Hereās a full breakdown of the demo at Evo.
There was always one Atlus rep that would go through the demo with a group of 3 people.
Controls:
Square - Melee attacks. Direction+Square causes different attacks. Left+Right are the same attack, Up is a launcher, and Down is a slide. Similar deal with aerial attacks.
Triangle - Jump. Tap Triangle again for a double jump. Tap Triangle a third time will cause the Amazon to dive kick (might be only 2 triangle presses), Sorceress to do the air dash, and Mage to float (holding down Triangle will make him float longer).
Circle - High damage AOE attacks with Fighter, Amazon, and Dwarf which will cause them to drop their weapon temporarily. A big X covers the weapon with a meter draining down. Once drained you can pick up the weapon. During this time you have physical melee attacks at your disposal for less damage. With the archer she fires an arrow but can charge the shot. With the spell casters they shoot a more powerful spell. Holding the button down causes them to cast an even more powerful version of the spell. I think in combination with the directional buttons you get AOE spells.
X - I donāt think I used it outside of confirming menus and items.
Left Analog Stick - Movement
Right Analog Stick - Brings up a cursor to interact with background objects. If you highlight a door or treasure chest then press L3 or L1 you will command the thief to open the chest/door. There are also shiny objects in the background that you click on with the cursor to get treasure/experience. You can examine backgrounds to find hidden areas as well.
Directional Pad - Brings up your inventory. Fighter had tonics for health items, Amazon had buffs/debuffs stuff, Spellcasters had spell books, and didnāt get to check with the other because I discovered this later on.
If you hold a direction and then press and hold down square you can make the character run. This can also be achieved with double tapping a direction but this was harder to do on analogue. The Evo demo did let you change the controls to use d-pad instead of the analog stick for movement.
Town:
The town had multiple places to visit for stuff like shops, churches, etcā¦ Unfortunately, we didnāt get to see much of it as the Atlus rep would always throw us in a dungeon right away.
Dungeon:
You get a world map where you can select a dungeon. In the demo there were 3 dungeons but few people were lucky to play or see the last dungeon. Most of the Atlus reps avoided that last dungeon since it was harder and most of the new people kept dying.
Once a dungeon is selected you get an area where youāre free to play around with the control scheme. Friendly fire is on in this area but it does no damage to the party members.
Dungeons are pretty standard beat emā up. Some enemies you can ride as a mount after beating them up a bit. They basically lie down and if you hover on top of them you can press Triangle to ride them. The demo had a saber tooth tiger and a lizard to ride. They only had one standard attack.
Treasure boxes are in several areas of the dungeon and each chest has a rank to them based on the loot inside. Sometimes thereās a limited use weapon like a cross bow that anyone can use.
Youāll find boxes that contain food and treasure items. The food shows up under your characters portrait and as shown previously, if you stand still they automatically eat the food to replenish your health. I believe they can raise your max HP temporarily as well.
The Mage can change certain boxes, using the square button, to become a wood minion. The wood minion is more of a meat shield to absorb attacks rather than a damage dealer. Youāll also find bones in some dungeons and the Sorceress can change the bones, with the Square button again, to form a skeleton warrior which deals better damage than the wood minion but canāt take as many hits. Alternatively, you can take the bones and bring them back into town where you can resurrect them to be an AI controlled character or a NPC helper. It wasnāt made too clear by the Atlus reps so not sure which is true.
Bosses seem like they require strategy and team work to bring them down but for the purpose of the demo we were over leveled and could just roll our face on the controller and still win.
There are lives but reviving a dead character costs in game gold. If you die a lot the price to revive your character goes up. On harder difficulties the costs for reviving is high. I believe the Atlus rep said that on hard mode it would have costed him 20k.
After completing a dungeon, your experience is calculated based on a score (finding treasure and loot raises this score) that is applied to the entire party, and then a bonus score is applied on how well you did by fulfilling certain objectives like not dying on the boss fight. Thereās a bonus percentage score that gets applied based on the difficulty; with normal mode you get a 10% boost.
After wards, youāre taking to your spoils screen with all the treasure that was found during the dungeon. Everything is not appraised and you have to spend money to appraise an item or you can sell it. When highlighting an item youāll see the items rank and if it contains additional abilities. Usually, itās not worth appraising low quality gear.
I used all the character classes and the Archer, Amazon, and Dwarf stood out for me. The spell casters were kind of boring and the Fighter is pretty standard. Not saying the classes are not good but in terms of play style the other 3 have more interesting mechanics.
When holding square with the fighter he defends with his shield but creates an AOE perimeter around him. Any party member in the area gets a defense and attack boost while remaining in the area. The Atlus reps said that later on the Fighter can learn aggro skills so he can become the tank character.
Archer has a limited amount of arrows but you can pick up your fired arrows anytime plus enemies/treasure drop arrows from time-to-time. You can charge her arrow shots (Circle) for more damage, and you can aim her shots. Up shots will cause the arrow to ricochet from the roof and rain down on enemies. In the air, her default shot is a diagonal shot, while up makes her shoot straight.
Spell casters square is standard melee attack on the ground. Spellcasters have mana and can only fire a limited amount of spells but if you hold down square you can recharge mana. You can move and charge mana at the same time. Holding square while in the air makes them shoot three tracking balls on an enemy. Circle shoots their specialty spells. Sorceress focuses more on ice while Mage uses fire. Both spell casters can pick up spell books which will cast different spells if you access it from the d-pad menu. Sorceress had tornado spells, ice walls and buff spell books while the mage had a thunder cloud spell, and some other buff/debuff spell books.
Amazon combo flow chart image is not true. lol She has fast movement speed and a good dive kick. Her attacks are pretty slow though so you kind of have to be careful with her. Her animations when riding a mount are pretty ridiculous.
Dwarf movement speed is slow but he his aerial attacks gets him around the screen quickly. Heās the strongest melee fighter and his ability to throw objects/bodies at people deals huge damage.
