This past week in Tokyo, Kotaku was able to sit down with Final Fantasy Type-0 director Hajime Tabata and talk with him about the gameâs upcoming HD remasterâwhatâs new, whatâs cut, and why the game is so damned hard.
In the West, there is no doubt Final Fantasy Type-0 is one of the most anticipated of Square Enixâs upcoming titlesâespecially since the original PSP version never left Japanese shores. Tabata never expected his game to be so desired by foreign audiences.
âI was surprised and I am continuously surprised by the reactions of the Western audience.â But he was even more amazed by the reaction he received when it was announced he was directing Final Fantasy XV. âI got comments that said âyouâre going at it in the wrong orderâ so I was surprised about how passionate people were about having Type-0 come to Western audiences.â
Even though most Western gamers have not played Final Fantasy Type-0, I personally played it back when it was first released in Japan. And when I did, there was one thing I felt more than anything else: This game is unforgivingly difficult.
A nearly complete lack of resurrection spells and phoenix downs means that the deaths of characters are quite final; you canât simply bring them back. And while you have 14 characters to cycle through, once they are all dead, itâs game over.
Moreover, if, for example, a dungeonâs boss can fly and you have no ranged characters left alive or have no ranged magic equipped, you cannot win. You will likely have to start the dungeon over completelyâlosing 30 minutes to an hour of progress. While I found this more than a bit frustrating, Tabata explained that this was by design.
âThe whole setting of Type-0 is that you are in a war and these kids form a special ops team,â he said. âAnd youâve got these very talented individuals who are very proficient in their given weapons but are also capable of equipping magic as they progress. So you are kind of strategizing on which character and what equipment combination would be most suitable for a particular mission and executing that activity.
Continuing, Tabata said, âI wanted to emphasize knowing the characters you have in your party. You have 14 students and each of them has his or her individual abilities. So itâs a combination of skill, weapons, and magicâtrying to understand your characters . . . so that you can fully equip them appropriatelyâso you can send them into the mission. Of course, there is an ideal way of beating your monsters, but you also want to be faced with the reality of if you donât plan appropriately, youâve got the reality of failure of the mission. And I felt it wouldnât be right to spoon feed the directionâit kind of spoils the fun of being able to strategize and go into battle and execute your plans seamlessly.â
However, thatâs not to say that Tabata was unsympathetic to players who might find the game unenjoyable because of its difficulty. Not only has the PSP gameâs annoyingly long loading time for a mission retry been vastly improved, he has opted to create a new easy mode for the HD version of the game.
In the PSP version of the game, normal attacks do little damage. As Tabata put it, âThe main mechanic of [the game] is not just hitting the enemy and attacking the enemy, itâs more about strategizing and getting the enemy off guard and knocking them down.â However, he understands that this can be difficult. So in the new easy mode, characters do more damage, level up quicker, and have higher defense. However, he hopes that once people master the easy mode, they will play it on normal mode as it was originally designed.
Yet, while some features have been added or tweaked, others have been cut in their entiretyânamely coop. The original PSP game allowed you to play ad-hoc with up to two other human players in your party. However, to do that in the HD release, the coop mode would have had to be entirely redesigned for online play; so the feature was removed.
âThe reason why we made this decision was because what prompted us to make a Western version of Type-0 in the first place was the demand from the fans. So we wanted to deliver the game as quickly as possible to the fans. So rather than taking time to remake [the coop mode], I would rather keep as many of the original elements as possible but still deliver a game as quickly as possible to satisfy the demands of the fans.â
Final Fantasy Type-0 will be released in North America and Europe on March 21, 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It will include a playable demo of Tabataâs other upcoming game, Final Fantasy XV
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