Final Fantasy: Type-0 had me in tears after watching a chocobo bleed to death in the opening scene, and for the next 40 hours I would experience everything from sadness to disbelief as the thin but reverent story unfolded. During that same time, the zippy action-based combat made running around the world of Orience a lively experience, though viewed through an occasionally obstinate camera. Type-0 has a strange dichotomy of action and emotion, but it comes together to create a roleplaying game that works on multiple levels.

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Everything in Type-0 is tied to war, which makes for some intriguing presentation of the usual Final Fantasy features. Magic comes in the form of fire bombs, lightning missiles, and ice bullets, while the story progresses via military campaigns that involve liberating towns, defending bases, and invading cities. Even chocobos are bred for war; I liked that by capturing birds in the wild and correctly breeding them, you can hatch combat-ready chocobos that help fight in sorties, or can race across the world map to quickly arrive at a destination.The tale of an elite group of young cadets fighting an aggressive military empire serves as a reminder that it’s the young who die in war, and who are the first to be forgotten. Class Zero ’s emotional struggles – like watching friends die on the battlefield and then feeling guilty because they’re unable to remember them, is incredibly moving. Unfortunately, the cringe-worthy voice acting in the English-language version sometimes distracted from the solemnity, especially when the class loudmouth Nine kept adding “yo” and “hey” after every bloody sentence. Luckily, there are humorous moments sprinkled in to lighten the mood and keep the story from getting too dark; I laughed out loud when a saucy cadet named Carla sweet-talked a military instructor, then turned around to brag about her manipulation skills.

Campaigns that involve running through city streets or infiltrating fortresses were pretty fun, but I had a hard time with the real-time strategy missions that popped up here and there. I nearly rage quit one operation because the stubborn camera and clunky controls made it hard for me to move around the battlefield. These annoying mechanical issues were inherited from the original PSP version of Type-0 (which was released exclusively in Japan back in 2011), along with a few other noticeable limitations: NPCs have blocky faces, wall textures are blurred and jaggy, and dungeons and towns are little more than long, monochromatic corridors. I was so bored by most environments that I stopped caring about them halfway through the story.

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Jack is slow-moving but can easily slice through monsters with his sword, Seven can nimbly dodge enemy soldiers while using her chain whip to deal out vicious attacks, and Rem can use her Undying Wish spell to temporarily prevent cadets from falling on the battlefield. And if one of your team members does fall, you can immediately summon another cadet from Class Zero’s reserves to replace them, or call on a powerful Eidolon to help thin out enemy ranks. (Eidolons tend to be unwieldy, though, and require the sacrifice of one of your party members in order to summon them.) You can even request NPC support units from Akademia to help you on campaigns, which is a nice way to earn special points that can be used to acquire rare items.Whether I was fighting mundane soldiers or taking on more exciting enemies like poison-spitting serpents and giant, angry snow beasts, I felt powerful because the combat was always super fast paced. In fact, many victories were achieved in less than a minute using the handy "kill sight" and "break sight" features, which allow cadets to heavily damage or even instantly kill an enemy with a well-timed attack. Levelling up so many cadets in order to make sure they were all combat ready required a lot of patience, but I didn’t mind since Type-0 includes a nice array of ways to beef up your characters. You can accept side quests from NPCs, train at Akademia’s battle arena, increase magic skills by attending a lecture, participate in random battles on the world map, or re-do story campaigns accessed from the main menu.It may seem like it’s easy to overpower Class Zero, but almost everything you do is tied to the limited amount of free time you have between military campaigns. This clever bit of time management forced me to think carefully about which activities I participated in: did I want to spend two hours talking to an NPC, or leave Akademia and lose six hours so I could go on a monster hunt? Time was of the essence, and I enjoyed having to use it wisely.Finally, I had a little bit of an issue with the convoluted ending, which requires a second playthrough and a lot of reading up on Orience’s lore to fully comprehend. I didn’t mind relying on the in-game compendium for some things, but having to bend over backwards to understand what’s going on didn’t add anything to the story.