Final Fantasy Type-0

Ever since I first started reading about Final Fantasy XIII, I have been ignoring this game and pretty much anything that has to do with it. However, since Versus XIII is still a widespread mystery and since XIII-2 is moving at snail's pace to be released, I decided to take a look at this and see what it's all about. Besides, I think it would be great if I could shut up about XIII-2 and look at something else for now, even though I am sure XIII-2 will not disappoint.

Well, the first thing that I read about this game is that the gameplay is centered around magic. It is something that the characters rely on since they are aligned with a crystal of magic or something. It seems to me that the game is going to start off at some school of magic, and with that I see that Square is now trying to make a Final Fantasy version of Harry Potter. I remember when I noticed a ton of similarities between Final Fantasy XII and Star Wars. Maybe Square is trying to do something where they recreate various movie series. Next thing I know, there will be a Final Fantasy with an eccentric detective who sets off on some adventure with a friend who has some Japanese-ish variant of the name John H. Watson.

So the first thing of interest to me is the class of characters. Class Zero, as they are named, is the group of youngsters who embark on this story. Each character is ridiculously named after a trump (playing card), and they are given their own number. At first, I read that the class consisted of twelve characters, but after I skimmed through the list I saw that the last guy was No. 13. The Final Fantasy Wiki stated many times that there were twelve characters in the class, and I didn't understand at first how they could make the mistake of saying that there were twelve characters numerous times on both the Final Fantasy Type-0 page and the Class Zero page. Then I looked through the students again, and I noticed that No. 10 wasn't listed. Uh oh. What the hell happened to No. 10? Who is he/she anyway? Nothing on the wiki even hints that they had a clue that there wasn't a No. 10. There's no reference to any interviews with the directors of the game where somebody asked the question "who's No. 10," which leads me to assume that nobody ever noticed that No. 10 was missing. Am I seriously the only one here who noticed that there is a student missing in the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy?

Actually, the school is named Peristylium Suzaku, the first part of the name meaning "garden" in Latin (I know a little Latin. Cool, huh?). When I noticed that, I realized that this game was starting to feel a little similar to Final Fantasy VIII... a little too similar. Any similarity with that game, aside from the gunblade, is too similar. The gunblade itself was something that I found rather stupid until Lightning received the perfected version of the weapon. Anyway, so I read through the gameplay information again and it turns out that, like in FFVIII, your stats are things that you sort of change through magic. Sorry, I reread the character development information and learned that it is nothing like in Final Fantasy VIII. The whole thing about magic is that you can somehow customize the stats of a spell (I like that, sounds a lot like Oblivion and it's magic creation system). It says that the characters are developed through a crystarium like the one from FFXIII, thank god. In my opinion, that was the best form of character development, aside from the older games where all you had to worry about was leveling up and letting the game take care of increasing the stats for you. So there's another plus I see in this game. I guess the only similarity then would be the school, but hopefully I won't find myself playing through all of UMD 1 (yeah the game comes in two UMDs, insane) in that school. That was the problem with FFVIII, it took too long to move on with the plot.

Another plus I see in FF Type-0 (I'm going to call it "Typo," from now on, because of how they changed the name) is the party system. As in FFXII, this game allows you to chose a party of three and switch between party members at any time; and when the lead member dies, you can switch in someone else from the list of fourteen playable characters (two "transfer students" are also in Class Zero, but they don't have official trump card names like the rest of the bozos in the class, so I guess they aren't considered cool enough to be a numbered student. Whatever). I like this party system much better than in  Final Fantasy XIII, but I suppose in FFXIII that kind of system wouldn't make sense given the pace of battle. However, Square said that Typo is supposed to be the fastest version of their ATB battle system yet. I can never figure out a damn thing of what they mean by their ambiguous statements such as that.

