Final Fantasy Type-0

"It was their destiny, and theirs alone to decide. Free from fear of fate, gazing undaunted into the eye of death."

A game in the dumbfoundingly popular Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy Type-0 (known as Final Fantasy Agito XIII until late January 2011) is an Eastern RPG for the Play Station Portable. According to an interview with Famitsu it is still a part of the (newly renamed) Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy, which is a Pretentious Latin Title meaning "The New Tale Of The Crystal", the name change done solely to prevent the assumption that Type-0 was dropped from the Fabula project.

In the land of Oriense, there are four regions: Rubrum, Milites, Concordia and Lorica. Each of those regions has a crystal, and this crystal powers their military forces which are trained at four Peristylia (a combination of military academy and Wizarding School), each represented by one of The Four Gods. The countries have been at peace, honoring the Pax Codex between them.

However, the expansionist Empire of Milites, led by High Commander Cid, has found a way to shatter the crystals and has set their sights on Rubrum and the Peristylium of Suzaku. Twelve students somehow retain their powers from the crystal pact, and it's up to them save their homeland and become Agito, the savior of the world.

Type-0 was originally slated to be a cellphone game, but this was changed early in development. It was released in Japan on October 27th. Both a direct sequel and an overseas release are in the works.

Playing the game again after completing it results in a different story.

This game provides examples of:

