The class of 2011 are making their mark four years on
Back when we were at school, classes could barely get through a day without locking an unlucky victim in a supply cupboard or happy-slapping someone. if you'd handed us a variety of arcane weaponry, it probably would have resulted in even bigger swear words being carved into desks. Trust Final Fantasy to turn what amounts to a group of 14 mismatched teenagers into a swashbuckling group of handsome young things who spend their free study periods honing each of their particular brands of superpower before tramping off to combat Nazi-like military evil. As silly as it might sound (and we're not even taking into account that most of them are named after playing cards), there's something fitting about the scholastic setup - Type-0 forces you to relearn just what a Final Fantasy game is.
That's primarily because it breaks some golden FF rules. in fact, that seems to be the whole point. Originally released on PSP back in 2011, it ditched static, turn-based battles, random encounters and the series' traditionally dreamy aesthetic (the game's trailer opens with the sight of a bloodied, dying Chocobo - some would say sad, we'd say 'magnificent Sunday roast') - all hallmarks of the main, numbered entries. it proved to be a stretch too far for localisers - this new-gen remake is the first time the game's come west - but it fits nicely into Square Enix's remit for Fabula Nova Crystallis, the mini-series that's grouped several games under one overarching narrative of the 'crystal legend'.
"I remember when [series producer] Yoshinori Kitase came around and asked me to make my first game in the Fabula Nova Crystallis series," explains director Hajime Tabata. "i remember him saying, 'As long as you pay attention to this legend, understand the idea of the mythology behind it, you can really make any kind of game you want.'" He clearly took that to heart.
Crystal maze
The story might be familiar - the grandiose tale of a world of four nations, each powered by a respective magical crystal, which is torn apart when one country decides it'd be cool to break everyone else's eldritch rock and go full fascist - but the gameplay is anything but, powered along by an action system that draws equally on the considered attack patterns of Monster Hunter and some distinctly MOBA-like thinking around special abilities.
Central to that system is your 14-kid party. Each armed with a different weapon and almost entirely different sets of abilities, they're tailored to some very specific needs. With only three slots in your party, and the ability to control only one character at a time (although you can switch between them at any time using the D-pad), the differences between them become a far sight more specific than whether they're a melee or ranged fighter. Elemental types, weapon speed and even the fact that certain characters dodge by rolling and others by teleporting become surprisingly important dependent on the lineup of enemies you're up against.
Timing is everything, not least because it gets really, really boring standing in the middle of a warzone with nothing to do. Along with the traditional MP counter (recovered by collecting Phantoma, magical essence you sap from downed bad guys) every spell's bound by a cooldown time, meaning your management of how they're used, and in what sequence, will need to become second nature to defeat bigger enemies. Handily, enemies also leave themselves weak for a moment after stronger attacks. While this is a pleasant bonus in most encounters with common goons, one grotesquely powerful boss we fought could only be beaten by exploiting those halfsecond openings - a tough enough challenge that we had to get ourselves killed and choose a new party better suited to doing so.
Which leads us to Type-Os other major divergence from its parent series - this thing is hard. Where most FF games let you level up with their enemies, only providing truly super-tough moments towards the end (or even post-game), Type-0 takes cues from other action games, punishing you for not learning the ins and outs of its frantic combat early on - it even grades you on performance in missions, Platinum-style.
Easing off
For those not up for being killed repeatedly by vicious Cactuars, the remake does add an Easy mode, one of several tweaks to the original. Tabata seems to have made those changes as much for his own benefit as anyone else's: "My eyesight's starting to get a little worse recently and i'm finding it harder and harder to play games on tiny screens, so i thought that if we were going to remaster Type-0, it'd be a good idea to make it on a big screen for people like me! There's so much information on the screen - we thought changing it around, allowing you to play it on a TV screen would be very fitting, allow you to take in everything that we wanted you to."
The remake certainly benefits for its readability, but it's been somewhat harder to paper over the cracks in the jump from old handheld hardware to shiny new console gubbins. Each level's made up of boxy little arenas connected only by loading screens, complete with grubby textures and dull layouts, while character animations - if fluid, performance-wise - are jerky and disconnected. It's not bad-looking, but it's got none of Final Fantasy's grandeur, and the up-res has only made that more obvious.
Given that lack of sheen, and the original game's general obscurity, it wouldn't surprise us if the majority of people buying into Type-0 HD are coming solely for the conveniently bundled demo of Final Fantasy XV, but that may well end up helping them as much as it does Square's coffers. Tabata and a portion of his team moved straight from this project to working on the new numbered entry -perhaps unsurprisingly, another action game.
As the director himself admits: "I think it was a very good experience for the team to make the kind of game where you control your characters directly and go around performing action scenes in that way. it was good practice." it's another reason those classmates are appropriate - you might just find yourself being schooled for a whole new Final Fantasy game in the process of playing this one. Sign us up.