Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, which is a remake of a PSP title that was previously unreleased in the US, is about three female protagonists, Sice, Seven and Deuce, in a story about war, politics, crystals and magic. At least, for me it's about those three. Type-0 would very much like you to play as every single character of the roster made up of 14 vastly different students, that you'll have to constantly cycle between, ensuring that you're keeping them all leveled up for future missions. But I can confirm that that's not really the case here.
You see, my first few hours with Type-0 weren't very good. I wasn't really having a lot of fun. In fact, I disliked the game for what it made me do. It constantly reminded me to cycle through my characters, ensuring that they're always up to whatever mission is right around the corner. And in a way, it's not entirely wrong. For people that like diversity in their characters, the game can surely be played that way. But once I realized I can choose three characters that I'm comfortable with and simply focus on leveling them up, the game became a lot more manageable, and thus, a lot more fun.
But it would be a mistake to say that you'll never actually play as other characters, simply because you've chosen your favorite three. There will be many instances where the game will forcefully remove a party member or you'll suffer an accidental death, meaning you'll have to resort to using characters you weren't planning on using. Basically, you still want to occasionally raise some of the characters' levels, but you don't have to concentrate on it like the game will have you believe.
Magic is slightly harder to use due to Type-0's fast paced combat
Type-0's biggest strength lies in its lore, its world and its politics. In fact, if the game didn't have Crystals, Chocobos, and summons like Ifrit and Shiva, I would have a hard time connecting this to the Final Fantasy franchise at all. That's not all that's connected, though. The world of Type-0 also has l'Cie, the magically branded and extremely powerful individuals that also populated the Final Fantasy 13 series. While Final Fantasy games in the past have centered around warring factions and countries like Final Fantasy VIII, XII and Tactics, I don't think they ever portrayed them as brutally as in Type-0, which is where the game's M-rating surely stems from. It's the only Final Fantasy I can think of that actually shows a wounded and bloody Chocobo on its last breath just minutes into the game.
The Crystals in Type-0 are peculiar, as they all provide their own respective countries a certain boon, as well as a burden. For instance, the Vermilion Crystal causes humans to forget people the dead, as it removes any emotional connection between them because it's otherwise a burden. For instance, one of the most unique aspects of the lore, which I really liked, was that each and every soldier needs to wear a Knowing Tag (Dog tag), but leave it behind when they go to battle. These Knowing Tags must then be picked back up after the battle, otherwise it's proof that the soldier has died. If a soldier dies in battle and his Knowing Tag is never recovered, it's as if he never existed. I don't think I've ever felt such despair playing a Final Fantasy game like I have in Type-0, and I'm guessing such risks were taken because this isn't a core Final Fantasy game, but rather a spin-off title.
Class Zero also has an interesting dynamic, with drama unfolding between the various students. Rem and Machina are two new members of Class Zero, and while Rem seems to be trusting of her new comrades, the same can't be said for Machina. Likewise, the Doctor, who Class Zero refers to as Mother, also doesn't trust the two new students. It's as evident as ever, when she grants you 12 pieces of equipment for completing one of her tasks, and yet there are 14 of you total.
Machina (right) is one of the game's central and mysterious characters
The game fires off all cylinders right from the beginning, thrusting you into an invasion by the Empire (it's always the Empire) and putting Class Zero in the front line. Class Zero is a special unit of classmates that act as the game's covert ops, with students who are highly skilled in magical combat and possess weapon prowess beyond a normal person's limit. It's not long until your home region of Rubrum decides to fight back and reclaim the lands lost to the Empire. Of course the story has a lot more twists and turns beyond that, but I won't spoil any more story elements here.
The game is divided into two distinct aspects — the free roaming aspect that allows you to complete side-quests, explore the world and grind to level up and be ready for tough missions, and then the Mission aspect. Before each mission, you get a finite amount of time, and various activities will take up a certain amount of hours. Talking to NPCs with green exclamation marks and studying in class will take two hours away, while going out into the world map and coming back will take up six. You're never forced to do any of these and you can easily skip all the allotted hours to go directly into the mission but you'll be missing out on a good chunk of the content. Talking to those NPCs will sometimes give you a lot of insight into the game's backstory, as well as allow you to get to know a lot of the characters in much more meaningful ways. And even if you don't trigger a cutscene, you will always get a helpful item out of it.
Missions are what progress the story further, and it is where the majority of the game's difficulty lies. There is a toned down difficulty exclusive to the HD remake, so if you're feeling overwhelmed, you can always tweak it when not in a mission. The missions in the game usually revolve around infiltrating enemy bases, and tackling a variety of mission objectives while systematically taking down enemies in the process.
