Final Fantasy Type-0 HD - Maxi-Geek Preview

Recently I was able to sit down and play some of the upcoming Final Fantasy Type-0 HD on PlayStation 4 and while I have never been a massive JRPG fan, I came away impressed.

My time with the game started out easy enough, exploring the school, meeting the characters and just getting a handle on what the game has to offer. But it was when I left for my first mission that I started to enjoy my time with it. For those who are not aware, this Final Fantasy was released in Japan only for the PlayStation Portable, back in 2011 and scored a lot of praise, but fans outside of japan were left waiting, well with this HD port that is no longer an issue.

But you must understand this is a HD port, the game has had its textures sharpened up, but you can tell from a quick look that they were not created in HD to begin with, thankfully the art style is just that good, that it hardly matters. But getting back to the game itself, after exploring the school, I was tasked by the commander to help secure a nearby town that was overtaken by another Crystal State. Getting to the location had me leaving the schools ground and then place in me in a large overworld, similar to old school Final Fantasy games, complete with random encounters. Once in the city though, It was back to normal and time to fight.

I was playing as Ace, one of the 12 members of Class Zero, a pretty special class that is led by Kurasame, a man with a lot of power and a desire to hide his face. At the start of the battle, I was given the option to build out my team, who would join me in battle, I added half of the class to that list and then I was asked, which 3 would I want to actually join me, with the remaining class mates rotating in and out as needed, with my party selected, I jumped in. The combat in the game was pretty straight forward, 4 attacks are assigned to the four face buttons, with each one using a portion of my magic, the more powerful the attack the more the spell cost to cast.

But each character has a basic attack that would not consume magic, making the balancing act of when to go big and when to not, quite a challenge. I ran through the destroyed city streets, fighting through soldiers of the Militesi Empire. Most of the time they were standing out in the open, but others they would take cover behind walls and barriers, but as the game sports an active battle system, I was able to chase them down. Perhaps one of the issues I have with Final Fantasy is the turn based system, it never really clicked with me, so with Type-0 HD having an active battle system, I was able to freely move around the world, attach enemies from any direction I needed to.

But simply killing the enemy soldiers was not all I had to do, there is a sub-system in play that requires you to harvest phantasma from fallen enemies, while you wont need to do it for each kill, there are sometimes where you will need to in order to complete objectives. But back to the main quest, I had to find the destroy the large mech unit that was causing the most trouble, I was able to find it pretty easily and taking it down was quite simple as well. Thanks to my saving my magic until this fight. Afterwards, I returned back to the school and was told I had 12 hours of free time until my next mission, which meant I could do anything I wanted. You can attend class to boost your skills and teamwork, head to the library to read up on the world or even head to a cemetery to pay your respects to the fallen soldiers.

My time with Final Fantasy Type-0 HD ended with me taking the fight back into the world to recover many towns and strongholds that were taken from the Dominium of Rubrum and it was the first time I had seen Final Fantasy do something different, I had to actually command soldiers, tell them where to go and such, even selecting the right unit for the task. At the end of it, I was sure that the game could be fun, for me it has dropped the main element I hated, turn based battles and while it was not visually stunning like the upcoming 15 will be, it still has a fantastic look to it. I don’t know if I will be able to return to the world of Orience anytime soon, but I really want to.

The game is due for release on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on March 19th