Final Fantasy Type-0 – Finished at 29 hours. Probably could have been a bit shorter if I had done a little less sidequesting. Interesting game with many flaws but some good points as well.
The gameplay is enjoyable. I enjoy the multiple characters even if it is very clear that the game had a set team composition in mind; ranged unit, melee unit, healer/support character. There are times when you can feel ‘stuck’ without a ranged unit in your party. I think a warning or reminder for that fact would have been nice, although you can just let the lead unit die in a pinch. The hardest part of the game was the mission in Chapter 5/6, with the battle on the clouds and the clash on the big bridge? I was pretty brutally underlevelled for both of those missions and had some difficulty getting through them. For whatever reason the difficulty/levels spiked a lot there. After that, I did a few extra missions and caught up in levels for the rest of the game. Problem solved. Final dungeon was very weird; the enemies are underlevelled but you have to kill them quickly. I think it was a pretty good idea because you are stuck in the final dungeon, so if it were a ‘normal’ final dungeon it would possibly be too hard for a team that was very underlevelled. (Although you can still play the missions in the Main screen so you’d never be permanently stuck.)
I found both the randoms and the bosses pretty pleasant, with a couple of exceptions. The dragon boss in Chapter 5 was just way too hard (at least for my level). I ended up using the goofy SPP characters to beat him. The final boss is a stupid trainwreck of stupidity. Why in the world did they think that two plot fights and no actual final boss was a good fucking idea? Good grief. I wouldn’t say that this game has the best gameplay ever, but it’s a decently executed ARPG with some warts.
The characters I generally thought were pretty good were Eight, Queen, and King, with Seven and Rem and Trey being decent as well. Everyone’s useable, though, although I wouldn’t bother with Machina.
I really enjoyed the Battle on the Big Bridge. It was probably my favourite part of the game.
The RTS stuff is decidedly less good, but not the worst? I endured it.
The war story is actually quite interesting and really hits you with some emotional notes. I think that the game hits the theme about war sucking really hard, from the cadets being traumatized by battle to the moral debates behind the use of nuclear bombs from both sides. Neither side is portrayed as particularly great; feels a little WWI-esque in that way. I think the war documentary aspect of the game’s plot is one of the strengths of the game. The game is QUITE dark compared to most other FFs and definitely most games set in a school, which caught me off-guard. I also like how people call you the red devils because you go into places and fuck people’s shit up. A lot of the people in both your school and in the outside world dislike the PCs for a variety of pretty good reasons.
The ‘regular’ ending is holy shit dark, with all of the PCs slowly dying and talking about what they would do with their lives if they had any more time to live. Then you see the scene with Rem and Machina where they find the pile of dead bodies of the PCs. I think the ending fits quite well with the ‘war sucks’ theme, especially since usually your own characters rarely suffer from random death like other people do in these games.
That’s about the only thing that I liked about the endgame plot. This is definitely a Fabula Nova Crystallis issue with the totally insane, nonsensical plots at the end. All of the setting work in the game is basically blown up just for some weird apocalypse and it’s all very confusing. And why in the ending is the wanky traitor Machina the true hero???The character work is quite poor, and most of it boils down to a combination of scene direction, scene choice, and general systemic underdevelopment of all of its characters. Some spoilers ahead, so be warned.
The 12 PCs not named Rem or Machina – Pretty unexciting and underdeveloped as a collective, the characters can hit some good moments, but overall are not that great. I think Queen and Trey are my favorites, just because they are pretty good representation of male and female nerd stereotypes, and I think a few of the others (King, Seven, Sice, Deuce, Cater, Nine) work in their limited roles and feel like different variants on teenagers.
Rem – Feels like the relatively unimportant love interest of the male lead that doesn’t exist. She’s okay, but in distress a little too often and doesn’t quite have enough scenes to make her work.
Machina – What a wanky loser. He feels like a character with some decent ideas (his inadequacy with respect to protecting those he loves could have been good), but good grief is he annoying. He spends all of his time moping and wanking around like a fucking loser, and then he has a face-heel-face turn like Kain Highwind? Great. It think the game really needed to develop his motivations and his relationship to Rem better to make him work.
class zero indirectly killed my brother so i will side with the people who killed my brother?
His turn to the empire (temporarily) is so underutilized, and the scene where he and Rem fight is so fucking weird and happens very rapidly. MILF (Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia) – Oozes style and stage presence and is very mysterious. She’s fine, but her plot arc feels a little abbreviated. Like everything else. She might be secretly god, who knows.
The Council that is not MILF – Dropped plot for the most part. Was the Commandant a traitor or is he just a troublemaking asshole?
Kurasame – Not much of a character, but amused me because the kids all irrationally hate him.
Caetuna – Kinda of a weird character. Don’t have too much to say about her.
Cid – I actually really like the idea of Cid, classic junta/autocrat, but again, the scenes he’s in are not well-directed and he ends up feeling undercharacterized. He reminds me a bit of a Soviet leader; understated in his dress, doesn’t have an ostentatious title, but is a control freak. The endgame plot with him has some massive jumping the shark. Why does he act this way? This is not in character. What is going on? (I read the Wiki afterward that said that he was possessed by some other being, but it would have been nice to see that in the bloody game.)
Qatar – Same song, different verse. He has this hook in the middle of the game where he talks about his ambitions, but the next time you see him he dies. It seems like he dislikes Cid and wants to do something about it, but nothing comes of that hook at all.
Incognitus - gee guys, I'm not sure who this character this, look at him just wanking around like a bitch with a skinned knee with a massive popped collar yo. holy shit what a good pseudonym
Aria – Drooooppped.?
Celestia – Feels like that Suikoden character who is loyal to their king even if they are a douchebag, except…
King of Concordia – Who the fuck is this guy? How does he hang on to power? Did Cid have him put in? What are his motivations? Is he the queen’s brother, nephew, cousin, boyfriend? Does he die at the end of the game? Who fucking knows.
The outfits are sweet. The music is good, but the music direction is horrible. Tracks play at very inappropriate times with sometimes very awkward results. The towns are very bland; towns from each country pretty much all look the same, which is very lazy. The scenes always feel a little shorter than they should be and seem to cut out at random times. I wondered if it was NG+ content, which would be very annoying? But the Wiki seems to not think so.
Oh well. It was worth the try. 5/10.