Never doubt a dude's ability to kick your ass with a deck of cards
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is an action game, which might sound atypical for Final Fantasy games, but it has been done before. The combat feels similar to FFVII Crisis Core's, but certainly more responsive. Each and every member of Class Zero sports a different weapon and handles very differently, which I certainly appreciate. I highly suggest you take on the game's combat training with each one to get a good feel for all of them. Ace, for example, is primarily a ranged user who shoots a deck of cards at his enemies and can buff himself with certain cards. Jack, on the other hand, wields a very powerful Katana, his stance makes him unable to run, but instead he has some crazy powerful counter moves. Seven is a good mix of close and long ranged combat with her Whipblade, as it can take down enemies up close, but it can also extend to hit far enemies. What I'm trying to get at here is that not only does each character have different strategies based on their movement and weapon they have, but each of them will have a different appeal to the player, based on their fighting style preference.
There are also missions that play out a bit like a Strategy game. They play out on the world map and have you controlling a single character, assisting armies in taking over neighboring enemy towns and cities. You'll have to juggle defending your own cities from invading armies, while also providing support for your own. As your army surrounds a settlement, it will slowly drain its health until it becomes yours. Larger cities will have protective barriers that need extra firepower from your armies to take down and can be invaded, which takes you into the city on a mission to kill the commanding General. These missions never wear out their welcome though because there aren't a whole lot of them.
But it's the segments of exploration and combat within missions that really drive the whole experience home. While you might always have a mission marker telling you where to go, you're still encouraged to explore various areas for hidden items and extra enemies that will further award you more XP. There is something extremely satisfying about unleashing your favorite Class Zero member on enemies with a fighting style that evolves as much as the character does. There are always new skills to unlock and master, some that drastically change up a character's attack strategy. It's also important to note that Type-0 is certainly no button masher. In fact, that's probably the easiest way to get yourself killed. Playing strategically, waiting for opening, knowing when to defend and use healing spells and items, and even knowing when to pull back completely are all major components of the game's battle system, and it all blends together fantastically.
Here is Lightnin– I mean, Seven, wielding her Whipblade
If there is one aspect of the combat and mission scenarios that feels a bit uneven are the frequent difficulty spikes. There will be missions that throw crazy enemies at you without a warning. Often times you're supposed to run from them, but unless you notice the Moogle text telling you that in the top left corner of the screen, you might miss it and attempt to fight, only to lose members of your squad. Likewise, there are enemies and bosses you are supposed to lose to, but the game never makes mention of that. I hate these sort of encounters, because those fights always make me waste a lot of my healing and support items, only to find out I could have just stood there and advanced the game. There is a big difference between liking the challenge of Type-0, but then being punished by its uneven difficulty spikes.
The fact that Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a remake of a PSP game is very evident. While the main characters look pretty fantastic, it's the secondary characters and the environments that suffer from extremely low textures. All of the game's cutscenes also use the standard PSP footage, which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have a completely different color filter than the rest of the game. It's not that I expected Square to fully remake and rebuild the entire game, but just know there are some truly ugly characters and environments in the game. What's also jarring is the crazy fast camera rotation coupled with some really intense motion blur when you're Akademeia. Seriously, it's enough to give you a headache. The graphics I'm willing to forgive, it's the various mechanics of the game that I just can't wrap my head around. This is going to be quite the laundry list so bear with me.
That low texture face…
For one, when exploring Akademeia, there is no simple fast-travel system, meaning you always have to run to each and every destination on foot. It's not that Akademeia is huge by any means but the game tries to extend its playtime by forcing you to run to each and every destination. There is a teleportation pad in the middle of Akademeia which does take you to six different facilities, but all of them are inaccessible by foot anyway, and what's more inconvenient about this is that you have to always teleport back to the Main Hall, and never directly between the six locations. Here is the worst example: when the timer runs out and you're forced to go on a mission, you usually have to run to all the way to your Classroom which is a few loading screens away, then listen to the briefing and accept the quest, then run all the way back to the front gates of Akademeia, which once again is four loading screens away.
Also trying to upgrade all your characters, if you indeed choose to play as all of them, is extremely tedious. For one, you can't simply switch between character screens with the shoulder buttons, which would have made the whole process slightly less annoying. You also can't just auto-level any character based on what the game might recommend, which means you have to go in and manually select the upgrades. I get that some people will actually love this, but the whole process just takes too long. Equipping and changing skills is done in an entirely different menu as well, which also isn't as user friendly as I had hoped. Switching characters also falls into this category since you can only ever do it at a Save point. If you do plan on grinding with multiple characters, you're always going to have to go back to a town, back to a save point, and switch your Leader, as well as shift around your Reserves.