Let's talk more about the setting. Above is the Hogwarts Final Fantasy Edition school where Class Zero studies magic. It's good to know that it is not as ridiculous-looking as Balamb Garden. It actually looks like an authentic school, and in my opinion it gives off that magical feel. Unfortunately, other than the school and the map, I haven't really seen anything else from Typo's world. I assume that this game is not future-esque like in FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, and FFXIII, which I always found interesting about Square's RPGs. It's okay with me though, because I am starting to take interest in the fantasy themes and all. The world, I presume, is called Oriens, and is divided into four nations, which are the Suzaku Fiefdom of Rubrum, the Milites Empire, the Lorican Alliance, and the Kingdom of Concordia. That school is from Suzaku. I don't have much to say about Suzaku and Concordia since neither page on the wiki provided a suffice amount of quality pictures for me to look at. The Milites Empire seems to be technologically advanced as there seems to be asphalt roads, steel buildings with lights and all that other crap, and mecha running around (which happened to be named Magitek Armor. Interesting). The Lorican Alliance looks like a European city, like something out of Rome or Austria from old history.

Apparently, what's going on is that the Empire wants each nation's crystal for themselves, so they are invading each country with their specialization in weapons due to their crystal. They are easily able to take over the nations of Lexington and Concord... I mean Lorican and Concordia. Apparently, those two nations found themselves stuck with the lame crystals, as Lorican's crystal is the Crystal of Shielding and Concordia's crystal is the Crystal of Dragons. You would think that the Crystal of Dragons sounds pretty badass to be considered a lame crystal, but it has to be stupid because the Empire is apparently able to overcome the adversary shown below.

So all that is left is the nation Rubrum. Apparently, Rubrum proves to be a difficult adversary to the Empire. However, I also read that the students of Class Zero are trying to get their crystal back in this game. The stupid idiots on the Final Fantasy Wiki are never clear with what they write. If that is the story, a bunch of kiddos fighting a huge imperial government, it sounds interesting. I just hope that the game does not turn into another Final Fantasy VIII. Square said that the game is hardly similar to the other FFXIII titles, which is why they removed the Agito XIII part of the title and replaced it with Typo, but I don't see the lack of similarity. Apparently in Versus XIII, it is exactly the same concept. A city with a crystal is under attack by other people who wish to have it, because apparently the crystals of their cities "died" or something. How is that not anything like Typo? Whatever, at least in that sense I can assume rightfully that the game will hardly be as annoying as FFVIII was. It also seems that I am noticing things that nobody else is noticing today. On terms of Final Fantasy, first I noticed the notorious missing student No. 10 whom the idiots of FFWiki failed to pay any mind to, and now it is how this game has the same concept as Versus XIII and Square doesn't realize it. I don't really mind the latter, but I am very interested to know just who is the ominous No. 10?

I guess he or she was somebody who wasn't created because Square couldn't think of a cool name for the character. You could clearly see that they were running out of ideas with the names since No. 7, No. 8, and No. 9 were named Seven, Eight, and Nine respectively, when they could've been named Mullet, Ocho, and Nina, also respectively. I guess when they got to ten, they thought, "Shit, what the hell do we name this guy? Screw it, let's go on to the easy ones, the court cards. Jack, Queen, and King. There, simple as that." Ten could've been named Dime or Sawbuck, but I guess that never came across their minds. And where's the Joker? Why isn't he included in Class Zero as the class clown? Goddamn it Square, there goes another perfectly good character. For that purpose, when the game comes out, I will be deliberately keeping an eye out for No. 10 and the Joker student.

Then again, the game might never be released here. So far, only a Japanese release has been listed. America and Europe haven't even been mentioned... Wait, I take that back, because the director of the game said he was trying to make the game "appeal to North Americans." That could mean anything, though, but I will keep an eye out for any information on a release date. Hopefully that will be at least a week before it's time to head on over to Tallahassee.

Edit: As a matter of fact, it turns out that Cater, Cinque, and Sice aren't even real names for cards as well. Something is definitely up with Square's naming system for this game. The name of the moogle is even ridiculous, it's Hattsumikamine Rōtoyōsuna Eripuruchi. Talk about the longest damn name in the world. I wonder if the voice actors in the game have to go through the trouble of pronouncing that whole goddamn thing. That name should definitely say something about whether Square is really considering releasing this game overseas.

Edit 2: Cinque is actually a card name for five, but it apparently is no longer used. I still don't see anything on Sice and Cater

Edit 3: Sice and Cater are apparently names for the sides of dice. That clears up the confusion. I still don't know what the hell happened to No. 10.