Pulling off counter-attacks like that is really, really fun, especially as the challenges get more difficult and the missions get more grueling. That cast of 14 might not be ideal for storytelling, but it sure is great for fighting. Thanks to their varying weapon styles, each character has a genuinely unique feel, and although some party members are more useful than others, almost all of them are fun to guide around the battlefield, especially as you level up their abilities and magic.

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For example, Trey, the archer character, not only can charge up his bow and release charges of varying strengths—reminiscent of the archer class from Final Fantasy Tactics—but also has a sniping ability that lets you turn the game into a makeshift FPS while you mow down enemies from afar. Ace, whose weapon is a deck of cards, can draw from a stack of random abilities to restore himself or mow down enemies, depending on his luck. Setzer would approve.

The missions are paced really well, too—enemies are challenging, yet go down fast enough that fighting them rarely feels like a chore.

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While out on a mission, you'll typically use three party members at once, with the rest hanging in the "reserves" section to be called up whenever one of the main three run out of health. But when someone hits zero HP and dies, they're gone. Kaput. No more using them for the rest of that mission, with a few rare exceptions.

This sort of permanence adds real stakes in a way that makes Type-0 feel tenser and darker than your average Final Fantasy game, where the phoenix downs flow like water. In Type-0, it's possible to lose most of your party and find yourself totally screwed when you get to a tough boss or challenging set of encounters, especially when you're on a harder difficulty setting. You can abort mid-mission and live on to fight another day, keeping all the experience you've gained, but you'll have to go through the whole mission again from the beginning on your next shot.

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There are some brutal difficulty spikes, too, and if you don't take time to do sidequests and gain levels from mission to mission, you'll probably get stuck on some of the later boss battles. Unless you are like me and wimp out around chapter 7, switching the difficulty to easy so you can finish the game without grinding. (There's also a new-game-plus mode that lets you keep your levels so you can go do harder sidequests and see extra cut-scenes that aren't in the main game.)

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After each mission, you're taken to the academy, where your class can chill, talk to other students, and go explore the world map. Yes, there's a world map. It's a little empty—and kind of a pain to navigate because parts of it always seem to be covered in fog—but it's there, in all of its old-school glory. The player who doesn't spend a large chunk of time scavenging the globe for optional towns and caverns is the player who's missing out on half of the game.

I should note, it's not a particularly pretty world map. Final Fantasy Type-0's world is rewarding, no doubt, and there's a whole host of places to see, from lava caverns to hidden airships, but this generally looks like a PSP game from 2011, mostly because it is a PSP game from 2011. No amount of makeup could hide Type-0's old warts, and although the developers did a great job making this HD version (the first version released outside of Japan) feel like a console game, it's not fooling anyone.

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Ugly textures I can live with, though—it's the camera that serves as Type-0 HD's worst technological offense. "Disorienting" is not strong enough a word. Trying to control Type-0's camera is like trying to read a book while riding a rollercoaster, and as you roam through the cities and battlefields of Orience, you'll have to grit your teeth and deal with the nausea of a camera that just won't get out of your way.

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That's Type-0. This is a game that has no problem being impenetrable, barraging you with proper nouns and saddling you with a camera that's always in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a game that drowns you with exposition and buries its best writing in random NPC dialogue. It's frustrating in a lot of ways. But once you've really gotten the hang of the combat, once you've learned how to bounce around the battlefield and drive your whip into an enemy just as that red marker appears on his chest, it's not hard to forgive Type-0 for its many flaws. Just don't forget to talk to everyone.

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You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.