. But yeah. Final Fantasy fans... this is IT, you can safely be hyped.
I forgot how big that damned map was....and that's not even counting the Huge Weapon monsters that walk around the damned planet....
This is sounding like the Final Fantasy game I've been clamoring for since, well pre XIII. 
