Hit the Books
Review
Final
Fantasy Type-0 HD, SquareEnix (PS4)
Abstract: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a surprisingly solid addition to the
gargantuan Japanese role-playing game franchise. A decidedly darker tone sets Type-0 apart from other Final Fantasy titles. Incredibly smart
design decisions permeate the quick, skill-rewarding combat. The huge cast of
party characters allows players to keep the game fresh through its completion. A
nonsensical story, poor dialogue, and empty tedium between story quests detract
from experience, but Final Fantasy Type-0
HD is certainly a game worth checking out for fans of the franchise or genre.
Final Fantasy Type-0 is a game I never thought I would
get to play. Originally announced as Final
Fantasy Agito XIII, Type-0 was
later renamed and released on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) exclusively in
Japan. This portable release was intended to be one of the three games that
made up the ‘Fabula Nova Crystallis,’ an elaborate plan by SquareEnix to create
three totally different games that all shared a similar universe and mythology.
The first of these was Final Fantasy XIII,
a traditional JRPG released for the PS3. The second was Type-0, a mission based mobile JRPG experience. The last was Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a more action
heavy open-world RPG. Over the course of each games’ development, there were
some radical changes. FFXIII went from one game to three, becoming the
Lightning trilogy. Agito XII was
renamed and restructured. And Versus XIII became what we now know today as Final Fantasy XV.
Initially,
I was ecstatic about this tremendous initiative by SquareEnix. I had been a
pretty avid Final Fantasy fan ever
since I played FFVII, and was always hungry for more. My enthusiasm was quickly
damped after I played through FFXIII. The game had some good elements, but was
marred by many baffling design decisions. A confusing story and unlikable
characters aside, FFXIII was a linear grind-fest that only became enjoyable 25+
hours into the game. Each subsequent FFXIII sequel felt worse than the last.
Not completely dissuaded, I turned my eye to the other Fabula Nova Crystallis
titles. I was relieved to see that Final
Fantasy Type-0 had received fairly positive reviews, only to be crushed
upon discovering that Type-0 had
never made it to the states, and Versus
XIII was stuck in development hell. When the HD remastered version was
announced for a PS4 release, my interest was once again piqued. Right around
its release date I felt hungry for a new JRPG to dig into and felt Type-0 would fit the bill. Plus, I’m a
sucker for Final Fantasy. So I picked
it up, and here were are.
 |
| Yep, that's a dead chocobo. |
Final Fantasy Type-0 begins with a bang, as the Militesi
Empire initiates a deadly assault on the Dominion of Rubrum, leading to an all
out war between the two nations. The game is set in the world of Orience. The
land is divided into four separate ‘crystal states,’ so called because each is
led by a deity that manifests itself as a large crystal. After years of peace
between the four states, Militesi sought to gain control over Orience, starting
its surprise military campaign with a blitz on Rubrum. The intro to Type-0 was shockingly brutal, as graphic
depictions of warfare littered the game’s first cinematic. Bleeding troops
hobble to safety, Militesi troops execute the wounded by shooting them in the
head, civilians are massacred in the crossfire. Even the franchise staple
chocobos aren’t immune to the destruction, as the game starts with the brutal
bloody death of one. I really enjoyed what Tabata and team were going for with
the tone of Type-0. The is the first Final Fantasy game I have played that
takes into consideration the death and suffering caused by the game’s central
conflict. It helps to ground the fantastical world in reality, even if only
slightly, making it inherently more tangible and affecting. From that point
forward, the story progresses rather simply. You play as a group of elite
cadets from Rubrum’s foremost military academy, Academia, known as Class Zero. As
this strange student-military hybrid force, you are tasked with aiding Rubrum’s
military campaigns: recapturing Militesi controlled territory, conducting
secret infiltration missions, etc. As you get further, like so many other Final Fantasy titles, the game’s plot
goes off the deep end. Despite the work that clearly went into creating it, the
history and mythology of Orience is dense and impenetrable. Type-0 is written in a way so that only
the most dedicated fans can piece together what exactly is going on, or what everything means. The last act in
particular is a confusing mess and it comes out of nowhere. It provides no real
sense of continuity, or finality, to the story and gives far more questions
than answers. Poor writing permeates Type-0’s entire story, but that is sort
of expected for Final Fantasy games
at this point.
