I miss Stumps boring long ass impressions. In fact I miss the almost complete lack of impressions in total in the thread. Occasionally see a someguyinahat write up and a few other peeps who sometimes post a paragraph or two (thank you to those who do) but it's been a bit flat on the ground impressions wise in here for a while
Final Fantasy Type- 0 HD impressions (10 hour playtime)
Firstly, lets talk about the rest of the port other than the graphics settings. Now then, the launcher is extremely well done, having not played FFXIII for Steam, and not having encountered a launcher of such quality before, I was extremely pleased with it's quality and look. They did an outstanding job on it, but there is an important part where things didn't turn out quite right, and that is the keyboard controls.
For a while, I tried playing with the keyboard to test out if I can effectively operate it, and unfortunately some commands don't work or are poorly labeled to facilitate use of the keyboard. A major issue was the 'accept/okay' command. I tried every key and checked the keyboard controls layout, and even made changes/adjustments for quite a while and still could not find an 'accept' button for it :/
Fortunately, every other key was functional and worked as it was supposed to. I'm not sure if this is a one-off issue, but hopefully it gets resolved. On short, a great port, but some flaws that need to be addressed. I wouldn't recommend anyone to try playing it with a keyboard. A controller is the way to go.
Story/theme
While the story starts out as okay, and a bit confusing unless you have a gist of what l'cie and their crystals are, Type-0 greets the players by showing the devastation and destruction brought by war. A certain NPC is shown being killed on his Chocobo and gushing with blood. Some of the scene transitions depicting it was good, only hindered by the use of the origin of the assets.
Now, another key theme of the game is that once characters die, their memories are lost and the only way to know who died is by collecting their knowing tags...the dogtags of the game. Now, one factor this gives is the ability to fight without loss or succumbing to emotions, making the characters efficient soldiers, something that is also explored later on. The dialog is often cheesy, but that didn't really matter to me, i'm a cheesy person myself, and I don't see it as a negative.
Sound/Music
The sound options are standard and the quality of the sound itself is good. The English VA cast also did a good job, unfortunately they couldn't capture the personality of some of the characters. NPCs were great, just that some class zero members sounded off (I'm looking at you, Jack and Cinque). As someone who uses Jack a lot, I had to switch to the Japanese voices as his English voice was quite grating to hear, like someone just hit puberty. :/
As for the music, well...i'm not much of a music enthusiast, so i'll keep it simple. The music is used quite well throughout the story, though there are some battle music which could be used better elsewhere as it didn't fit the atmosphere or the group of enemies that used it. Otherwise, it was used quite well, and the music was mostly quite good.
Combat
Now for the main dish! Unlike previous Final Fantasy's, Type-0's combat is that of an Action RPG, rather than turn-based. Each and every character plays and controls differently. Running, dodging, battle stance etc.
My only issue is that the Ability/magic slots are too low (Only 2 slots max to customize your skills and magic both, not separate for each). There are a ton of options to choose from, unfortunately you'll have to reduce that wealth to effectively use your characters. There is potential to combo with your moves at least. You'll have to be patient and progress a fair bit for that though.
The introduction of killsight makes it quite easy to dispatch enemies and bosses. While this would generally be a bad thing, there are certain bosses that would result those fights into a war of attrition, and spawn grunts, so this mechanic aids in ending such fights faster. Also, you're often facing enemies out of your depth in later stages in Officer/agito difficulties, so maximizing or creating killsight conditions is important there and an element of strategy instead.
One nice feature is how summons behave in this game. You sacrifice your party leader in order to summon your bosses like Ifrit, Shiva, Odin etc and here's the best part, you can play as them! They each have their own levels too, and attacks that can be upgraded. Also, unlocking more summons requires completing expert trials, which is quite difficult and fitting to it's name. There are some stages where you're forced to not use magics and summons too, which helps raising the challenge of the stages, and those restrictions are connected to the plot which helps add a layer to the story too.
Overall, I felt that the combat is fun and enjoyable.
A solid game and port, with some glaring flaws. I'd recommend a purchase at $15 or less in a heartbeat.
