Type-0 Demo

It turns out that the demo of the game wasn't just for a bunch of Japanese people who attended the demo event. The folks at Siliconera shared this awesome article here that gives links and instructions on how to download the demo, either via PSN Japan or the company's website (I personally went with the other link to the company's website, as that is the method that Siliconera explains and to get the demo off of Japanese PSN you need a JPSN account, which sounds a little complicated to me since I am an English noob).

The article also gives lovely links to other articles that explain the game's controls an whatnot. I don't know if it's included on that page, but here's a link to a guide for the demo. This should be interesting. Expect a playthrough, and this time I am ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS about it. I know I said I would do FFXIII and Dissidia 012, and I know I never got around to doing them. I can't find the time to do it. However, given that this is a demo, things might be different. Let's see if I can at least find No. 10 during my brief aventure into FF Typo.

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.

FFXIII-2 Nearing Completion

"Lightning Strikes Twice." It doesn't get any more awesome than that. I think this is the first time I have ever seen a Final Fantasy game featured in Game Informer, rather than some Japanese magazine like Daruma Magazine or something. I think the writer of the article even said that this is the first time Square has globally opened the game up to be seen in magazines outside of Japan and all. This is really exciting. Tim Turi wrote that Square was going to "tap into the series' core fan base," which I am sure means that they are going to go back to their roots or whatever you want to call the days between FFVI and FFX and make a game with the same elements. This sounds like the greatest thing that the company's ever done for years, and I hope that all the hype isn't leading to nowhere. Turi wrote, "If my short time with FFXIII-2 is any indication of the final product, I can't wait to get my hands on this promising piece of digital redemption once more." He said that he had played fifty hours of the first FFXIII and found more enjoyment in the thirty minutes he spent playing this game. It was not a surprise to me, given the things I have seen and heard from this game, that he would write that the game is a vast improvement, yet I am very astonished by the things I read from the article, and therefore I myself cannot wait to get my hands on that game as well. I doubt it will be the best Final Fantasy ever, but it will surely be one of the company's greatest releases if it lives up to what was shown. Apparently, this game now gives players the ability to jump freely, at any time. I don't know if that will really come into any necessary use, but nonetheless it makes me happy to hear that. I cannot wait to see it all for myself.

FFXIII-2 Gets a Big Reveal at E3

Square decided to bring forth some new information on Final Fantasy XIII-2 to light this year at E3. Continuing from the the first ambiguous teaser trailer they released, the added another ambiguous teaser showing short clips of the different things going on in the game, each revolving around Serah and this new guy called Noel. Things varied from them walking around with a moogle to them fighting a giant arm. No dialogue, hardly any music, and all of it ending with the game's title logo at the end. Very informative, Square, very informative. I was beginning to think that that was all that they were going to show at E3, because I've known Square to pull silly tricks like that often, but then they released the trailer I have here a couple of days ago, along with a full set of interviews. From what I've gathered, this sequel is going to be a billion times better than the original. I think that this game was going to be the true Final Fantasy XIII, and the original was really just something to set the stage for this sequel. For the first time, it seems that Square might just actually release a sequel to a numbered game that is actually good. This is something I have to see. Also, they said that there would be multiple endings in this game. It seems to me that this game is going to be a historical turning point for Square and it's Final Fantasy series, if they decide to follow up from this game. I doubt it, though; each time they release a game, you never know what the gameplay might be like save for the fact that it's an RPG. There's apparently a video interview with someone representing Square Enix, NA, and it's supposed to cover some information regarding the gameplay, so let's check that out first.

Okay, so for the most part, it's basically stuff I already read in the interview with Kitase. Let me open that up real quick so that I could cite some information. You can hire monsters to fight for you in this game, weirdly enough. It doesn't seem like something I would use. Also in battle is a little something called Cinematic Action, which basically looks like reaction commands from Kingdom Hearts 2. You can see them in action in the video above, where you see something like a cutscene come up during the battle with that weird arm thing, and you'll see something on screen indicating a button you need to press. While it doesn't entirely live up to the original battle design that they were going to implement on in Final Fantasy XIII, it looks cool enough to switch up the battles a little bit and to give the player a more active role in the game. It's about damn time. They also say that they are going to make the world an open and exlporational world with towns and shops and NPCs of which you could speak to and decide what to say. Sounds very reminiscent of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. As with all traditional towns, each town will have shops in them. They also said that they are implementing an AI in each individual NPC, so they will be doing a variety of their own things like walking with their families and such. There will be actual side missions for once, and they said it will be like in Red Dead Redemption where you would go up to some other NPC who is offering a special mission that doesn't have to do with the main storyline or something of the sort. I think this is a fantastic improvement to the game. I can't wait to see what that would be like.

