Tested in the demo

The first screen says the demo covers the complete first chapter and lists its restrictions: character level cap 15 and Vision Mastery rank cap 5. It also says saved data can be carried over to the full game.

We stopped in Chapter 1 at party Lv.5, so we didn't reach either cap or the chapter's end. The transfer itself can only be tested with the full game.

The title menu offers New Game, Options, Quit Game and Full Game, which opens the full game's store page; once you have a save, Continue and Load Game appear too. The Tokyo Game Show Dungeon and Colosseum choices aren't here. New Game asks for Casual, Normal or Expert, and the prompt says difficulty can be changed at any time from Options.

Save at save points or from the System Menu while you're on the world map. Inside Mitra neither the System Menu nor the main menu offers Save, so step out to the map first. Load shows a separate Autosave above the numbered slots, and the save list always adds the next empty slot: after five saves it offered slot 06.

On Steam for Windows the saves are files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\FFRS_DEMO\Steam\ under your Steam ID, and Steam Cloud listed them as synced. The demo has no import, export or transfer menu.

Battles use menu commands: Attack, Skills, your Vision's skills, Defend, Items and Escape, plus Summon Esper or Limit Bursts when available. A turn-order bar across the top shows allies in blue and enemies in red, acting left to right. Tab fast-forwards animations, and Escape was greyed out in the boss fight. Escape can also fail: one attempt in a random battle didn't work, and the turn was spent.

Enemies carry a yellow stagger gauge under their HP. Empty it and they lose their turn and take extra damage. Stagger every enemy in the same turn and the game calls a Sweeping Stagger: every party member gets a bonus action, and then you choose a Resonance, a big attack from one of your equipped Visions. The full rules are on the Full Break, Limit Burst and Espers page.

Each character's battle box has a Limit bar under HP and MP. It started empty and rose after the character took hits. We didn't see it jump when we staggered an enemy, but Tronn's Mastery Rank 3 ability is called Fill LB on Stagger, so staggering is meant to feed it at least through that ability.

At Mastery Rank 1, Tronn taught Rain Restore MP on Stagger. With Leah equipped instead, Rain could still slot that ability for 20 of his 100 AP. Lasswell, with no Vision at all, could slot Leah's First Aid (10 AP). The details are on the Visions and inherited abilities page.

Text Language offers Japanese, English, German, French, Spanish, Korean and Traditional Chinese. Voice Language is Japanese or English. Both can be changed from the title-screen Options.

Gameplay has a Difficulty setting, Casual, Normal or Expert ('Change battle difficulty.'), so the choice you make at New Game isn't locked in. It also has Autosave (on by default), Text Speed up to Instant, Sprint Type (Hold, Invert Sprint or Toggle), an Encounter Sensor toggle and two airship settings, Airship Horizontal Camera and Additional Landing Marker. Graphics defaulted to Borderless Windowed at the desktop resolution, 60 FPS with Vsync. Keyboard controls can be remapped; the defaults are in the next section.

Read from Options > Keyboard. To skip a story scene, hold 1 for about 2 seconds; a quick tap only shows or hides the Auto, Log and Skip hints. Some keys change meaning with context: Q is Multicasting in battle and Active Time Chat on the field, and R is Limit Bursts in battle and Chocobo / airship interior on the field. While choosing a target for Tronn's Fire, Q switched it to all enemies (the prompt reads 'Q All'); we haven't confirmed whether that is what the keyboard map calls Multicasting.

In the quest log (J), R is 'To World Map': it opens the kingdom map centred on the current quest's target, and G there recentres on your own position. There's still no fast travel at this point.

On the field, H opens Recovery. Choose Items (Potion, Ether, Phoenix Down) or a character's white magic. Leah's Cure can target All (press 1) for 6 MP, and at Lv.6 it healed each party member for about 123–125 HP. The field main menu (Tab) also lists Quick Heal on G.

We stopped on October 22 back in the capital after Grandshelt Castle, at the start of the next quest. Not reached or not tested: the rest of Chapter 1, awakening materials and an actual awakening, Espers you summon yourself (Carbuncle, Leviathan, Odin), support Limit Bursts, what Multicasting means, the demo caps themselves and the save transfer to the full game, which wasn't installed on our test PC. Those parts still rely on Square Enix's previews and announcements.