2496: Type Zero

In anticipation of the imminent Final Fantasy XV — a game which I am getting increasingly desperate to play the closer its release date creeps — I decided to boot up a game I’ve had on my shelf for a while, but haven’t really done anything with: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD for PlayStation 4.

I had pretty much no idea what I was in for when I fired it up for the first time. I just knew, prior to its release, that it was a well-regarded game for PSP that had previously been confined to Japan, and that people had been clamouring for a localisation for quite some time. In fact, so desperate were English speakers for an English version of the game that there was already a decent quality fan translation of the PSP version available, though in order to play that you’d need to 1) know how to “do” PSP homebrew and 2) be willing to “do” PSP homebrew.

In other words, Final Fantasy Type-0 was a mystery to me when I first started it. After about 15 or so hours with it so far, I think I’ve kind of got my head around what it’s all about and where it sits in relation to other Final Fantasy spinoff games — and the mainline series, for that matter.

Type-0 (formerly Final Fantasy Agito XIII) is part of the overly ambitious Fabula Nova Crystallis series which also includes the Final Fantasy XIII games and the upcoming Final Fantasy XV (formerly Final Fantasy Versus XIII), though since the series was first conceived each of the projects kind of diverged off in its own direction — hence the name changes, abandoning the direct links to XIII — so that now they only have the loosest of thematic and stylistic connections with one another.

That said, Type-0‘s mythology is quite closely related to that of Final Fantasy XIII despite unfolding in a different world, with particular regard to the existence of “l’Cie”, individuals who have submitted themselves to the will of a superior entity (in FFXIII’s case, powerful godlike beings called fal’Cie; in Type-0, the “peristylium” crystals that form the centrepieces of the game world Orience’s various city-states) and an obligation to fulfil some grand purpose called a Focus in exchange for kinda-sorta immortality and badass magical powers. Unlike Final Fantasy XIII, you don’t play l’Cie in Type-0; they’re part of the backdrop of the ongoing story.

Type-0’s narrative focuses on the dominion of Rubrum and its elite training facility Akademeia. Across thirteen classes, Akademeia trains young people to become Agito, the best of the best when it comes to martial and magical prowess. Among the classes, the cream of the crop is found in Class Zero, a unit of youngsters with particularly exceptional powers that has, until the events at the start of the game, been kept somewhat secret from the rest of Akademeia.

Class Zero is brought out of hiding and into immediate active service as Agito Cadets when the Militesi Empire invades Rubrum’s capital and Akademeia itself. Against rather improbable odds — including a l’Cie — they manage to push back the imperial incursion and retake Akademeia, giving Rubrum the opportunity to pick itself up and start planning a counter-offensive. From here, Class Zero plays a leading role in helping Rubrum to expand its territory, push the Militesi Empire back and prevent them from deploying any more of their weapons of mass destruction, such as the Ultima Bomb which devastated one of the other city-states of Orience.

If this all sounds highly political and like the setup for a strategy game such as Final Fantasy Tactics… well, you’d be wrong, technically, but there is something to that comparison, which we’ll get onto in a moment.

In actual fact, Type-0 is an action RPG in which you control a single member of Class Zero at once — accompanied by up to two of their classmates, depending on the situation — as they attempt to complete missions for Rubrum and, in between mission days, wander the dominion generally helping out and making life miserable for the Militesi Empire. Unlike mainline Final Fantasy games (with the possible exception of XII) where the emphasis tends to be on the core cast’s personal stories, Type-0’s plot is less about individuals and more about the ongoing conflict between Rubrum and Militesi.

Each member of Class Zero is unique in their capabilities. Each one wields a different weapon, which all handle very differently from one another, and each one has a unique skill tree, though there is some overlap in common abilities between numerous class members. Some are better at dealing or taking physical damage, some are ranged attackers, others have particularly strong magical capabilities. Ultimately, the best approach to playing the game is to try and keep the entire squad levelled up pretty evenly, which means you’re going to need to get comfortable with playing at least a few of the characters, and perhaps bring the ones you don’t like so much in the AI-controlled slots so they still get some experience.

