FF Type-0: Completed.
I'll keep this rant brief. Basically, in short, kind of disappointed at the game. I've already ranted about the Voice Acting nonsense, though I guess I should give credit to the fact that the last chapter, the voice acting quality did jump considerably as the actors felt like they were actually trying, so it was no longer "Ada, Wait!" level bad.
My issues with the game are otherwise this:
-Combat system feels kind of cheap. The main issue I have is the game REALLY hates melee fighters and if your fighter isn't good at Magic, or you equip the wrong kind of spell, you could legitimately be SOL for certain areas. The entire issue could be resolved if they just gave you a Jump button. I wish they just did KH style combat in that you hold a button down to access a hot-key of several attacks, instead of being locked to 4 moves until a save point.
-Character deaths not well handled; ranted about this already, won't go into details.
-Enemy level curve is stupid. Level is kind of a god stat, near as I can tell, and at first things are fine, but then you hit Chapter 5 or so and the game is all "Suggested level is 28!" *highest level character is 22* Leveling is slow too unless you abuse Secret Training. I get it; this was a carry over from the Portable area, but it's still stupid. I don't mind this stuff for optional aspects, but forced areas? Argh! Just do level scaling for plot missions.
-The Ensemble cast, in that they have a cast of 12 characters and try to give them roughly equal time...in a 10~ hour game. You never really get a good sense of character growth or development, and there's no real focus either. This makes the ending fall completely on deaf ears, since all the ideas they're talking about are so poorly established. The whole "These are kids who grew up knowing nothing but war!" is completely lost and we only recognize that when the game comes out in the final hour saying "Wait, there's things you can study BESIDES Warfare!? That's crazy!" The cast really needed to be cut down in half, or alternatively, make a primary 6 characters, with the other 7 just being there for primarily gameplay purposes. Better to have half the cast receive some level of characterization beyond surface level stuff than the entire cast fall on it's face. All we really get is, near as I can tell:
Ace: Generic acting-leader dude
Deuce: Reserved Girl
Trey: By The Books Guy
Cater: Quirky cheerful girl
Cinque: Ditz
Sice: Serious Bitch
Seven: Rational Bitch (honestly, her and Sice were basically interchange-able, I often confused them)
Eight: Exists
Nine: Is Raijin
Jack: The Simple yet optimistic one
Queen: Brainy Girl
King: Stoic Guy
I may have fudged some of those up, but that's because the game gives you so little to work with until the last few scenes. Really, the only personalities that actively stood out were Nine's (because he's very open about the "Tough Idiot" thing), Queen because she actually speaks like an intellectual at times, and Cater because her VA actually put inflections on the character to give her something resembling a character in her lines. While the game succeeded at focusing on the class as a whole instead of individual characters, it failed to actually give any character enough time to really become a developed figure. It contrasts, say, Dissidia which did the same thing, giving the 10 heroes equal spot light (with WoL getting a little bit more as the designated "Ensemble Lead"), and while Dissidia has it's issues here, you can at least get a full snapshot of the character in question. Ignoring accuracy, if you didn't play their original games, you could get a sense of what kind of character they are or what they were aiming for with them, and at least see some level of growth, if forced, on the characters. Type-0, I can't tell you how, say, Trey started the game and how it was different from where he ended.
-I left off Rem and Machina on purpose, because I feel they need to be addressed separately. In a sense, while Type-0 is an ensemble...these two are the real protagonists of the game since they get significantly more attention than the rest of the class, being the new students. Now I don't mind this in terms of Rem because I feel Rem they had an interesting angle to take and she wasn't offensive, just kind of wish they did more with her, but Machina? He's the real issue. At first, Machina didn't seem so bad; ok, he's over-protective of his childhood friend, because he doesn't want to lose her; ok, that's not something I'm fond of but it's also something I can tolerate. The problem is that Machina just becomes more insufferable as the game goes on. "Hey, your brother was killed helping Class Zero, CLEARLY they are the ones responsible for his death!" "YOU"RE RIGHT! THEY SHOULD PAY!" was the moment where I realized just how bad Machina is and the game really does nothing to offset this. Also I felt it was blatantly obvious that the new Milites l'Cie was him. Gee, he disappears for a chapter and that same chapter Milites gets a NEW MYSTERIOUS MASKED l'CIE WHO APPEARS OUT OF NOWHERE! Totally not suspicious! The fact that Machina is one of the only characters to get any legitimate focus just makes the game's utter lack of character focus hurt that much more.
-As a positive, I will grant Type-0 did a decent job with the limited screen time given to the supporting cast member NPCs. Kurosame was probably the best handled honestly, as I legitimately felt bad when he was gone. It's rare they can make a hard-ass, kind of a dick leader actually seem like a decent guy but they pulled it off, since they demonstrated that yes, he does care about Class Zero, and wants to support them, but he only has so much pull, and were it not for the awful voice acting, I feel Class Zero's reaction to him being dead, eg "So this guy was our leader? I hear he was a dick, **** him" would have been quite powerful since they team goes "we'll remember you, we promise!" but nope, Crystal tells you to flip off, so the guy's noble sacrifice and good deeds are all for naught. I also appreciate the One Eyed Milites Commander, being the trope of "he's the enemy, but he's not a bad" but not painful in it. He has no remorse for fighting for his side, but he's clearly not a bad person, and they even give him a fitting end that lets you look at him with a "yeah, he went out a hero" and in a way that would be viewed positively from Milites' point of view too given he prevented a potential serious **** up by someone else and saved many lives, not just the player's "hey he helped the team, he's a cool guy!"
-Game's too short. Seriously, this ties in with the ensemble issue, in that they have a really interesting setting with a lot of facets to explore, and a big primary cast...and hope to get everything done in as little time as possible. I'm not against short games, but this game was inappropriately short. Crisis Core is similarly lengthed, but the game is focused on one character and his point of view, and had the advantage of being in an already familiar setting, so they didn't have to do major setting establishments. It's a pity because Type-0 definitely has an intriguing world I'd love to learn more about, but it really doesn't give it enough time.
Overall, for a game I was interested in, it left me disappointed. It has some ok points, but overall I cannot defend this game much, as it screws up too many details. I WOULD be interested in a sequel of the game, if they actually handled it like a full-length game and tried to address a lot of the issues mentioned above, since yes, Type-0's world is definitely one worth revisiting, but the game itself leaves a lot to be desired.
