[PSP / PERPETUAL IMPORT] Final Fantasy Type-0

[\Lennox]

Name: Final Fantasy Type-0 (Reishiki)/ファイナルファンタジー零式
Developer: Square Enix 1st Production Development Division (known for TWEWY, Sigma Harmonics)
Platform: PSP (in a physical UMD form and a digital release on PSN that makes it playable on Vita)
Genre: Action RPG
Verse: Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy
Release Dates:
NTSC - TBA
NTSC-J - 
PAL - TBA
 
Synopsis:
Orience, Month of Water, Year 842.
 
Cid Aulstyne, High Commander of the Miltes Empire marches into his neighboring territories in an effort that will lead to his domination of the continent of Orience. Despite the fact that a peace treaty has been declared throughout the continent, Aulstyne just pushes to take the Crystals of the countries around him, crushing their armed forces in the process. Their newly crafted weapon, the highly advanced Crystal Jammer, causes the crystal of the Suzaku Dominion of Rubrum to shatter. This leaves Rubrum open to attack, and it only encourages Aulstyne to press on: the Dominion's crystal was responsible for preventing the Militesians to advance, if not attain their victories.
 
However, the Peristylium of Suzaku, a highly technical magic academy, sends their best students to combat this threat: their name, Class Zero.
Composed of Machina Kunagiri, Rem Tokimiya, Ace, Deux, Trey, Cater, Cinque, Sice, Seven, Eight, Nine, Jack, Queen and King, and led by their advisers Kurasame Sasaya and Mog--
 
--they seek to become the Agito that will save their nation.
 
Gameplay Video and Screenshots:

 
     
 
     
 
     
 
     
 
     
 
     
 
     

 
Why I Like This Game So Much (OH BOY HERE COMES THE IRRATIONAL GUSHING:

Okay. *long breath*

 
So the past four or five years have been dull for most Final Fantasy fans. We've been getting half-assed ports and remakes, half-assed games that had such wasted potential attached to them, and many of us were replaying old games, in my case, XII (which is for me, one of the best ones, anyway). The Square Enix 1st Production Department (AKA the FBCFF(XIII)/KH) team has been responsible for meriting the hate that's been attached to the new era of FF (cases in point, FFXIII and FFXIII-2), and yet even within this group of developers, comes greatness.
 
Cue the 1st Production Department's handheld team helmed by Hajime Tabata, known for putting out such gems as Sigma Harmonics, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, The 3rd Birthday and The World Ends With You. This is comprised of Square Enix's non Hiroyuki Ito/Akitoshi Kawazu creatives that are responsible for being able to show us how to pair story and gameplay effectively; i.e. being able to immerse the player in its world by encouraging it to play the damn game so that understanding the story (and being taken along its rollercoaster) follows. To me, Final Fantasy Type-0 is one of the most emotionally investing games... ever. I just added it onto the list of video games I will remember forever: Xenoblade, Xenogears, The World Ends With You, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Pokemon Black and White (as well as their sequels) and this exact game just made me want to become play even harder than ever before.

Now, onto the actual stuff. XD

 

Gameplay:

The Final Fantasy franchise has been known for using the Active Time Battle system (as well as its derivatives being the Command Synergy Battle system of FFXIII, the Active Dimension Battle system of FFXII, the Conditional Turn-based Battle/Charge Time Battle System of FFX and FFT and the Real Time Battle system of FFXI and FFXIV to name a few). The Active Time Battle system, or ATB, is a variation on classic turn-based systems in which every character has to wait for a period of time that adjusts itself according to the character's Speed/Agility stat or ATB modifier, such as Haste or Slow. After a character takes an action, the character enters ATB cooldown; only after this cooldown can the character attack an enemy again.

 

Final Fantasy Type-0 uses my favorite (read: fast-paced) variation of ATB, dubbed in Japan as Supersonic Active Time Battle. This version of Active Time Battle is known for being mostly seamless and well, way past fast to the point where cooldown is almost instantaneous yet omnipresent like in your typical Action-RPG, making battles thrilling as fuck. This prevents attack spamming and button mashing as the duration of an attack's animation imposes said ATB cooldown. Attacks that would be selected from a menu in your typical Final Fantasy game would then be mapped to the four face buttons of the PSP. Your Triangle or Circle buttons carry out your weapon-based attacks (whichever button conusmes the damage-increasing Ability Gauge is up to you), your Square button casts a spell and your Cross button activates your defensive measure. You can change these commands at will as long as your are at a save point. Necessary items are equipped to the START button, which can be changed freely whatever the circumstances.

 

Party members can be switched by holding the L shoulder button as you press left or right on the D-Pad--reserve characters can be brought into battle when the character you control dies. The game ends (well, not in terms of narrative) when all characters, reserve and in-play, are out of their Hit Points. You lock-on to enemy characters by pressing the PSP's R shoulder button, and when you kill them, you absorb their Phantoma by pressing any one of the face buttons on your PSP (just not Cross). Phantoma recovers a number of your Magic/Mana Points, and is also spent to upgrade spells in the Altocrystarium.

 

The game of course, features your usual battles with enemies, although the types of enemies you can battle range from the usual wolves by another name to incomprehensible horrors from beyond. They all usually die (or at the very least, suffer a significant amount of damage) when performing the Trinity Attack, Type-0's Limit Break system activated by Circle and Triangle buttons at the same time, fully consuming the Ability Gauge. They can also battle your Summons, activated in the same way yet incapacitating the summoner character in the process. However, there are several features that set this game apart: Skirmish Battles, in which your character functions as an attacking convoy that delivers supplies to towns under the rule of the Suzaku Dominion of Rubrum, and Airship Battles (that's right) where your characters pilot airships and engage in dogfights with aerial invaders.

 

When not engaging in missions that Kurasame gives you in order to liberate towns for the sake of becoming Agito, you are free to roam around Orience with the limited amount of Free Time you have. Your Free Time is spent roaming around the campus, talking to people in order to obtain items or activate cutscenes, engage in sidequests achieved by speaking to Suzaku townspeople, and because of that, you need to know when and how you spend your free time. You are given a limited amount of Free Time before and after missions, however. The Free Time, regardless of how you spend it, does an awesome job of immersing you into the world of Orience, much better than how FFXIII and FFXIII-2 expected you to read from a Datalog.

 

Either way, hack your PSP and download this game/import this game from Japan now. You guys are really missing out on what is possibly the best Final Fantasy game in the past five years. XD

Edited April 10, 2013 by Lennox

[Jin.]

I do really want this.

[MegasonicZX]

I want this, along with gundam extreme vs. But the price, I'm gonna learn japanese first before I get into importing RPG's so I don't have to look at a guide.

[Skyward Sword]

This may just be the 2nd PSP title I import. Seeing how popular the system still is, play-asia and other import game sites will be rather busy for PSP titles.

 

I do wonder, I could apply the patch to the PSP system and still use the UMD copy lawfully like I do with mhp3rd.

 

Oh, yeah, the game on hand. Barring Versus-XIII (Which may as well be renamed Fabula Nova Crystallis Forever), this looks like the best thing to come out in the 13 era of Final Fantasy.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I've seen this on the FF wiki.

 

This shit is intense, and may actually be the darkest title in the franchise considering it has child soldiers defending their country and...well...let's just say that the ending gets very bleak yet bittersweet before things return to normal.

 

I'd play it for the story alone.