There's not much else to say other than that. They also spoke of the music in the game and how Red Dead Redemption inspired them, somehow. They also talked about how the game was going to run on the Xbox and how many discs will be needed and all sorts of other shit I don't care about because I'm getting the game for the PS3. This really looks amazing, and they said it will be out sometime early 2012, not Winter 2012 that Final Fantasy Wikia said. I can't wait for it!

A Small Check In

Sorry I've been really busy for the month, but I have some good news. I got the new Dissidia, and I must say it's new storyline is a huge improvement. It could be a million times better without Vaan and his stupid ass, but I think the game paid much respect to Tifa and Lightning's characters, as I was hoping for, so I'm cool with the game. It still pisses me off that you have to level up your characters and that you can only have so many abilities, and that your characters are nothing without gear (oh man, in this game they made the consequences of not having gear even worse than before). However, I got Lightning up to level eighty thanks to a new and hilariously exploitable and easy way to level up your favorite characters and stuff. The game also rewards those who went through the nonsense that was Dissidia 1 by allowing you to keep your characters' levels from the first one along with that awesome chocobo that would give you experience multipliers like crazy, but the downside is that the gear and summons are not transferable for some stupid reason. That's all for now. More on a playthrough (and this time I mean it) next time on this blog!

Enter Gilgamesh!

It looks like Square finally wised up to their choice of characters. Who wanted ExDeath as Bartz's adversary? Nobody. We were all looking for Gilgamesh, and when he was not featured in the first Dissidia, I was all like "SQUARE, Y U NO FEATURE GILGAMESH," but now he's here, and now i have some competition with Lightning over who's going to be my "only" character. Lightning may still be my "only" character given that Gilgamesh is an unlockable character like Gabranth and Shanttoto were. Considering that I will probably have to play through Vaan's story for that and go on another adventure with that moron, I am not so sure if I will ever get to experience what it's like playing as Gilgamesh. I read that he was basically a wild card character whose attacks are completely random, and I'm not sure if that's really a good thing.

However, I liked what I saw from that video (lol, Butz Klauser). That was a hilarious whooping at the end. So maybe I'll endure the torment of "I wanna be a sky pirate" Vaan, "Why am I fighting" Cloud, and every other character in Dissidia that I hated. Gilgamesh seems like he is worth the breaking down of my sanity.

The Fabula Novella Crystallis Dish Out More Expectations

First off all: BAM! Finally, some gameplay footage for Versus XIII. Finally, I am no longer contemplating whether the game exists.



Update: Apparently Square lifted the copyright block on the trailer. The hell? Well, please ignore anything I say about the trailer being blocked, and do enjoy!

Unfortunately I didn't quite make out half of what I saw, but from what I did make out, I instantly developed high hopes for this game. The fact that it is still a PS3 exclusive is already sounding good to me. The CGI trailers look great, but the actual gameplay graphics look a bit funny. The gameplay looks promising, as it really is that Kingdom Hearts-esque style of combat that Square promised not to bullshit. It just doesn't look too glamorous yet, but that might be perhaps of limited abilities in the trailer. From what I've seen, though, it doesn't look too bad. Most of the trailer showed Noctis running around in a slightly realistic looking city with cannons bombarding the streets and some weird flying bus thing crashing into buildings. If that wasn't enough, they showed the fight against the Behemoth, which is an actual Final Fantasy Behemoth and not some retarded bipedal piece of shit that FFXII tried to pull on me. Those Behemoths are not vicious, they look more like a pack of idiots.

Well, I was going to post the video for FFXIII's sequel, FFXIII-2, but Square blocked it for some stupid  reason. I assume that could only mean that the trailer I had for Versus XIII here might also be blocked, for this is all happening before I've even posted this shit yet. Oh well, I guess I cannot show you all Lightning's ass for now, but in time good Readers, in time. I'm afraid that that game will be terrible, but I'm willing to cling to some hope since Lightning's in it. Maybe the developers will actually make the game an explorable world with tons of sidequests, but given their previous compilations to other video games, that would be very unlikely.

Note: Yeah, they blocked that Versus XIII video too. Sorry, Readers, but I can't help it if Square wants to be a pain. We'll just have to wait till they calm the hell down about their "rights."

HD Videos | Final Fantasy XIII-2 | Reveal Trailer

Well I found another trailer for the second FFXIII. God knows how long this one will last, so hopefully whoever the hell I imagine is reading this has a chance to get a good look at you know what before Square takes it down. Aw man, come on Square, don't be so stingy with your fanservice.

I'm now working on figuring out how I am going to save the video.