Wolf Kanno
04-10-2014, 04:03 PM
Final Fantasy Type-0
The Missing Pillar of Fabula Nova Crystallis
52859
Originally announced at E3 in 2006 for mobile phone devices and finally released on the PlayStation Portable October 27th 2011 in Japan, Final Fantasy Type-0 has had one very rocky road from its conception to its eventual phoenix-like birth. The game sold very well, selling nearly the same amount of units in its first four months that major PSP hit Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII had sold in its first year in Japan. As early as January 2012, the game was well on its way to hitting the one million unit mark. Despite this success, the game has never made a voyage beyond its homeland of Japan marking it as one of the few Final Fantasy g52860ames to never reach the West.
This is a huge disappointment because the game has received strong reviews from both Japanese Final Fantasy fans and importers whom both consider the game to be ambitious and one of the stronger entries in the Fabula Nova Crystallis franchise. While Type-0 director Hajima Tabata has shown strong interest in releasing Type-0 in the West and despite the game having become popular enough to warrant several spin-offs including a new mobile game due this spring, Square-Enix has made little effort to even talk about a Western release of Type-0. This eventually led to an online fan petition called Operation Suzaku (http://operation-suzaku.com/), which was created in the same vein as the somewhat successful Operation Rainfall (http://operationrainfall.com/) campaign of a few years back to get the game a proper release in the West.
There may be many factors hampering the game’s ability to see release. Probably the most notable issue was simply the game’s timing. It was released both in the waning years of the PlayStation Portables life cycle and during the fervor of the new PlayStation Vita’s launch, making the game completely lost in the media circus around the new system’s launch.
52864
This leads to the other issue that directly affects the Western release: the strange stigma that has hounded the handheld market since the original Nintendo Gameboy. Western gamers seem to be very skeptical of a handheld system ability to deliver a “full console experience” and thus handhelds tend to have a second class status among the Western gaming community. This is usually noticeable by sales trends where consoles tend to sell better in the West (including PAL regions) than handhelds, whereas the reverse is usually the true with Japan. For instance the PlayStation 3 has sold over 9 million units in Japan compared to the U.S.’s 28 million and change. On the other hand, the PlayStation Portable sold over 19 million units in Japan whereas the system only sold a little over 21 million in the U.S., despite being available longer than the PS3.
One other issue stemming from the game’s timing also deals with SE being at a financial and career low point:52861 at the time of the game’s release, SE was still trying to recover from the disaster that had been Final Fantasy XIV, which had been released the previous year and was still bleeding money from the company. Final Fantasy XIII and then-announced sequel were already divisive titles in the West, but many felt that XIV had been of a far greater stain on the series, to the point where then-Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada; openly apologized about the quality of the game and admitted that it had hurt the series reputation. The financial loss and the scramble to fix the game caused a huge financial burden on the company that saw the delay or cancellation of several projects within the company.
While Type-0 may have been slated for an eventual Western release, the delay could have easily pushed prospects far behind what was eventually the end of its life cycle for the PSP. It took almost a year for Western news magazines to ask about Type-0’s localization and no one at SE seemed to know if such a project had ever been green-lighted. The only known info of a possible localization came from a comment by the staff in the Japanese-only Ultimania saying they were working on a Western release.
Another issue with Ty52863pe-0 may also be the fact that this game had the least amount of interest in the West of the three initial titles of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project. This could largely be due to the fact that when the game was originally announced, it was for mobile phones a small market in the West at the time caused a lost in interest. Even worse was that the initial promo simply showed the character Ace, who uses playing cards as a weapon made some news organizations wrongfully suspect the game would be a card game which were very popular on mobile devices in Japan at the time.
These factors would have killed most interest at t52862hat point, but disappearing off the news map with Versus XIII also didn’t help. Eventually the game was moved to the PlayStation Portable and according to Hajime Tabata, the game was completely reimagined to the point where the team chose to change the game’s title from XIII~Agito to a non-numbered entry called Type-0 in order to distance itself from the original XIII project and show the game as its own standalone title.
