Like Final Fantasy 15, Final Fantasy Type-0 was part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project, then called "Agito: Final Fantasy XIII". It was to be a flagship title for Sony's PSP marking a real-effort Final Fantasy (as opposed to say ports). It took a long time to come out and released toward the end of the PSP's life. As such it's probably one of the largest PSP games in terms of scope. I always wanted to play it but for whatever reason I never got it on PSP. So recently, I decided to purchase the HD version for PC. My first impression is that it was a quick port. I know for sure many things were up-res'd but the game really shows it's PSP roots and the config screen before playing feels very amateurish. Not a great first impression.
As for the game itself, it starts out with what must have been a 15 minute cut-scene that lays some of the plot background and spends an entirely too long on a dying soldier just to up the grittyness. In fact the plot in general was just boring. You're fighting this war but it just feels like nothing really matters and none of the characters are interesting. The production values aren't bad especially for PSP. You can see all the weird tricks in HD like the static non-parallax background behind the doors, the tiny little areas you explore and the constant enemy respawn that happens because only 3 or so enemies can be on screen at any time. The HD version has much nicer textures and lighting but it's not really matched by the really stiff animation. Cut-scenes are also a low part. The voice acting is terrible and has terrible timing. I just started skipping the non-plot ones because they were universally bad and uninteresting.
The gameplay is a big mixed bag. You get to use 3 of 14 students at a time, each with a specific weapon and play-style. This is actually kinda cool as it gives a lot of variety to how you handle things. Unfortunately the actual execution is a bit jank. I have no idea how it worked on PSP with a single analog stick, but the camera can be very finicky. You can choose to lock on to enemies and fix the camera but when other enemies are around it can be difficult to avoid them while strafing around the target. Even more annoying is that the game has a completely unnecessary mechanic to harvest "phanta." Phanta is a resource used to upgrade magic but to harvest it you need to lock on to a defeated enemy and then press the attack button. The problem comes in because this means that you maintain lock on defeated enemies while your are still being attacked by others. Worse, the game is bugged so that even after harvest you still sometimes maintain lock on where the corpse was, or sometimes you just can't lock on to a corpse and this leads to frustration. With full camera controls, not locking on was doable but efficient gameplay requires using a mechanic for timed strikes that either kill or do critical damage and this can only be performed while locked on. When it works it's fun but there's too many times where it doesn't. Getting around is also a chore. Movement doesn't feel good, I almost liken it to a PSX or N64 game as the movement is very stiff and linear with no acceleration. When outside of Akademia, in the game's main hub, you plod along at an incredibly slow pace. You can use Chocobos but they run away after a while and you either need to breed them which takes time or catch new ones which requires even more walking. It's just a bunch of boring padding in the end.
I got through most of the game but eventually you start hitting walls. Basically if you haven't been keeping your level up with side-quests (because they are so boring) then you come into the next mission under-leveled. This is bad because it means enemies kill you instantly. While you can still dodge attacks and make progress it becomes a huge grind. At about the last chapter it got to be more than I could bear. Grinding to level-up was not fun, you've already seen the same 6 or 7 enemies and I had hours of grid ahead to hit the level recommendation. I was pretty much done with it, there wasn't anything interesting enough to keep playing.
Overall, it's a very flawed game. It's a bit tragic since you can see the parts that had a lot of work put into them. It was not a cheap portable game and yet I feel they made all the wrong trade-offs. They went for lots of fancy cut-scenes and production values which aged poorly when what they really needed was the fundamentals. The problem is the gameplay has some good ideas but it's just not executed well at all and that's a damn shame and I honestly can't recommend revisiting it.
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