The Silent Protagonist – Final Fantasy Type Zero

Hello and welcome back to The Silent Protagonist, where — contrary to the title — I talk about upcoming, and released, JRPGs.

As promised in my last blog, I’m going to talk about Final Fantasy Type Zero, although it was originally known as Final Fantasy XIII Agito. As per usual, all the good games are being kept in Japan, and unfortunately in November, Hajime Tabata, the director of the game stated that there are no current plans to release it outside of Japan.  Despite that, there is a group of fans out there who are steadily translating the game, take a peek at what they’re doing here. Although I highly doubt that they will get far before they’re unfortunately sent a Cease and Desist by Square Enix.

Enough of the boring mumbo jumbo! Time to talk about some gameplay!

So! What’s it all about? The story is set in a place called Orience, where there are four nations, with each nation specialising in one particular area of combat. Their combat abilities abilities are granted by crystals, and each nation has one. For instance, the nation of Rubrum has the Suzaku crystal which bestows the power of magic.

However, if you are lucky enough to become blessed by the crystal, and receive the powers unique to each nation, you become a l’Cie, a servant of that nation. Each l’Cie is given a “Focus” by the crystals, which is a task that one must perform. While the l’Cie are gifted with these powers, they also have their lifespan extended… but there is a price. The price of these gifts is your memories. Although this reminds me of Final Fantasy VIII, and the Guardian Forces making you forget stuff… Oh, whoops. SPOILER ALERT, I guess, for fourteen years ago. Shit! Do I feel old now or what?

There are fourteen selectable characters in the game, each with a specific weapon much like many of the previous titles. All of the characters are named after a set of cards as well, which is… interesting. For instance, Ace wields a deck of cards as his primary weapon, whereas King, uses a pair of handguns.

a cross between Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XII’s battle system and a bit of a story influence from both Dissidia and Final Fantasy VII

The story begins as one of the four nations, Milites, invades Rubrum, and using a device called the Crystal Jammer destroys the Suzaku Crystal, causing the nation of Rubrum to fall. Enter Class Zero, an elite group of individuals from the Peristylium (I dare you to say that fast ten times) Suzaku’s magical academy.

Anything after that point is basically a huge spoiler, so I’m going to leave the plot description there… but it’s an awesome story line… yet another one we’re missing out on.

If you’ve played Final Fantasy XII, then you’ll be somewhat familiar with the battle system. It revolves around a party of three characters, one of which is the “Leader” which you control. There is also an ATB system, summoning system and a brand new magic system.

There are three elements of magic, Fire, Ice and Thunder, however, these can be classified into five types of spells. They are:

• Shotgun Spells – doesn’t travel far, but has a wide range
• Rifle Spells – long distance magic, but narrow range
• Missile Spells – homing magic, higher levels have an AoE
• Bomb Spells – BOOM in your general vicinity
• Rocket Launcher Spells – a target will appear, and the magic will release in the direction you aim, then BOOM!

If you can imagine a cross between Final Fantasy XIII, with the crystarium system, Final Fantasy XII with the battle system and a bit of a story influence from both Dissidia and Final Fantasy VII, then you’ve got this title covered. Sorta. Not really. All we can do is hope, and pray that we get a copy of it out our way.

Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about Kingdom Hearts 1.5HD? Well, turns out that we’re getting lucky! We’ll be expecting to receive this title in either the third or fourth quarter of the year.

In my next blog, I’m going to take another look at a game that has been out for a while: Magnacarta.

Till next time! To be continued…