The Wheel of Dubious RPGs Episode 37-38: Lost Kingdoms II and Final Fantasy Type-0

Lost Kingdoms II

Developer: From Software

Release Date: May 21, 2003

Time Played: A little more than 90 minutes

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Amount I paid for this game: Less than Xenosaga Episode III, but more in terms of a mental toll.

Would I play more? I mean, maybe? I certainly paid too much for this to let it sit on a shelf. Alternatively, anyone interested in buying a secondhand copy of Lost Kingdoms II? I accept Venmo and Paypal.

Upon revisitation, I think I’ve decided that both Lost Kingdoms and its (far rarer and more expensive) sequel are quintessential representations of Early 2000s From Software’s RPG design. Which is my nice way of saying that they’re an interesting idea (action RPG where your attacks are represented as a deck of cards) that does not sustain a full 8-12ish hour game. Even with the improvements of the second game, including the removal of random battles, something resembling a story, and a general quality-of-life upgrade can’t change the fact that it’s a clonky RPG coasting more on novelty than anything else.

As the excellently-named Tara Grimface, I spent the slightly less than two hour introduction of Lost Kingdoms 2 fighting monsters in fairly barren environments. Like my time with the first game late last year, it’s the kind of B-tier (and I mean that in the budgetary term and not the far more nebulous “Star Wars The Force Awakens is a mediocre video game and therefore B-tier” sense of the term) action-RPG that was rife during the PS2 era. There is some level of thought into stuff like deckbuilding and using the brief invincibility window when you play cards to avoid attacks. Make no mistake, the FromSoft-ass Fromsoftness is still here, even if Lost Kingdoms II bothers to explain and expand upon its mechanics far more than its predecessor ever did. While more… comprehensible than King’s Field: The Ancient City, there’s still enough arcane mechanics and strange choices to make it clear who made this.

Unfortunately for my tattered attention span, that wasn’t quite enough to sustain me with Lost Kingdoms II, and given the amount of time it’s taken me to write this particular write-up, you can be assured that it was hard to think of things to say about it. It’s a marked improvement over its predecessor, but it’s still not *all that interesting* once you stare at it long enough. It’s just a tad too stiff and rigid to be a great action RPG. ...I still might play more of it.

Final Fantasy Type-0

Developer: Square-Enix

Release Date: October 27, 2011 (or March 17, 2015 for the HD version)

Time Played: A little over two hours

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5 (one extra point for legitimately giving me a headache)

Inconsistent HD Textureosity: 5 out of 5

Would I play more? Listen, if ZP can’t play this game when it eventually becomes the subject of a Deep Listens podcast, I’ll take the bullet for him

In retrospect, it’s hard to look at Fabula Nova Crystalis as anything other than an albatross, a curse hung round the neck of the Final Fantasy franchise that more or less dominated its single-player offerings for more than a decade. I’m on record as saying I like XIII-2 and Lightning Returns, but it’s hard to argue for those in the recent shadow of the “actually a great video game” VII Remake. One of the odder ducks to come out of this initiative was Final Fantasy Type-0 (previously known as Agito XIII) a Japan-only PSP game whose translation patch was completed… just days before the HD re-release was announced. I feel like this is definitely the forgotten child of the bunch, and after playing a few hours I was reminded exactly why.

And to be clear, the thing most worthy of emphasis in Type-0 isn’t the M-rating, or the part where you’re very much controlling a band of murderous child soldiers who also attend a school (for child soldiers.) It’s the part where it’s a prettied-up version of a Playstation Portable game. There was very much a trend in Japanese portable game design in the late 00s, especially on the PSP to “try and make your game like Monster Hunter” so that it would appeal to the exact demographic of salarymen who have 20 minutes to murder a Rathalos on the Shinkansen before work. As I’ve mentioned before, that sort of focus around a repetitive core loop only works if it’s refined to a razor point… and most games are not as good at it as Monster Hunter. Final Fantasy Type-0 is very much “trying to be a monster hunter” with its structure. Between main missions, you have a certain amount of time to engage in faux-S.Links, attend classes to increase the stats of your FIFTEEN playable characters, research magic, do side missions, etc.

It’s the same problem as Valkyria Chronicles II and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, where, divorced from the culture around portable video games in Japan (and with these HD remasters, the concept of portability at all) you’re stuck with an intentionally grindy structure that doesn’t endear itself to longer play sessions. Of course, if Type-0 played well or like… understood why people liked Persona that would be a different story. But it doesn’t! It’s yet another example of Square-Enix trying really, really hard to make a good action RPG with some bootleg-ass sub-Kingdom Hearts action-based menu combat with the added benefit of having a camera that legitimately started to give me motion sickness after only an hour of play. Does it bother explaining like… most of its core mechanics or how any of its 15 characters play? Not really.

At the very least, I’m to understand the story goes in some wild directions, and some of it is apparent from the outset. They really do, uh, start this game with a bunch of war crime and also a chocobo covered in blood. Those kids sure do call this lady “Mother” and have a dogged loyalty to her. Oh, also the crystal erases the memories of the fallen from the minds of these kids so they can be more efficient murderers. I dunno if it’s good storytelling (especially given how not great a lot of the persona bits are) but I at least understand it goes full anime crazy at some point. Maybe something worth coming back to? No? Okay.

Other Business

Anyway, sorry about taking as long as I did with this write up, but hopefully things should probably be more stable. Now-ish. While I have you here, I'd just like to mention that our Xenosaga Episode 1 podcast series has wrapped up over at Off the Deep End. Might be a tad biased, but it's worth listening to all three episodes if you want to hear us slowly lose our minds trying to understand Monolith Soft's second venture into the world of God, Robots, and Existentialism (the first being Xenogears.) We also have a Kusoge episode done and in the oven, so look forward to our reactions to what might be *The Single Worst Video Game That Will Probably Ever Be Played On A Deep Listens Family of Podcast.*

Similarly, as was promised during my Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run stream, thanks to your generous donations there is now recorded evidence of me playing through the entirety of Tango Gameworks 2014 disasterpiece The Evil Within on my Twitch. I still kinda like it! oh also I played through all of RE6 co-op with a friend because I like to have fun. I guess you could watch that too. I even made a playlist for it on youtube, with the VODs coming over in a steady drip. C'mon. C'monnnnnn.

That'll be it for me. Hopefully I'll be back to your regularly scheduled dubiosity soon.