 |
| I know exactly how you feel, Cinque. |
Class Zero
is the focus of the game, acting to move the global narrative forward as the
central players within it. Class Zero also makes up your party of playable
characters. Each character is named after traditional playing cards (2-10,
Jack-Ace). There are fourteen total members, each with distinct personalities
and fighting styles. You have the ditzy mace-wielding Cinque, the spear-using
numbskull jock Nine, the rapier-equipped bookworm Queen, the stoic King with
his dual pistols, and the know-it-all elitist archer Trey to name a few. As you
can tell from these descriptions, Type-0
worked hard to make each of the 14 characters memorable and distinct. The price
the game had to do so was steep, though, as no one gets any real character
development, leaving them hollow stereotypes who exist just to exist. Type-0 keeps another franchise staple, too:
the characters have horrible dialogue. I found myself physically cringing at
the words, and delivery, whenever the characters spoke. Shallow personalities
and bad writing aside, I found myself really enjoying the design of Class Zero.
You could never confuse one character for another, as each one looks and plays completely
distinct. I found myself constantly switching between characters to see how
dialogue interactions changed or how they moved through the world (Cinque has a
great / terrible run animation by the way). The real strength of this character
diversity comes across in the gameplay. With fourteen (and more) unique ways to
fight enemies, I would change my squad of three characters between every
mission just to see how they played and synergized.
 |
| Just one of my many different party combinations. |
This brings
me to the combat in Type-0. Every RPG
relies on a solid combat system, and I’m happy to report that Type-0’s is pretty great. For starters,
the combat is fast and nimble, taking inspiration from action heavy systems like
the one in Kingdom Hearts. Dodging is
quick and essential. Battles are varied too, with an equal mix of magic, close
quarters and ranged attacks. You can reinvigorate encounters whenever you want
with how huge and different the cast of playable characters is. Not only that,
but mid-encounter Type-0 allows you
to switch between characters, changing up the way you play or getting off that
heal your party direly needs. In what feels like a franchise first, health
design feels more akin to a Souls
game. Player and enemy alike hit pretty hard, and either one can be downed in a
couple quick attacks. To be clear: health does not deplete nearly as quickly as
a Souls game, but still goes down much
faster than any Final Fantasy I can
remember. And this is great. Encounters, even bosses, are over with quickly, definitely limiting the frustration
the JRPG grindfest can cause. Final
Fantasy has always pretty guilty of turning enemies into damage sponges.
For example, a certain boss in FFXII can take over an hour and a half to kill,
even with perfect strategies and max level characters. In Type-0, the hardest boss I ever faced was down in a matter of
minutes. This adds to the quick feeling of combat, and I loved it.
Type-0 adds a lot of great skill-based
elements to its combat, too. My favorite among them was the breaksight /
killsight attacks. When locked onto an enemy your targeting reticle will change
colors, indicating when an enemy is exposing itself to big damage, which
usually occurs at some point during their attack animation. If you hit the
enemy when the reticle turns yellow it is a breaksight, which deals massive
damage. If red it is a killsight, and the enemy instantly dies. In this way Type-0 really rewards the players for
attacking at the right moment, rather than mashing the attack button. It was so
satisfying to bait out an enemy attack, only to kill it from full health in one
well-timed gunshot. Killsights in particular allow the player to tackle
extremely tough areas whenever they want, even if they are massively
underleveled. While I was playing, I managed to clear a level 39 mission even
though my party was filled with level 18 characters. My normal attacks did
essentially no damage whatsoever to enemies, and I could die in one hit, but
when I timed my killsights just right and dodged perfectly, I could down even
the strongest foe. Further, Type-0
allows players the option to do specific combat challenges to earn rewards,
like regenerating health or bonus defensive auras. These can be quite tough to
accomplish and the penalty for failing them is death. This creates a nice
risk-reward balance, and gives the player full control over how challenging
they want their experience to be. Finally, as an aside, Type-0 also features some real-time strategy missions, which
involve helping Rubrum troops capture Militesi controlled strongholds. I
appreciated that the game tried to change up how you ‘fought’ your enemies, but
the system was a little undercooked, ending up as pretty rudimentary and
boring. The game lets you skip these, however, so it’s not an issue.