All of these points are simply conjecture and until we hear from SE we may never know what kept this title as Japan-only. All we know is that it may be a crying shame as Type-0 features many of the elements that fans have been clamoring for a while such as a return of an old-school-style world map, chocobo breeding, a darker story dealing with the horrors of war and actually showcasing blood and dying, an action RPG battle system, and a cast of characters that are genuinely likable. Hopefully fan efforts like Operation Suzaku can convince Square-Enix not to let this game become another Final Fantasy III and be lost to the rest of the world for a long time before eventually getting released. Until then, check out the game’s intro and hope.
t_Ryi6ttcu0
The Missing Pillar of Fabula Nova Crystallis
52859
Originally announced at E3 in 2006 for mobile phone devices and finally released on the PlayStation Portable October 27th 2011 in Japan, Final Fantasy Type-0 has had one very rocky road from its conception to its eventual phoenix-like birth. The game sold very well, selling nearly the same amount of units in its first four months that major PSP hit Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII had sold in its first year in Japan. As early as January 2012, the game was well on its way to hitting the one million unit mark. Despite this success, the game has never made a voyage beyond its homeland of Japan marking it as one of the few Final Fantasy g52860ames to never reach the West.
This is a huge disappointment because the game has received strong reviews from both Japanese Final Fantasy fans and importers whom both consider the game to be ambitious and one of the stronger entries in the Fabula Nova Crystallis franchise. While Type-0 director Hajima Tabata has shown strong interest in releasing Type-0 in the West and despite the game having become popular enough to warrant several spin-offs including a new mobile game due this spring, Square-Enix has made little effort to even talk about a Western release of Type-0. This eventually led to an online fan petition called Operation Suzaku (http://operation-suzaku.com/), which was created in the same vein as the somewhat successful Operation Rainfall (http://operationrainfall.com/) campaign of a few years back to get the game a proper release in the West.
There may be many factors hampering the game’s ability to see release. Probably the most notable issue was simply the game’s timing. It was released both in the waning years of the PlayStation Portables life cycle and during the fervor of the new PlayStation Vita’s launch, making the game completely lost in the media circus around the new system’s launch.
52864
This leads to the other issue that directly affects the Western release: the strange stigma that has hounded the handheld market since the original Nintendo Gameboy. Western gamers seem to be very skeptical of a handheld system ability to deliver a “full console experience” and thus handhelds tend to have a second class status among the Western gaming community. This is usually noticeable by sales trends where consoles tend to sell better in the West (including PAL regions) than handhelds, whereas the reverse is usually the true with Japan. For instance the PlayStation 3 has sold over 9 million units in Japan compared to the U.S.’s 28 million and change. On the other hand, the PlayStation Portable sold over 19 million units in Japan whereas the system only sold a little over 21 million in the U.S., despite being available longer than the PS3.
One other issue stemming from the game’s timing also deals with SE being at a financial and career low point:52861 at the time of the game’s release, SE was still trying to recover from the disaster that had been Final Fantasy XIV, which had been released the previous year and was still bleeding money from the company. Final Fantasy XIII and then-announced sequel were already divisive titles in the West, but many felt that XIV had been of a far greater stain on the series, to the point where then-Square-Enix president Yoichi Wada; openly apologized about the quality of the game and admitted that it had hurt the series reputation. The financial loss and the scramble to fix the game caused a huge financial burden on the company that saw the delay or cancellation of several projects within the company.
While Type-0 may have been slated for an eventual Western release, the delay could have easily pushed prospects far behind what was eventually the end of its life cycle for the PSP. It took almost a year for Western news magazines to ask about Type-0’s localization and no one at SE seemed to know if such a project had ever been green-lighted. The only known info of a possible localization came from a comment by the staff in the Japanese-only Ultimania saying they were working on a Western release.
Another issue with Ty52863pe-0 may also be the fact that this game had the least amount of interest in the West of the three initial titles of the Fabula Nova Crystallis project. This could largely be due to the fact that when the game was originally announced, it was for mobile phones a small market in the West at the time caused a lost in interest. Even worse was that the initial promo simply showed the character Ace, who uses playing cards as a weapon made some news organizations wrongfully suspect the game would be a card game which were very popular on mobile devices in Japan at the time.
These factors would have killed most interest at t52862hat point, but disappearing off the news map with Versus XIII also didn’t help. Eventually the game was moved to the PlayStation Portable and according to Hajime Tabata, the game was completely reimagined to the point where the team chose to change the game’s title from XIII~Agito to a non-numbered entry called Type-0 in order to distance itself from the original XIII project and show the game as its own standalone title.
All of these points are simply conjecture and until we hear from SE we may never know what kept this title as Japan-only. All we know is that it may be a crying shame as Type-0 features many of the elements that fans have been clamoring for a while such as a return of an old-school-style world map, chocobo breeding, a darker story dealing with the horrors of war and actually showcasing blood and dying, an action RPG battle system, and a cast of characters that are genuinely likable. Hopefully fan efforts like Operation Suzaku can convince Square-Enix not to let this game become another Final Fantasy III and be lost to the rest of the world for a long time before eventually getting released. Until then, check out the game’s intro and hope.
t_Ryi6ttcu0