This is a high profile Final Fantasy title that didn't reach the Western shores because of next generation gaming device transition. It was released in Japan during the final mainstream years of Sony PSP and PSVita/PS4's impending release. So Square-Enix halted the game's already a work-in-progress English version till later notice.
I played the Japanese version and I had a hard time understanding most of the story. And yes, I know all about the English patch of the game (and the drama that surrounds it) but this review was written long before the patch is released and it's overdue.
STORY
As part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series of FF games, the story involves l'Cie, Focuses, a few fal'Cie gods and dieties. The presentation is a documentary. It's mature and it's about the mage students of the Suzaku Perystilium Magic Academy that is at war with the Byakko Imperial Army that wants to take control of all four nations' Crystals. This threatens the balance in the world of Orience.
The opening cutscene is already chaotic and bloody. That poor guy and his chocobo. The three members of Class-0 arrived and saved both guy and chocobo but sadly their death is inevitable. After that scene you get to control the three-man party to repel the invading imperial army out of your school, and so the story began.
This probably is the most graphically violent Final Fantasy game. People are screaming to their deaths and theres so much blood. Well this is war after all.
GAMEPLAY
Type-0's gameplay is closer to the classic Final Fantasy games. The game have an Overworld that we haven't seen for a long time. The game also have a school life simulation, which I find it less appealing, where you can attend class, interact with students/faculty members, do some sidequests and roam around the large school. You can also breed captured Chocobos here.
You are given different set number of days and hours in school after every mission. Every interaction (Represented by a character with an ! mark) costs 2 hours of your school time. If you ran out of time, the mandatory, story-driven Mission begins. As you complete a mission, for example liberating a town, will unlock this town for you to visit again.
These towns/cities have people in need of the player's help. So aside from the school sidequests there are town sidequests as well. Keep in mind that whenever you get out from the school, you'll spend 6 hours of school time so better go nuts on level grinding and taking sidequests before going back to school.
Another type of mission takes strategy. You direct your mage army (yes you have an army too) to attack and take the enemy's base and/or camp while you as a Class-0 student must support your army, defend your base and achieve victory.
Combat is real time and it's really fast and fun. You actively control one member of the 3-man party and easily switch to the other party member anytime. The main attack is the Circle button. Other skills can be assigned to the other 3 face buttons. You can also break or instantly kill the enemy with the Kill Sight mechanic that appears when a locked enemy makes a slight opening to his attack or let his guard down.
Each of the 14 main characters have unique weapons, movesets, abilities and animation. They even have their own dodge animation. You'll easily notice that some characters represent a traditional Final Fantasy job class.
The Alto Crystarium lets you enhance your magic through the use of Phantoma, orbs extracted from fallen enemies. It also restores some MP and gives a tactical advantage in battle when you're surrounded by enemies, because while you extract Phantoma, the dead body explodes and damages nearby enemies, now that's brutal.
Type-0 also have a Multiplayer option, but sadly I didn't have the chance to try it.
GRAPHICS
This is probably one of the most best looking PSP games that I've played. It feels like playing on a gaming console. There are particle effects like debris, smoke, dust flying around the war torn towns. The lightings are nice, but some areas are too dark that you need to crank up the PSP's brightness or turn off the lights if you want to save battery life.
The in-game cutscenes is like any static conversation style scenes, but uses beautifully rendered 3D character models on a 2D background. Square-Enix made an effort in making many different angled backgrounds to make the scene more dynamic.
Every place that you will visit in the world of Orience looks beautiful, most of them are fresh and new except for each nation's towns/cities. They're different based on culture and lifestyle, but they all look the same especially if you visited every locale on a single nation.
The plane of the Overworld random battles have different detailed terrain, vegetation and elevation That will sometimes disorient players especially during a bad weather.
The Overworld have an actively changing weather system/effects that affects your random battles. There are different weather situations: Fog (low visibility), Rain (darker environment, low visibility) and Clear skies. There are permanent Overworld weather like snowstorm that reduces your HP while you're moving around the world map.
MUSIC
The music is great, one of the best sountracks I've heard in my opinion. If you've played Crisis Core, you'll be familiar on Type-0's awesome music. The battle music is very fitting to the game's theme, War. The music wants you to march through victory. The mood of the soundtrack is passionate, mellow, gloomy, determined, agressive and hopeful.
REPLAY VALUE
The game is really long and have a new game plus that keeps the stats of your party members and some other items. I used the new game plus to do the early side missions that requires a large level to survive. I finished the game having level 33 characters in a raw and blind playthrough. It's painful to finish the game on that level and clueless on what other stuff the game offers because it's in Japanese language.
CLOSING REMARKS
Final Fantasy Type-0 is so great that it deserves to be a numbered title. It got great controls, graphics, gameplay, battle system and music. Its story is great, maybe (because I don't exacly understand it). It rivals any main Final Fantasy numbered title, it even puts Final Fantasy XIII to a shameful state. This could be our Final Fantasy XVI, right? The things that I appreciate less in the game are the school simulation and its restricted school time limit and level grinding all your 15 characters. But hey, at least these things I mentioned didn't break the game. And the battle mechanics looks similar to the upcoming Final Fantasy XV.
The localized Final Fantasy Type-0 HD edition is coming for the PS4 and XBox One soon.
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