Final Fantasy Type-0 #2 - The Meadow

 Chapter 2 begins with a bang. Tune in as our heroes battle imperial forces, deadly slimes, and hypermobile flying mechs hundreds of years ahead of everything else in the game... for some reason.

Seems the Ultima Bomb has put the fear of God into everyone. No one wants to oppose the Empire and risk annihilation.

That said, most of the smaller nations don't want to accept the Empire's peace terms because it'd be like admitting the Empire is in the right, which it isn't.

On that note, BOOBS

The environments are very nice in this game. They're high-res and one thing the game excels at.

Class Zero, being the elite super-troops of the kingdom, get tons of poon awe from the other students in the military academy.

The interior of the academy is pretty nice too, but it's a little bit of a chore to roam around in because it's so big.

Ace runs into a dude who is chatting it up with two women.

Judging from his hair, Ace is moments away from breaking down and wailing "IF I COULD BE A STAR LIKE YOU! SPECIAL LIKE YOU! A STARRRR LIKE YOU" while cutting his wrists.

...I like that song. I don't like this guy I'm playing as.

He gets to class, only to have the instructor draw a sword on his neck. WTF?

She then proceeds to beat the complete crap out of a bunch of the students without warning, which I guess is supposed to be some kind of lesson. Oooookay.

On the bright side, two new cadets have arrived:  Machina and Rem. Aside from being an accomplished band, Rem is hot as hell. I think I found my new main character.

...ugh, she does the same "timid Japanese girl" thing that most of the other female characters do. Whatever, I'll still play as her.

Speaking of female characters, what's this 10 year old doing here? Where are her pants/parents?

WHY ARE ALL THE FEMALE CHARACTERS SO TIMID? STAND UP STRAIGHT!

Now we get to...Mog. He sounds like a 3 year old girl, but he has the vocabulary of a wisened adult. Which would make him the first adult in this game. Yay.

I try to go do party-organization, but Mog insists that I go to the cemetery first. I can't even leave the room because Mog is all "go pay your respects, asshole!"

I go to the cemetery and the characters have a quick conversation about how Cid is leading the nation to ruin and how his usage of nukes is horrible. No argument there. Also, props for this conversation in the cemetary both A) Making sense and B) Moving the story along in some way.

They totally copied Persona by giving you free time before missions, during which you can go around and talk to people and make stuff happen.

There's the full roster of party members. I moved things around to make Rem my main character, with Queen and Cinque as the party members. Mainly because they're the three attractive characters.

...can I legally say that? How old are these broads supposed to be?

 Man, Rem is so cute. Unfortunately, I've been told that she isn't available for the whole game, so making her my main and leveling her up is basically pointless. Well crap. I'm going to do it anyway and level up backup characters too for the point when she isn't available anymore.

ProTip: In a game where you control one character at a time, it kinda sucks to take one character out of the game entirely at any point because what if the players were main-ing that character? It's especially bad if it's "the hot one", as there's a good chance lots of people were playing that character.

 Not all of the students are in awe of Class Zero. That or maybe different characters get different responses out of people. Rem seems to be getting a lot of negative attention. Maybe if she'd act confident at all...

In this game, you don't deploy for missions. You "march". I guess it works out, because the character cast are basically the Hitlerjugend. Seriously, who the hell sends a bunch of highschoolers to war?

 Here's the strangely-flat overworld. I like how stormy everything looks, at least. There's some sense of being in a nation at war.

As you wander around, you can get pulled into random battles. It happens annoyingly often. These battles take place in a sub-space where you can't leave until you defeat everything.

Most of the fights are against imperial soldiers, but flans/slimes seem pretty common too. Rem fights with dual knives, which is a bit more interesting than Ace pummeling things with playing cards.

Magitek armor alert! It's worth noting that you spend waaay too much time laying on the ground during fights. Seems like every enemy has some move that can knock you down, and whenever it happens you just sit there and wait for your character to slowly get back up. It's so irritating. I tried all kinds of button presses to try and get them to pop back to their feet, but no avail.

"The price of failure is death" okay no thanks. I think these are side-missions. Let's just get through the main game.

Editor's Note: Further investigation has revealed that an SO isn't so much a side-mission as it is an "optional objective". It'll give you something to do, like "defeat the next enemy within 30 seconds" and if you do it, you get a reward. Fail, and one character gets instakilled for the remainder of the mission unless you dodge three very hard to dodge death traps. Bizarre. I left SOs off for the whole game and things turned out fine.

