Final Fantasy Type-0 - "You know Ace, we really are type zero"

[king_mickey rule]

There's some more character developement in the second playthrough, but it's still not enough.
The only character who really evolves is Machina and he sucks major balls.

But who thought it was a great idea to add more (very much needed) character development in a second playthrough? It's so stupid lol

This game, goddamn. I'm glad everyone else apparently loved it, going off of the hype surrounding it and the great reviews it got, 'cause it's probably one of the (if not, the) most disappointing games ever for me.

 

[Shadow Fenix]

I didn't. To be honest, I can't even say I felt anything other than "God, I hope XV is better than this".

It almost tricked me into caring, though, as it was a powerful ending. But no story should start making me care about the characters right at the end of it. I just didn't know any these people and I understood pretty much nothing from the story, other than the things I already knew from the XIII-series.

I remember being really impressed with the opening cutscene, which was truly amazing, but then getting to the first gameplay and already getting worried. It never succeeded in connecting with me.

Here's a game that bombards you with lore and 14 characters from the get-go and expects you to just care about all of it. Same for the gameplay, not once can I say that I got so immersed that I forgot I was playing a game.

And I was so excited to play this game. Like I said at the beginning of this post: I sincerely hope XV is better than this, 'cause I'm really worried now.

Yeah I remember being pretty confused by the story that I had to look it up further on the FF wiki for further clarity. And it confused me as well in that I first picked the ending where you become the fal'Cie I think and just fight the army till you die or somethingwhich was the wrong ending and didn't even think to pick the other choice. The alternate ending for beating it a second time was really cute though.

Yeah their introductions could've been handled a lot better if I remember right (it's been like two years since I touched this I think). And they almost expected you to be super familiar with the lore instead of sprinkling it into dialog naturally. But on gameplay terms, it's unavoidable that you can feel that its ripped straight from a PSP game. They did the best that could be done I'm sure, without having to massively overhaul everything, but there could've been some room to improve it.

I wouldn't worry on XV because of this. Type 0 came out technically over five years ago.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

The problem with this game lies in the fact that they decided to 1) Focus on Machina and Rem. Nobody liked them and nobody wanted them. Ace was supposed to be the main character. 2) Didn't build up on Class Zero's history. They have a pretty interesting life being pretty much child soldiers with a notable reputation around Orience but we never see that and literally catch them at the tail-end of their history. 3) Focused too much on the bland political aspects.

Too many characters and not enough focus on what really mattered. I think for me it was the core of the story that was intriguing. A world repeating its history endlessly until the proper decision was made. The execution was awful, though.

I still love Type-0, though. I wish people could have played it as the beautiful PSP/Vita game I got to play and not the kind of super ugly PS4 game we got because a lot was lost in the HD Remaster tonally and visually. Also making it a PS4 title created expectations for this game that it was never going to reach. It was a handheld game through and through.

FFXV's saving grace for me, personally, is that it is still Nomura's story just heavily modified. Nomura isn't the best writer out there but every story he's had a hand in shaping has always ended up being one of my favorite games.

 

[VoidGear.]

I can't even say why I loved this game so much, but I really did. It was a lot of fun to play even though I was quite sad about some wasted possibilities and the fact that many things looked the same and stuff.

But my highlight really was the second walkthrough's ending. Maybe mostly because of Sice and Seven, but still!!

 

[Sephiroth0812]

Can only second what Master Spockanort said.

The two main issues with Type-0 are that it has a world-driven story where a character-driven story would have most likely been the better approach and that in order to grasp the whole thing at least in its basics you need to do a second playthrough.
The game is geared towards a second playthrough being mandatory in order to get all out of it and even then it remains rather flat at least on the topic of most of the characters.

 

[king_mickey rule]

FFXV's saving grace for me, personally, is that it is still Nomura's story just heavily modified. Nomura isn't the best writer out there but every story he's had a hand in shaping has always ended up being one of my favorite games.

I think my biggest worry now in terms of FFXV is the gameplay and the presentation of the story.

I've had more fun with the FF XV demos than I had throughout the entire playthrough of Type-0, but I've always found the gameplay of XV to be extremely rough. I've also noticed that certain mechanics were poorly explained in the demos, which is something I thought was very present in Type-0. Same goes for the controls, which also feel really rough (and that's also a complaint of mine for Type-0).