The reason I mention Final Fantasy Tactics earlier is that the way you set up your characters in Type-0 bears more than a passing resemblance, albeit without the deep and complex Job system that Tactics has. In Tactics, each character had the ability to equip two different “Job commands” at the same time, allowing them to mix abilities and spells from two classes at the same time. In Type-0, your character has two main ability slots, up to one of which can contain a spell — though some characters can unlock an ability to equip two spells — and the other of which can contain one of their unique abilities. There’s also a third ability slot dedicated to defensive magic and abilities, allowing characters to equip curative spells, protective spells or physical abilities such as blocking damage.

In order to succeed in Type-0’s missions, you ideally need a mix of different capabilities, since you’ll run into enemies that are strong or weak against particular types of attacks, and sometimes you’ll encounter enemies that are out of melee reach — on balconies, for example — necessitating ranged attacks. In other words, it’s not simply a case of equipping all of your cadets with equipment and abilities that boosts their physical attack power as high as possible; you need to understand which ones are intended as mages, outfit them accordingly and them complement them with physical melee and ranged attackers to cover every eventuality.

The combat system itself takes a little getting used to. You control a single character at a time, and the face buttons on the PlayStation controller are mapped to normal attack with your weapon (Square), abilities and spells (Triangle and X) and defensive abilities (Circle). You can “lock on” to enemies and keep them in sight by holding the right shoulder button, and dodge with Circle while moving.

Notably, attacking doesn’t require button-mashing; characters instead continuously attack while you hold down Square. Some characters have different moves available if you push forward or backward on the analog stick while holding square; Sice, for example, has a gap-closing leaping slash forwards when you push forward, an attack behind her when you push backwards and a standard melee combo if you just hold the button without a direction.

The different weapons are all very… well, different, and in order to succeed with a character you need to familiarise yourself with not just the abilities you can equip, but the amount of time the character’s various animations take to complete. This is because Type-0’s combat is heavy on timed hits; while locked on to an enemy, they will occasionally show a weakness, usually right after an attack or if they’re knocked off balance. During this time, depending on the enemy’s remaining HP, your lock on reticle will turn either yellow (Breaksight) or red (Killsight), and if you land a successful hit with either a physical attack or magic while either of these is active, you’ll do enormous damage, even killing the enemy immediately in the case of Killsight.

Just hitting the attack button as soon as you see the markers isn’t generally enough, however; most characters have a bit of a wind-up to their attacks, meaning if you start an attack when the marker appears, you’ll probably miss the window by the time it actually impacts the enemy. Instead, you need to watch the enemy animations to anticipate when Breaksight or Killsight are going to appear, and over time you’ll come to recognise how different enemy types behave in order to take maximum advantage of this feature. Pudding-type enemies, for example, rear back before they swipe at a foe; when you see them do this, dodging to the side to avoid the strike then immediately launching a forward+Square attack with most characters is a good way to hit their Killsight window perfectly every time.

Type-0 is very much a mechanics-focused game rather than a story-centric game, which puts it somewhat at odds with the mainline Final Fantasy series, but firmly in keeping with many of the spin-off titles such as the aforementioned Final Fantasy Tactics. That’s not to say the story is bad — I’m not that far in so far, but it’s been a suitably dramatic “wartime epic” so far, with many of its important moments presented in an appealing “documentary” style — but rather it’s a game in which its individual characters are of significantly lesser importance than the big picture.

It’s an acquired taste, in other words. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it all that much when I first started playing, and indeed I know a few people who bounced off it quite quickly. However, give it some time and get to know how the combat works, and it becomes quite rewarding and satisfying. There’s plenty of side content to do besides the main missions, and it’s one of the most replayable Final Fantasy games I’ve ever seen, with a second playthrough not only seeing your Cadets at a suitable level to tackle tougher challenges, but also rewarding you with additional story material at various points.

Give it a chance if you haven’t already. It’s not the best game to ever bear the Final Fantasy name, but it’s a solid, interesting game in its own right that demonstrates, once again, that Square Enix isn’t at all afraid to experiment and do all manner of strange, wonderful things beneath the Final Fantasy banner.