Be sure to check out Eric Layman’s review of the PS4 version for a much more complete and detailed review from someone who knows his Final Fantasy!
One of the best parts about writing for a gaming outlet is being able to try out games I never would have otherwise. I’ve been playing games for a very long time, but I have never played a minute of any Final Fantasy (FF) title until I was tasked with reviewing Final Fantasy Type-0 HD for the Xbox One. The franchise has just never appealed to me, but I went into it hoping to be surprised and to just come away with a better appreciation for it. Well, after putting a several hours into Type-0 HD, which is to say I have not completed it, I do not see myself going back or looking ahead to Final Fantasy XV (a 4-5 hour demo of which is available exclusively with Type-0 HD by the way). But that said, I’m not the target audience for this release, it’s the FF fans who have wanted this mature (first FF game with an M rating), previously Japan-only PSP game from 2011 to come to the West, and it finally has. I’m all for happy endings like that.
From what I have played and gleaned from reading and watching about Type-0 HD, one of most compelling — or at least different — aspects to it is that it’s not turn based which most of the (older) FF games are. Players also have fourteen different characters to manage, and these are available to you within the first two hours of play. They have their own unique appearances, names, personalities, weapons, special skills, and they also level up individually, too. During missions, you select a main character and two other party members, and you can also call in Reserves to survive tougher encounters. Side note? I liked that any XP you earn during a mission can be preserved even if you end up aborting the mission to head back to HQ.
As the story goes, it’s rife with overly dramatic scenes, characters, and terminology. The very brief overview of it is that there is an area known as Orience that is comprised of four nations. The Militesi Empire invades the Dominion of Rubrum and with that ends the terms of a longstanding peace treaty. All hell breaks loose, and its time for the young warrior students — especially those in Class Zero that you will play as — to get to work. Now as a newcomer to both the game and the franchise, I was overwhelmed with the terminology and just the weight and breadth of all of the information being presented during the long opening cutscenes. Moreover, I realized that my commitment and interest level were bottoming out quickly. Suddenly I had fourteen characters on my squad and at least a dozen other NPCs and four different empires and etc that I knew nothing about. A few hours later, I had a better understanding of what the heck was going on but not nearly as much as I would have in a typical game. That I did not get hooked into the stories and characters really tarnished the experience for me and I reached a point when I literally started skipping cutscenes. I appreciated then and do now the effort that went into developing this universe, but it just doesn’t captivate me.
The story and RPG elements take somewhat of a backseat to the combat and strategy within, however. Unfortunately, the combat is only ‘so’ compelling. Not being turn-based was good news for me as I rarely enjoy those, or at least those in a purely fantasy setting. Being able to switch between your (three member) party quickly is cool, and that you choose who you want to actually take into missions before they start is good and provides some key strategic elements to the gameplay. Furthermore, while some skills are shared between the cadets, overall they have a unique feel and purpose to them in my experience, and discovering tactics in real time while encountering different foes is pretty interesting. The sum of these parts, however, didn’t do a whole lot for me. The combat feels bizarrely loose and lacking impact. Certainly the Eidolons that you can summon (at great cost) provide for some cool visual spectacle, but the action, as with the story and characters, just didn’t resonate with me.
I think part of this is due to the UI, and/or presentation. I’ll get to the graphics shortly, but the camera has to be mentioned. You can, and really should, lock-on to targets, but doing so has no bearing on what the camera does; so it’s routine to lock-on to a target but you need to manually adjust the camera to view them. I liked the Break Sight and Kill Sight mechanics by the way, which yield critical or insta-kill hits depending on the color of your reticule. Speaking of which, I thought the over-sized bluish cues/targeting reticule in the UI should have been scaled down too if I’m to nit-pick. You know part of this ‘lack of impact’ sentiment might be derived from other titles I have been playing lately that do this mechanic very well (Lords of the Fallen, The Evil Within, etc), or it’s more than likely just a artifact of this game having been originally only on the PSP — which would also explain the camera woes.
That this game was originally on the PSP and likely on UMD media probably explains the near constant load screens. In and of themselves, these constant two, four, and eight second or so load screens are not a game-breaker, but in conjunction with Type-0 HD’s other shortcomings — well, it adds fuel to the cons side let’s say. But seriously, there are just too many ‘fade to black’ load screens that only serve to remind you that this is a four year old handheld game and it works to inadvertently tamper with any sense of immersion you might be going for.
I’ve spent the majority of this review harping about what I didn’t like in my time with Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, but at the end of the day it should be pointed out that core Final Fantasy fans — or at least those that did not mind the free-form combat of XII and XIII — are probably going to really dig this game. And that’s exactly why Square put in the work to bring this West. Could it have been a more complete and robust HD remastering that fixed some of the issues carrying over from the PSP version? Absolutely. Yet even as is, it finally makes available, for the first time, a key game in the franchise and can also help tide folks over until XV arrives.
To the summary…
