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There were two parts to the demo. The first part was mainly an introduction to the story. I'm assuming it will be the opening scene in the game. It starts off with a FMV that will blow your mind showing Tidus before and during a Blitzball game (He makes an awsome check the the middle of it. Knocks the guy into the stands ^_^). The camera then goes back to the outskirts of the city as it shows Auron, who's shaping up to be the coolest character in the game, is overlooking the city when some bad s*** starts going down. It show Auron walk toward the arena where Tidus is, and as he steps in a puddle of water, the water splashes, but instead of landing on the ground, as you'd expect, it falls up. Things get worse from there, and Auron seems to get cooler with every step he takes. He meets Tidus, after the game is rudely interrupted when what appears to be a big ball of water fires blasts reminiscent of Diamond Weapon (via FFVII) in the middle of the city.

So Tidus runs after Auron, and as he does so, a kid appears behind him as time freezes (hard to explain, but so very cool to observe). He get's kinda stuck on the kid, and he realized that time has frozen. The kid, about 7-10 years old I'd guess, then says, "It's begun (sp?). [insert dramatic pause here, complete with kick arse camera directing] Don't cry." Then suddenly time has resumed and the kid is gone. Intrigued? Sure you are. Anyway, Auron finds him and brings him to this one point, motions toward the huge ball of water, and says, "We called it 'Sin'." The fact that 'called' is in the past tense is very curious to me. Anyway, Sin spawns a mini-sin the demo calles a "Sinspawn-Ammes", and it causes a whole mess of trouble.

The main thing it does is sprout a whole bunch of little monster things. You fight them, get to the 'Sin-Ammes,' and destroy it. You and Auron continue on, get ambushed, Auron blows up a building a kills a whole bunch of stuff, and you get to the ending movie of the demo. You're running across the falling building, and Tidus jumps onto a ledge that Auron is already standing on. Auron looks up at 'Sin' and says, "You are sure?" Another dramatic pause, followed by Auron saying, "This is it. This is your story. It all starts here."

Okay, the battle system. If you were expecting something exactly like 7-9, you're going to be disappointed. People complained that the battle system had little inovation from 8-9, and for those people, they will not be lacking new things to gawk over. Instead of having the ATB system, they changed to something more like Legend of Dragoon, only it has a display showing when everyone will go, allowing you to plan a strategy ahead of time. It may be interesting to note that some actions, such as using an item, switching equipment (which, btw, can be done during battle, though it uses a turn), takes less time to perform than attacking, so if you switch the curor from an attack command to the item command, you can see the characters portrait moving up and down accordingly. Pretty nifty.

The ability system is something the demo doesn't explain very well. After a battle, every enemy(or at least every enemy that you fight in the demo) gives a sphere of some kind. The types in the demo are 'Power Sphere', 'Ability Sphere' and 'Mana Sphere'. As for what they do, you can draw your own conclusions, but I'll just show you what I found at The Final Fantasy.

At the very beginning, each of your characters has its own place in something called the "Sphere Board". The Sphere Board is, as it name says, a board with interconnected tiles that contain spheres. You can move your character across the board through the game, the more you advance, the more abilities your character will have. You have to be aware that depending on the path you choose, your character will obtain certain abilities, and of course the most powerful abilities and spells are hidden in the huge Sphere Board of FFX.

If you think you can get the most powerful spells easily with the help of the Complete Sphere Board you are wrong. There are paths that are "locked", which means that you have to unlock them with the "Lv. 1 Key Sphere", "Lv. 2 Key Sphere", "Lv. 3 Key Sphere" and "Lv. 4Key Sphere". Of course, it won't be easy to obtain some spells like Ultima.

Navigating through the Sphere Board not only grants you extra spells. It can also give you more HP, more MP, increase your speed, defense, attack, etc...depending on the color of the sphere on the sphere board.

This next part I found interesting. You can switch characters in battle, and it does not take a turn to do so. Just hit L1, select the character you want to switch in, press X, and select the action for that character to make. You can see the applications of this for yourself.

Next, the summons; or, as FFX calls them, Aeons(pronounced E-ons?). Yuna, of course, is the only one who can use Aeons. Once you summon the Aeon, it takes the place of all three party members, and it fights just like your characters would. It has HP, MP, abilities, and magic. Pretty cool, eh? Yep, you bet it's cool. If the Aeon's HP drops to 0, it un-summons, and you have to get to a save point to revive it. In the demo, HP and MP were restored automatically, but whether or not the full game will require tents is yet to be seen.

Limit breaks have also been re-vamped. Now they're called Overdrives, and you access them in a way that's sort of a cross between FFVII and FFVIII (and yes, Aeons have Overdrives to). When you take damage, your overdrive meter fills, and when it's full, you simply press left to access the overdrive menu. Select the skill you want to use (I'm assuming you will eventually have access to more than one skill to choose from, though the demo always has one choice.), and select the enemy you want to use it on. In the demo, Auron's overdrive required you to enter a sequence of buttons (reminiscant of Zell in FFVIII); Tidus requires you press the action button at a certain time (reminiscant of the Dragoon attacks in Legend of Dragoon. But don't worry, it's MUCH easier than that); and Khimari's(the beast-type-thing) limit break is a simple select and use with no extra effort required (remiscant of FFVII limit breaks).

So, that's my crash-course on the FFX demo. If reading this didn't get you rabid for more FFX, then you need to actually play the demo. Then you'll be hooked for life. But if you think you might become an uncontrollable beast if you don't get FFX once you play the demo, you may want to hold off, as the game is not schedueled for release in America until December 26th (I've also heard the 27th and the 18th. I'm hoping 18, but we'll see what actually happens). Well, Final Fantasy: Worlds Apart said it's now schedueled for a December release, but I've not been able to confirm that.