Despite what games like Call of Duty may have you believe, war is hell – it isn't pretty, it isn't exciting. At its core, it is mass murder that tears families and nations apart from within. A ballsy opening statement, perhaps, but it's something that Square Enix have clearly focused on in Final Fantasy Type-0, quite possibly the darkest, grittiest game to bear the Final Fantasy brand yet.
Set in the same mythos as FF13 (and, incidentally, 15), Type-0 focuses on Class Zero, students from Akademia, a military academy that's part of the Dominion of Rubrum. When the Militesi Empire invades the other Crystal States of Orience, their attacks seem initially successful, until Class Zero arrives and begins to fight back.
Players are thrust into the war, in control of the fourteen students of Class Zero (each named based on a set of cards, curiously with Ten absent, and two additional members) as they fight to retake Rubrum from the Militesi, and unravel the secrets of the war and the crystals themselves. It's typical Final Fantasy affair, but on an empire wide scale with a deep, meaningful, storyline that tugs on the player emotionally. I challenge all but the most stone-hearted gamers to not be at least a little choked up by the first fifteen minutes of gameplay.
With such a wonderful story to be told, one could expect Square Enix, masters of the RPG genre, to deliver on it well. Sadly, two factors severely inhibit this. As one would imagine with a plotline as in-depth as that of Type-0, there's a lot to fit in, and the sheer amount of places, people and events that are thrust on you can be daunting. The cutscenes play out in a documentary style, but the plot is still labyrinthine. That in itself is no issue, fans of the series are used to in-depth weaving plotline. No, the issue arises in that much of the story is hidden on your first playthrough as events unwind differently dependant on your actions and choices, and in order to truly understand the game, I felt that a second playthrough was necessary. Whilst I admire that the game inspired a second run almost immediately after the first, I can't help but feel that such a powerful story shouldn't be hidden from the players, requiring a second run just for certain plot points to make sense.
Secondly, despite Square Enix having over three years on the localisation, and some prestigious voice acting talent in their back catalogue (Richard Epcar as Gaius Van Baelsar in Final Fantasy 14, being a particular shining moment), the game really trips over itself into quite uncomfortable territory, and does so frequently. Most of this is just some awkward scripting on characters like the l'Cie Qun'mi, for example, who suffers from almost every alternate line she utters being some variant of “This sucks” or “That sucks”. Also, having your Moogle advisor staple “kupo” to the end of every sentence wore out its novelty quickly, and rubbed right through into the realms of laughable annoyance by the end of her introductory paragraph.
The game was originally a Japanese exclusive PSP game, released back in 2011, and whilst the graphics have been polished to a beautiful shine by the CGI wizards at Square Enix, it still shows in places with some slightly dodgy textures here and there, but considering the limitations of the original framework, this can be forgiven and it still looks gorgeous and runs great. It's a visually impressive game, especially when the spells begin to fly and some of the bigger enemies and summons strut across the screen, and there's plenty of this. The only significant graphical drawback is a camera that swings wildly and in a very fuzzy manner which can be very disorientating in the heat of battle.
Naturally, considering the setting, Type-0 has a lot of combat, and at this the game excels. Combat is simple to understand, complex to master, and has a wealth of depth that the most hardcore of JRPG fans will thrive mining into. Each of the fourteen playable characters feels completely different to the others, with varying weaponry, magic, strengths, weaknesses and playstyles. Some are slow and heavy, others nimble but weak, fragile but damaging, the list goes on, and it makes for some great replayability and differentiation between missions.
In true Final Fantasy style, there's also a lot of extra side content that can add to the already formidable game length of forty hours upwards, with chocobo breeding adding some much needed light—heartedness to the setting. Sadly, these aren't all great, and the battlefield control missions are clunky and frustrating at best, confusing and muddy at worst.
“A class act to school the competition.”