Final Fantasy Type-0 HD was originally only released in Japan for the PSP. It was remastered in HD for the PS4 and translated into English for the first time. It is a spin-off to the Final Fantasy series, and it’s development is a messy one. The original game was announced as Final Fantasy Agito XIII as part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries that included both Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (that has since morphed into Final Fantasy XV).
Despite the HD uplift, the PSP origins are obvious. While the graphics has been touched up, the textures are muddy, and the amount of detail in the environment is low. Character models, supposedly improved, still look blurry. As part of the process to port the game, the multiplayer was dropped, leaving only the single player story. The good news is that the multiplayer exclusives items were then incorporated into the single player mode.
It was mentioned by the developers that Type-0 was something more experimental than what a mainline Final Fantasy would allow, and this is obvious. Even from just the opening cutscene, it sets the tone with its subject matter of war, death and blood. Unlike Final Fantasy XV, Type-0 retains a lot of its shared mythos roots. It assumes the player is already familiar with terms like l’cie. Set in the world of Orience, the game starts off with the army of Milites storming against other nations in a bid to take them over and gain control of their crystals. Unlike the bloodless war that other Final Fantasy games had portrayed, Type-0 shows a grimmer reality. A twist unique to this world is that characters lose the memories of the dead, even close ones such as siblings and lovers. The Crystal erases these memories to avoid the characters having their past regrets haunting them and affecting their performance.
Unfortunately, a big chunk of the game is told via static images which are a bit disappointing. It’s understandable given the original hardware. It’s very easy to not care about the story though since it doesn’t quite grip you and ends up over complicating things. The game allows he player to control the fourteen members of Class Zero from the academy Vermillion Peristylium. While the combat mechanics are the same for each of the characters, they wield different weapons and thus their play styles can vary a lot. Despite this, ranged characters are definitely the better ones to utilize simply due to how the enemies placements are designed and the weaponry that they use.
Type-0 uses a real time combat system that has a high focus on action. Actions are mapped to the face buttons. All characters have an attack from their weapon of choice, an ability, an offensive magic slot and a defensive magic slot. The ability and magic slots can be customized as characters learn new skills as they level up. During combat, characters can dodge and lock on using the shoulder button. It’s a fun system once you get used to how it works and it is definitely confusing at the beginning as you struggle to learn its quirks.
During an enemy’s attack, they are vulnerable and this is denoted by a colored circle on the enemy and a distinct sound effect. If you land an attack during this short opportunity, it’ll either deal massive damage or outright kill the enemy. The combat system, while it may have been fluid on the PSP, feels quite clunky on the PS4 and definitely hasn’t aged that well. Locking onto opponents are annoying when you would rather that the lock-on move to the next opponent upon their death rather than staying there. Keeping opponents in range for melee characters can also be a pain.
One of the biggest complaints when it was first released was the camera. It is non-customizable and it is too quick with too much motion blur applied to it. While a patch was made to improve it, it is still not ideal and can cause motion sickness. The game is based around missions. During each mission, you choose any three of Class Zero as your active party and the rest will be placed in the reserves. You can swap between any of the three active characters at any time and if an active character dies, you can then swap for one of the reserves. You get a ranking at the end of each mission based on your performance in a variety of areas such as time elapsed.
The difficulty is poorly paced. You have way too many playable characters. Since only active characters gain experience and level up, thus keeping all characters at a decent level is difficult. If you focus on a few, the game penalizes you towards the end of the game as it will force you to split your characters up into multiple parties. You’ll be doing fine during a mission and then the difficulty will suddenly spike during the final boss of that mission. Each mission is filled with waves and waves of enemies that all act the same so there’s not much variety.
Between missions you can explore the academy. You’re allocated free time and interacting with characters will up time until the next mission. Some of these side activities are a lot of fun such as breeding chocobos while others are tedious like sitting through bland dialogue from NPCs. There are difficult sidequests that are more for New Game Plus due to their high level requirements. You can also head outside to explore the land of Orience. Despite being a very different Final Fantasy in terms of atmosphere, it still retains a lot of its classics. The soundtrack is comprised of many remixed tracks, which provides a hit of nostalgic as well as being of high quality. The game has a world map, and interacting with moogles, chocobos and the crystals feels right at home.
For every good point about the game, there are negatives. There is a very questionable choice of putting random high level enemies in story missions so that your characters get one-hit KO’d. This normally wouldn’t be as bad except that you cannot revive characters until the mission is over. Then you have the level 99 monsters roaming on the world map that chases you. It’s annoying and adds nothing to the game except negativity.
By the time half the game is gone, it starts to feel really tedious and repetitive. This is also the point where the story becomes uninteresting and turns into a mess. The characters are flat, there’s just not much to keep you staying. The missions with time limits in them are the worse since you will have to fight unending waves of enemies until the time elapses.
The final chapter of the game is where the game really goes off the rails. It is filled with long bland cutscenes that never seems to end. It doesn’t add much to the story and it took a wacky turn for its finale, seemingly without warning, a drastic departure from its war themes. You can feel it is the final stretch of the game, yet the game takes an hour of cutscenes before you can attempt the final mission.
The final mission is filled with stupid gimmicks that are more annoying than fun. Actually, it is not fun at all. That mission is dragged out, filled with crappy mechanics and outright terrible game design that ruins an already very bland and mediocre game. There are instant death attacks, warping enemies, invisible enemies, time limits, and other restrictions placed on your characters. This all leads to a poor final boss that is scripted instead of being an actual epic battle to save the world. Once you have finished the 20-25 hours story, you’ll come to realize that the game is designed for multiple playthroughs. However, only the second playthrough will yield any significantly new material. You’ll get extra story missions, cutscenes and bosses.
Overall, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a mixed bag. Its experimental nature gives it a very different atmosphere to your typical Final Fantasy game. Its focus on war and a group of characters journey through that is interesting, and the Academy environment different (although Trails of Cold Steel ended up doing all these things in a much better way). Unfortunately, it is plagued with a boring messy story, repetitive mission design and a lot of little design annoyances.
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