The main trio arrives at the next town. We march! For das Fatherland!

I notice that Rem has atrophied pencil-legs and Cinque is bow-legged. Is Yukiko the only normal person in this game?

We clash with more imperials here, and the lack of variety in the enemy models is starting to wear thin already. I'm fighting the same five or so enemies over and over and over and over in this game.

After a successful mission, my Hitler Youth head back to the base to submit a report to the inexplicably-employed ten year old. They did well, so she doesn't execute any of them for failure. DASENGRUPEN!

A war battle follows. These are somewhat cool, and they're optional. They could be much cooler if they involved skill, but they don't. You pretty much just run up to towns and beat them with your weapon until they get flipped to your side. I'd rather be issuing commands and dealing with enemy tactics and so forth, but that's mildly complicated, so we can't have that in this simple game.

Here's the military academy on the overworld. Vaguely reminds me of the Garden in FFVIII.

Meanwhile in the Imperial homebase, Cid conspires. He has someone in mind to unleash on our heroes. Captain Ginyu?

Back at the academy, it turns out that the good guys have a secret weapon of their own. Zhuyu here is a formidable L'Cie, meaning he's as powerful as the main cast in FFXIII. I'd like him on my team, but that isn't happening. This guy's like a ripe old 20 year old so there's no room for him in my party I guess.

For the record, in FFXIII vernacular:

L'Cie = Powerful person with control over magic/elements, like the Lunarians in FFIV or SOLDIER in FFVII.

Fal'Cie = Espers/Eidolons, only with the addition of demigodhood and the power to bestow quests on people via branding.

There, I just explained those two words better than FFXIII ever does. 

If you run straight forward with any of the female characters and the camera is down enough, you can see their panties. Rem here wears silky pink panties.

...I hate this game

Turns out the boob-tastic doctor is actually Ace's mother. She reminds the player of this in every single text box she gets when you talk to her as Ace. In other news, it's safe to say Ace never had a shortage of milk.

I take Rem to the arena and decimate practice squads with lightning as "Shiny Happy People" plays. Shiny happy peeeeople holding haa-SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE HOLDING HAAAANDS!

EDITOR'S NOTE: It turns out that lady I mentioned a moment ago isn't Ace's mother. She says the same stuff to all of Class Zero, and refers to herself as "mother" regardless of who she's speaking to, as do they. Don't think she's actually related to any of them. Weird. 

At this point I discover that you can leave your characters in the arena to train overnight and they'll accrue exp until you restart the game. Thing is, you can tab out of the game, turn your PS4 clock ahead, then reload your save and get all of the exp without waiting. Looks like two days is the limit on how much exp can accrue, so setting the clock forward a year wouldn't do much. Two days of exp is enough for about three levels, though. Once I figured this out I leveled up Rem very very quickly. ...which is pointless since the game is gonna take her away. I better level up some backup characters on this later.

After getting from level 9 to level 63 in a half hour, I head out into the world to obliterate some fools. Taste the OP!

...and I'm dead. Got one-shotted by some roaming bull enemy. WTF.

Well, this game is extremely difficult regardless, so even when you level up it isn't going to be a cakewalk. Leveling up doesn't make a huge difference on your stats either. I went from about 250 HP to about 1000 HP, which seems pretty low for level 63 in a Final Fantasy.

The next mission has Das Hitlerjugend infiltrating an enemy base and killing lots of imperial troops. Men with families.

After all that, they encounter... a mech straight out of Xenosaga. It's extremely mobile and fierce. It's also totally incongruous with everything else we've seen in this world technology-wise, but I'll roll with it because it's pretty rad.

The mech is piloted by the badassedly-named General Qator Bashtar. He proceeds to torch the streets and take out a lot of people (some on his own side).

Boss fight! This is difficult, even at level 63, because I can't seem to hit the bastard. He's faster and more manueverable than my characters are.

 

 I finally manage to catch him as he lands and unleash a devastating knife combo.

It took two of those combos, and I imagine this fight would have been an extended affair had I been at normal levels. Game is really difficult, even on easy.

That's another battle over... but at what cost? AT WHAT COST?

...oh, there's the cost. Milites is the empire, Rubrum is our force, and Concordia is the territory we were trying to help. The good news is that our side "won". General Bashtar escaped to fight another day, though.

To be continued.