In For A Bad Time? My Final Thoughts On Final Fantasy Type-0

Many of you may be excited by the news that Final Fantasy Type-0 will be heading to North America in 2015. I know I certainly was, and even found a workaround to waiting for it to come out next year. Since patching an import PSP version of game, I put a solid 30 hours into this beast. Unexpectedly, much of my time has been mired in a confusing haze of uncertainty over the quality of the overall package. After having finished the game once, I am still uncertain if I would recommend the final product to anyone.

Much of my reservation stems from the fact that Final Fantasy Type-0 is an unexpectedly amateurish experience wrapped in a satisfying combat system, and presented through a convoluted story which would make Kingdom Hearts sulk in jealousy. Disappointingly, a large portion of the late-game feels arbitrarily locked away during first-time playthroughs, forcing players to cobble together often mysterious motivations behind character actions (Spoiler Alert: please skip to the next paragraph if you don’t wish to have some late-game story elements revealed to you). For instance, the last chapter of the game introduces an entirely new set of enemies seemingly in medias res, with a large percentage of the game’s secondary cast being simply removed from the story, assumingly because of their deaths. Who are these enemies, how did the main antagonist summon them to begin with, and how did they manage to overcome the game’s secondary cast so efficiently? These questions aren’t revealed to you until you commit yourself to a second playthrough.

Sure, other developers have utilized a similar narrative mechanic in the past; and really, if it’s handled well, then I don’t mind playing a game more than once to gain a broader perspective of the game’s world, as well as more peripheral character motivations leading to larger story reveals. Part of Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter’s charm lies in this manner of revealing the game’s story to its players. Sadly, Final Fantasy Type-0’s initially promising story falls apart late-game, largely because of the aforementioned story mechanic, and its pacing suffers all the more for it.

Thankfully, the game’s combat is enjoyable throughout. Part of Final Fantasy Type-0’s DNA is built from the combat systems found in Crisis Core and The 3rd Birthday, the former for its melee combat and the latter for its range combat. The mix of styles is refreshing and handled well, as each of the game’s 14 playable characters is functionally quite different. Moreover, the game’s missions can be quite taxing, so choosing the right characters (for instance, opting for range over melee, or magic over physical) for the right missions is critical to success.

Too bad there isn’t any way of knowing what a given mission will demand of the player before playing through it. What results are often frustrating encounters where your physical melee units don’t have anything to do but slowly die in the wake of a flying enemy. Or worse, when you glass cannon magic user is literally decimated in one hit by a giant behemoth because the AI governing her and all your non-player controlled allies are so horribly programmed that it makes you wonder why the HD version will be omitting the option to play the game cooperatively (Adam and I seem to be in agreement that poor ally AI in RPGs means we’re all in for a bad time).

But the worst offender by far is the game’s horrendous lack of checkpoints, which are sparingly placed throughout missions more than they ought to be. I recall a mission midway through the game where I had to select a single character (most of the game involves 3-player combat, and the game’s difficulty appears to account for this), who needed to face off against three bipedal rocket launching mechs simultaneously, each capable of killing me in two hits. Once I managed to defeat them, I was forced immediately to fight a hovering soldier, who flew around the level spewing fire on me, while contending with gun-wielding soldiers and attack animals. The entire sequence took as long as ten minutes to get through, and if I died (which I did more than 4-5 times), I was forced to restart the entire encounter.

In other words, Final Fantasy Type-0’s fast, frantic and often challenging combat is shackled to a poorly presented story and amateurish gameplay design. What’s perhaps most puzzling is how strong the game starts out. I can’t recall the last Final Fantasy game where so much attention was put into realizing the game’s world and its historical underpinnings.  Perhaps the game’s ambitions were slightly too much for its own good, and the game’s designers lost the conviction that was needed to follow through with their initial premise. At any rate, I would still recommend Final Fantasy Type-0 HD when it is released in March of 2015. While it loses far too much steam in the late-game, the first 20 hours are solid and entertaining. Which I suppose is ideal, because who really beats games anymore anyway, right?