I'm glad the story's probably gonna be more up my alley, as it feels way more character-driven, but Tabata could easily diddly that up by presenting it in such a way that the pacing's all off etc. So there's still lots that could go wrong there as well.

Not to turn this into a FF XV-thread, but yeah... I'm worried and I think the worries are valid, sadly.

Can only second what Master Spockanort said.

The two main issues with Type-0 are that it has a world-driven story where a character-driven story would have most likely been the better approach and that in order to grasp the whole thing at least in its basics you need to do a second playthrough.
The game is geared towards a second playthrough being mandatory in order to get all out of it and even then it remains rather flat at least on the topic of most of the characters.

You hit the nail on the head: it should've been way more character-driven. And at times it even tries to be that. It's like they didn't know what to do, have it be more focused on the lore or focus on the characters. What we got is this weird mix where the story's so unfocused, it's hard to really care about anything. The game's a compilation of bad decisions, in my eyes.

 

[Shadow Fenix]

Can only second what Master Spockanort said.

The two main issues with Type-0 are that it has a world-driven story where a character-driven story would have most likely been the better approach and that in order to grasp the whole thing at least in its basics you need to do a second playthrough.
The game is geared towards a second playthrough being mandatory in order to get all out of it and even then it remains rather flat at least on the topic of most of the characters.

Yes, that's it! That's what I was thinking of. You'd think that've been the case with the amount of characters, playable characters mind you, in the game. To second what Spock said, this had such an intriguing premise and had the potential for great characterization, it just wasn't handled too well. I still love it though despite its flaws. I think we could use more mature FF games.

 

[Sephiroth0812]

You hit the nail on the head: it should've been way more character-driven. And at times it even tries to be that. It's like they didn't know what to do, have it be more focused on the lore or focus on the characters. What we got is this weird mix where the story's so unfocused, it's hard to really care about anything. The game's a compilation of bad decisions, in my eyes.

I personally feel that in this regard Type-0 is actually very similar to KH Birth by Sleep in terms of overall story presentation and characterization. It has a ton of potential that is either not even touched upon or presented in a rather unsatisfying way.

Yes, that's it! That's what I was thinking of. You'd think that've been the case with the amount of characters, playable characters mind you, in the game. To second what Spock said, this had such an intriguing premise and had the potential for great characterization, it just wasn't handled too well. I still love it though despite its flaws. I think we could use more mature FF games.

There is also another factor to take into account:
From the whole premise and potential scope with 14 playable characters Type-0 would certainly have benefitted from being developed for a more powerful system from the get go in order to flesh out this bigger scope.
It is undeniable that for a PSP game Type-0 is very impressive and the battle system can be outright addicting once you get the hang of it (and it's definitely better than the system in all three games of the Lightning saga) but the jump to the big console, while making it available to a bigger audience, did not really translate it well enough despite some polishing here and there.
Having that many playable characters does not have to be a disadvantage as Final Fantasy VI had a similarily big playable cast and there it worked.

The problem with this game lies in the fact that they decided to 1) Focus on Machina and Rem. Nobody liked them and nobody wanted them. Ace was supposed to be the main character.

While I admit I find Rem totally cute and also gladly use her in battle I wonder who had this glorious idea and why the original idea of them just being outside observers was scrapped and especially why Machina's role was bloated up so much at the cost of everyone else's.
Considering that especially in regards to Ace there are several very interesting tidbits thrown at the player that hint/tease at a possibly deeper and more intriguing story for that character I'm left wondering what possible gems we might have been robbed off in the end.

 

[Shadow Fenix]

There is also another factor to take into account:
From the whole premise and potential scope with 14 playable characters Type-0 would certainly have benefitted from being developed for a more powerful system from the get go in order to flesh out this bigger scope.
It is undeniable that for a PSP game Type-0 is very impressive and the battle system can be outright addicting once you get the hang of it (and it's definitely better than the system in all three games of the Lightning saga) but the jump to the big console, while making it available to a bigger audience, did not really translate it well enough despite some polishing here and there.
Having that many playable characters does not have to be a disadvantage as Final Fantasy VI had a similarily big playable cast and there it worked.

Agreed. I've always said that the biggest downfalls of all these KH spin offs is that they're very limited due to the hardware. Making it a console game, in this case and KH, would've significantly had a greater impact on it in a positive way I'm sure. That was probably a fairly big mistake in starting this game on PSP, when the PS3 would've given it a much greater advantage in the end.