 |
| Combat was fantastic. SOs, Killsights and character swapping kept each encounter fresh. |
Outside of
combat, however, Type-0 has
substantially less to do than its more fully fleshed out JRPG counterparts. Between
missions you have a set amount of in-game time to do tasks, explore the world,
etc. You can explore Academia, the homebase for Class Zero, but most of what
that involves is micromanaging your characters’ stats and equipment. Everything
you do (aside from fiddling around in the menus) consumes the time you have
between story quests. Talking to people can give you expository cutscenes and
items, but takes up 2h. Leaving Academia to explore the Orience takes up 6.
Super-difficult expert trials consume 12. I liked the feeling of having too
much to do in such a limited amount of time, but just wish the things you were
tasked with doing were interesting. Most people you talk to have a few
nonsensical lines and then they give you a Hi-Potion or something. Exploring
the world is pretty weak. There’s honestly not a lot to do or see. Towns
are never more than one screen, with a shop or two and nothing else. There are
a few optional dungeon areas, but they are generally short and unsatisfying. And
none of this even addresses the issue that, on your first playthrough, most of
this content is just too difficult to complete. By the end of the story you
should only be about level 35. So much of the world is filled with level 40+
monsters that getting through it is nearly impossible. You can only dodge every
attack and land killsights for so long without making a mistake. And this is a
clear design choice, as Type-0 begs
the player to play through the game again on NG+. To make sure you go through
the game a second, or third time, Type-0
locks off a lot of content through these level gates. I understand why the
developers want to encourage a NG+: it gives your game more ‘replay value.’ But
it just does not work for Type-0. In
a game with a more compelling world and more decipherable mysteries like Bloodborne I’m all for NG+. Not so much
here.
 |
Flying around isn't as fun as it looks. Talking to people around Academia
isn't much better. |
As a final
part of this review, I wanted to talk about how effectively Type-0 was ported from PSP to PS4. I’ve
never been a stickler for graphics and the like (gameplay and story are king in
my book), but the discussion is worth having here. There is a tremendous
generational leap between the PSP and the PS4, and when looking at the graphics
it really shows. The game is a smattering of different levels of graphical
fidelity. Floor and wall textures look like they are from a PS1 game; many of
the NPC models and environments look PS2-era; monsters and attack animations
from a PS3 game; and only Class Zero character models look PS4 (since they were
pulled directly from the high resolution pre-rendered cutscenes from the
original game). Also, to compensate for making the visuals look nicer, intense
motion blur was added to the camera. Now, the camera in Type-0 is already problematic. It is erratic and way too fast. But
with motion blur on top of that, seeing much of anything while rotating the camera is difficult. Over time you get
used to the crazy, blurry camera and find ways to mitigate its negative
effects. I just stayed locked onto enemies at all times to keep the camera
(relatively) fixed. Still, it was a major frustration for the first couple of
hours while playing.
 |
The motion blur can get really bad in combat. I quickly found ways to work
around it, fortunately. |
Overall, I
was quite impressed with what Final
Fantasy Type-0 HD had to offer. I was taken aback by how much I liked the
combat system, with smart choices all around. Type-0 was certainly more enjoyable than FFXIII, I can say that
much. The game’s flaws are obvious and problematic, but if you can put up with
them and see things through, you’ll be treated to a pretty solid JRPG.
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
3/5