 * Action Girl: All seven of them.
 * Alternate Character Reading: The character for "Light" is read as "Hope", where they refer to The Four Gods of Oriense.
 * Art Evolution: Being a cellphone game at first, it's not avoidable. Note that in early trailers, Ace is a White Haired Pretty Boy with younger facial features. Other characters that appeared in the trailers also underwent the same evolution, like how Seven still wore Class Zero's red cape and didn't have her unique shoulder guards as can be seen here
 * Artifact Title Drop: At some point, a Class Zero student is deemed to be the world's "Agito," or "Savior." It's not exactly a Title Drop, due to the game's name changed to Type-0 instead.
 * BFS: Gilgamesh is back with one, and he seems to have picked up weapon ideas from Garland since his last appearance.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * Earn Your Happy Ending:
 * Bloodier and Gorier: Surprisingly enough, as the Final Fantasy theme of swords and guns usually hit like bluntly or with out effect. People are set on fire, maimings and blood are prevalent, death is shown a lot more on screen, and even the magic system requires magically pulling a life force known as Phantoma out of their enemies' bodies through forcibly exploding them into a messy pulp.
 * Call Back: In the opening movie the twelve protagonists stand in a group ready to take on Milites under a flag of Rubrum flying freely.
 * Cast From Hit Points: Summoning in this game requires you to kill a party member.
 * Child Soldiers: Maybe not children, but Suzaku's idea of specialized warfare seems to be sending young teenagers into violent and bloody battle to fend for themselves. It gets even worse when their Crystal only bestows the height of magical ability in one's youth, and further diminishes as they get older, which doesn't leave much choice for youth born in the country.
 * Cool Sword: Seven, Jack, Queen, and Machina.
 * Cosmic Retcon:
 * Crapsack World: Man, unless that trailer is seriously misleading us, the world of Type-0 in the timeframe of the game is not a particularly nice place to live.
 * It becomes especially ironic given that the art is done by Nomura... and obviously using his stylized and colourful artstyle.
 * Critical Hit/One Hit Kill: A very important part of the gameplay. There are lots of enemies in the game where the player has to attack at the right time in order to score a critical hit on them. Sometimes, this is the only way to damage them at all.
 * Darker and Edgier: Unquestionably so, compared to the entire rest of the franchise (with the possible exception of the original Final Fantasy Tactics and Versus XIII), unless the game's 2011 "debut" trailer is lying to us. It depicts a world caught up in a full-on, no bullshit global conflict with plenty of death and suffering all over the place, and includes such shots as a Milites soldier shooting a dude in the face when the camera is from said dude's perspective, and the camera lens is splattered with blood. Not exactly common fare for the usually-restrained FF franchise.
 * Dark Reprise: The second segment of the final boss theme features a remix of the game's main theme, this time with Ominous Latin Chanting.
 * Decoy Protagonist: Viewpoint characters Rem and Machina are made out in publicity as the main characters, despite Word of God saying that they are only outside observers to the story's events.
 * Dragon Rider: Concordia relies on the dragoons of the Souryu Peristylium for offensive and defensive combat.
 * Dual Wielding: Machina, Rem, and King.
 * The Empire: The aptly-named Milites seems bent on conquering everything in their path.
 * Extranormal Institute: The Peristylium
 * The Four Gods: The symbols of each of the four countries revealed so far, with the protagonists' country being represented by Suzaku, The Vermilion Bird.
 * Fun With Acronyms: The Military Operation, Organization, Guidance and Logistics Expert, aka the MOOGLE. Doubles as a Mythology Gag.
 * Gender Equal Ensemble: The gender split of the 14 playable characters is exactly even: 7 girls and 7 guys.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: The official goal of all the Class Zero students is to sacrifice themselves to become "Agito", the country's saviour.
 * Holding Hands: The ending scene contains two instances of this.
 * Hotter and Sexier: Compared to the rest of the series anyway. The scenes of Emina in her bikini are the most gratuitous fanservice to yet come from Final Fantasy, which considering their past instances of such is saying a lot. It's also the first time the developers have been forthcoming with the design process behind the Panty Shots of the female characters, and recurring Ms. Fanservice summon Shiva barely even qualifies as a Cute Monster Girl, just being a buxom human in a bikini top and miniskirt.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Ace uses cards, Deuce uses a flute, and Machina uses screw-drill-sword-things. And let's be honest, Sice, a scythe isn't the most practical thing, either.
 * In the Hood: All the main characters in one cutscene.
 * Instant Awesome Just Add Dragons: Concordia's armies are full of dragons.
 * Keystone Army: Defeating an enemy commander causes all other enemies to surrender.
 * Laser Guided Amnesia/Wistful Amnesia:
 * Lazy Backup: Averted. You don't get a game over until all the playable characters are ko'd. Whether or not there will be exceptions to that rule remains to be seen.
 * Limit Break: Preforming basic attacks builds up a meter that lets you use your special attacks.
 * Combination Attack: The most powerful of which, Trinity Attacks, must be executed in tandem with the other two party members.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: There are fourteen playable characters.
 * And then there is this trailer.
 * Messianic Archetype: Each of the twelve students is trying to become one as part of Operation Apostle.
 * New Era Speech: Cid of Milites gives one to his armed forces, before they launch an invasion upon the Peristylium of Suzaku.
 * Mythology Gag: Several.
 * The Kingdom of Concordia employs Dragoons who ride dragons as their military, like the original Dragoons of Final Fantasy II.
 * Magitek Armor similar to Final Fantasy VI's appears.
 * "Peristylium" comes from the Latin word peristyle, which is a private garden. Final Fantasy VIII's military academies were called Gardens.
 * School Uniforms Are the New Black: Most likely, since all the promotional material has shows the playable characters in their school uniforms.
 * Nonuniform Uniform: Let's put it this way to save time; no two characters wear their uniforms the same way.
 * Patriotic Fervor: The opening movie begins with Cid rallying his troops in a Mien Kampf Liebenstraum-esque speech, and ends with Ace standing tall, driving a pole bearing the flag of Rubrum into the ground before he and his classmates go to war.
 * Sigil Spam: Anything that remotely Rubrum will have some kind of gear motive on them, whether it's clothes that its people wear, summons, or architectures.
 * Shout Out: Rubrum includes towns named Innsmouth and Arkham. Milites has a town named Arwen.
 * Mechanical giant scorpions
 * There's an airship named Setzer
 * Sidequest: The MOOGLE will give them out.
 * Slice of Life: Certain cutscenes revolve on the daily lives of Class Zero and other associated schoolmates between missions.
 * The Smurfette Principle: Averted. In contrast to the "three females rule" of other Final Fantasy games, there are 7 girls in the main party.
 * Stable Time Loop:
 * Summon Magic: Called Gods of War or War Gods in this game.
 * Theme Naming: Twelve of the playable characters are named after playing cards and French dice terms. The low numbers are dice terms, possibly simply for sounding more like names. The other two characters that are playable have Latin and Japanese Meaningful Names.
 * The four countries in the world are named for the four Chinese God Beasts. Suzaku (Vermilion Bird) for the heroes and Byakko (White Tiger) for the villains being most prominent in the story thus far.
 * The cities of Concordia mostly have names from Hindu mythology.
 * Too Many Belts: Where a normal school uniform would have buttons to close up their shirts and coats, we have buckles here. Thanks Nomura!
 * Trailers Always Spoil:
 * Vaporware: The game was infamous for this for a while; it was announced in 2006 as a cellphone game (that is, something traditionally very easy to put together), and it was 2011 before we got a release date... on the PSP, on two UMD discs. For a long time, people speculated that the project had just been canceled.
 * The creators of the game admitted that development on the game didn't even really start until 2008, two years after it was announced, and even then it had to be kept to a minimum for the first year so they could focus on The 3rd Birthday.
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: AIRSHIP BATTLES.
 * War Is Hell
 * White Haired Pretty Boy/White Haired Pretty Girl: It's a Square Enix game. Don't tell us you're surprised. (For the record they are Seven, Sice, and Qator Bashtar.)
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Sice, Cinque, Rem, Aria and the female Suzaku soldiers score an easy A in this.
 * War Is Hell
 * White Haired Pretty Boy/White Haired Pretty Girl: It's a Square Enix game. Don't tell us you're surprised. (For the record they are Seven, Sice, and Qator Bashtar.)
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Sice, Cinque, Rem, Aria and the female Suzaku soldiers score an easy A in this.