This user unfriendliness extends to Shops as well. Making sure your characters are equipped with the strongest weapons and gear is extremely important, but the game doesn't have a simple compare feature that tells you the current weapon stats versus the new weapons. You have to go into the Equip screen, hover over the weapon or gear, remember their value, then go back into the shop and compare that value to the new one. That's completely asinine!
Furthermore, every time the game asks you a question like "Would you like to enter this town?", "Would you like to teleport back to the main hall?" the default answer is always "No," which makes me always click that first out of habit because why wouldn't I want to use it, if I'm running directly into it? And while this might sound like a rather stupid complaint, here is an example of where it actually managed to wipe out my party. While on my Chocobo, I was running toward my Mission destination that happened to be in an area with tough monsters that are visible on the world map, that can insta-kill anyone in your party. One of them locked on to me and was directly behind me as I was rushing toward the town. I was in such a panic that when I got to the town, I kept pressing X in hopes of escaping it, but since the default option was "No," it booted me back out and the Behemoth-like monster actually managed to catch me, and the rest was history.
This and other Moogles will constantly remind you that you are indeed playing a Final Fantasy game
If there is one more slight complaint that I have, it's that the game's multiplayer was completely removed. In its place is a system of Backup characters that are basically Class Zero members with names based on various designers of the game. That means during a mission, you can be joined by Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase as they'll take the place of your two current squad members, and earn points as they defeat enemies. This is beneficial on two levels. Firstly, it allows your real Class Zero members to stay alive longer, as they're subbed out with Backup characters. Secondly, those points that they earn can be used to purchase various gear or useful items. As useful as this feature is, it doesn't replace another real player actually helping me out during a mission. Since the PSP version was originally built on tackling missions with other players, it's a shame this was taken out for what seem like non-reasons.
I just spent four and a half paragraphs detailing my personal annoyances with the game, and yet despite all of those, I couldn't help but enjoy my time with Type-0. It's legitimately fun when you're tackling difficult quests, and the combat system is highly enjoyable. Mechanically the game's busted, and I'm disappointed that the conversion to HD didn't come with a lot more user friendliness when it comes to the various mechanics in the game, but they never deterred me from playing it and for the most part enjoying the game.
There's also the complaint about the game not coming to the PS Vita, which would have made the most sense considering its PSP roots. While I'm not personally upset about that per se, I am baffled since many games nowadays have identical versions on the PS4 and the PS Vita, such as Samurai Warriors 4, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, and so on. But then again, I am not a developer, nor do I know the amount of work that goes into making something like that happen, so therefore I can't truly criticize this, but I can point it out.
While I hate Cater's voice, I can't deny she is useful in battle
The voice acting is certainly hit or miss, and often cringe worthy. While they're not all terrible, there are some truly horrible stand outs. The best examples of terrible voice acting come from Cinque, Cater and Jack. Man is it tough to listen to any of them deliver their lines. Thankfully, you can set the language to the original Japanese voice overs. The soundtrack overall is appropriately epic when it needs to be, as well as toning it down to being somber and melodramatic. Takeharu Ishimoto might be the next best Final Fantasy composer behind Nobuo Uematsu. The only downside to the soundtrack here is that there really aren't any memorable songs aside from the theme song motif that's used in various songs throughout. You certainly won't be humming the battle theme to yourself any time soon.
For a Final Fantasy game, albeit a spinoff, it's shorter than I expected it to be. I clocked about 32 hours when the credits started rolling. When you get to that point though and you're left wondering, what the heck was this game actually about, the answers actually lie in your 2nd and possibly 3rd playthrough. Once you finish the game once, you'll get access to secondary missions, as well as encounters in Akademeia that weren't there before once you load that save file and start a new game. All your levels, items and upgrades carry over though, so unless you're switching to one of the harder difficulties, you should breeze through the game.
If I was to score the game purely based on its individual mechanics, it would probably score less than what I decided to give it. However, my long hours spent with the game never wore me out. I was always willing to boot it up and progress the story, even if it meant I had to get through its largely archaic systems. I wanted to find out the fate of Rubrum, Orience and Class Zero. And even more importantly, I wanted to dive headfirst into each and every action-packed mission. It's a game I envied Japan of having for so long, and now I'm thankful to see that the envy was justified.
