I wouldn't buy it. I personally think that all the charm of the FF series was encapsulated in FFT and was lost with X. Maybe Squaresoft doesn't realize that their increasingly divergent style is alienating international audiences because their games still sell amazingly and get the stroke-off from the magazines and reviewers? I dunno.
But yeah, this doesn't look like the kind of world, story, or gameplay I would enjoy so I can't see any reason to pay money or attention to it.

"meh"

does anyone actually say "meh" because if I ever heard someone use that term I'd probably reflexively call them a fag

Maybe because I'm a campy dork who likes over-the-top "epic" shit but this kind of appeals to me... I liked the FFXIII versus trailer quite a bit more. But we're talking about the demo here... and I must say the battle system looks balls. I haven't really gotten into a Final Fantasy since 9 but I played 10 and I don't think this battle system looks like it works well! What was with the protagonist fighting that one monster about a few minutes in and was literally touching it while both parties just kinda stood there? If nothing else the battle system looks like it just needs to be refined.

But I thought it looked cool and epic.

what is epic about it

I think you're misusing the term epic it doesn't look epic at all

I'd pretty much written Final Fantasy off as far as future gaming purchases because I sided with my 360 instead of getting a PS3. But since this is going to be out on my system eventually, I started to have a kind of cautious optimism about it - provided I'll have the time to actually get into it when it comes out. I have mixed feelings based on what I've seen so far. It looks like Square Enix really liked how Advent Children looked and felt. It was nice to look at, but felt like a bunch of over the top cutscenes, culled from a Final Fantasy 7-2 that would never be made, stitched together with a nice (felt like) nine minute scene of a cell phone sinking. Flash and filler...little there for people who aren't already entrenched in the series - a percentage of them who would probably buy a phone book if it had the words "Final" and "Fantasy" on the cover, people who would go on to herald said phone book as a daring re-invention of the role playing genre.

This new game looks like it is going for the AC feel...everything is an over the top cutscene, including the battle engine. Yes, lets knock the enemy into the air, turn off gravity and go after them with some spinning attacks. I'm not sure they understood why the cinematics in the previous-gen FF's worked so well/had the impact they did. You trudged around with a spiked block for fourty five minutes bashing the confirm button through a menagerie of evil...then you got to see this (at the time) jaw dropping sequence. There are some scenes from FF8 I still remember, just because it was such a contrast... walk around fighting, talking, side-questing...then see this battle royale between the cadets from the two Gardens...or Squall's fight for the flying mech suit to go save the girl.

If the whole game is just...run forward, big cinematic sweep of landscape, fight, cinematic killing moves in the air, cinematic of the enemy transforming, cinematic of the walkway coming down after killing the enemy...there will be no impact. Visual desensitization.

There isn't much to see in terms of background so far. You basically have a roadway with some wreckage on it...a few monsters and enemy militia members sprinkled around with a bleak dystopian cityscape floating around the periphery. I don't mind the futuristic/sci-fi look, but it doesn't fit with some elements of FF yet they still try to shoehorn it in, it seems. And the baby Chocobo that ostensibly lives in the guy's afro?

I might be a bit naive or optimistic, but I think some of the goof-ball aspect of the black guy's performance will be toned down in the voice over for the NA release...unless they get Chris Tucker for the role or something.

though the UI still bugs me.

Same here, it looks like random scramble of selections. All for the sake of being slick. We'll see, it's hard to tell with that, but so far the battle system looks pretty bland and repetative. Though, the FF12-movement around battlefield style is OK. Not sure how it'll work. W/E. I bought all the FF's before, probably get this, but def. not at launch.

All FF systems were mostly bland. The thing that made the FFX/FFX-2 systems pop out to me was the pace, however. And that's why I think this one couldn't be too bad.


Also, I hated the FF12 system, because it was basically a mmorpg system made for controlling a group of guys rather than just one, and it was programmable.

Let the game play itself!