Fantasy Earth Zero was a free-to-play MMORPG/strategy/third person shooter game launched in 2006. It focuses on large scale PVP battles (50vs50) and was developed by Puraguru and Multiterm (later FenixSoft and then SoftGear) and in 2018-2020 by Ocean Frontier. Despite being published by Square Enix and bearing a very similar name, it has absolutely nothing to do with Final Fantasy. Square Enix screwed up big time during its few months of running the game and it was nearly done for until Gamepot bought it over as free-to-play. After that it enjoyed a fair amount of success in Japan. There were also servers in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 2010 it finally arrived for the USA, but then the NA servers were closed in March 2011. Later it was transferred back to Square Enix.
“Nation War” was the main attraction of the game. Each battle was basically a MMORTS where every player was a unit. Whichever side drained of their “morale” first lost. To decrease the enemy’s morale, you built structures to capture territory, and killed enemy soldiers. You needed crystals to build structures, which had to be harvested on the field. Crystals could also be used to create summons, which could kill soldiers really fast or demolish structures really fast, but there were also summons that killed other summons….
The PVE element of the game was limited to early level grinding, farming gold to buy consumables and, for some players, farming rare-drop equipment. Killing monsters for EXP became less efficient past level 20 and this was the point where most players started participating in nation wars. At the end of a nation war, EXP and rings, another form of currency, were awarded base on performance.
The English version of the game came with 3 classes. Later patches added Fencer and Cestus for a total of 5 classes.
- 1. Warrior – Well armed and armored Melee combatant. Deal good damage with skills that use a polearm or a BFS, or they can take sword and board that improve defense and allows you to set up kills with shield bash.
- 2. Sorcerer – Can hurt you with fire that comes with armor-piercing burns, zap you while overlooking a cliff with lightning spell that ignore height, or freeze you in place with the power of ice.
- 3. Scout – Lightly armored skirmishers that may use a bow or a gun. You may also go knife nut by sneaking into enemy and cause disruption with a huge array of debuffs. Can use stealth.
- 4. Fencer – Expert with the pointy thing, very swift and also very hard-hitting at times. Specialize in engaging other foot soldier (while doing jack shit to anything else). Has a counterattack skill.
- 5. Cestus – Monks who fight with a giant pair of cestus. Specialize in dealing with buildings, either to destroy the enemy’s or to heal your own.
There were Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors between all those classes and summons, so team play was encouraged. It was very difficult, if not impossible, to play One-Man Army.
This game was remarkable among MMOGs because that it used twitch-based aiming. The level of character did not usually matter. While higher level players did get equipment with higher stats, it was not impossible to knock one-third of HP off a character 10 levels above you in one blow, given the right matchup, and all the status effects were just as potent. Besides, lower level players could still participate in logistics efforts. The emphasis on skills and tactics was what fans loved most about this game.
The game's Japanese servers shut down on September 28, 2022 after 16 years of service.
This game provides examples of:
- Bribing Your Way to Victory:
- While you can eventually use top-class gear purchasable with in-game currency at max level, gears with the same attributes sold for real-life money always have a lower level requirement. The most powerful enchants can only be bought with real-life money.
- It's mostly averted. The faction shop that randomly changes every week if nation managed to complete 12 "Capture and Hold" missions, has gear that has much low-level requirement, needs only in-game money, and, statwise, is on par with gear from cash shop. And cash shop enchants will provide only a slight edge in battle.
- Crippling Overspecialization: The summons. Knight deals good damage against other summons, but can barely scratch anything else. Titans have a cannon attack that can demolish buildings very fast, but deal almost non-existent damage otherwise.
- Damage Is Fire: Or smoke in this case.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: The game starts with having only three classes: Warrior, Sorcerer and Scout. Subverted with the later addition of Fencer and Cestus.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three skill trees for Sorcerers, until the recent addition of the Gravity spell.
- Genre-Busting: Most of the game is typical MMO stuff, but the main heart of the game is basically a 100-man PvP RTS/Tower Defense.
- Level Grinding: Played With; since there were so many ways to gain exp. during war, during the early levels (1-20) your were almost guaranteed to level up every one or three wars. It's when you hit levels 30 and above when exp. gain slowed to a crawl.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Fencers have some of the fastest attack in the game. there Flash stinger attack for example hits faster than most skills in the game, has high priority over many attacks, can possibly stun lock if spammed (even if your a warrior with embolden up), and hits three times and does decent damage.
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No Export for You: Averted at first in 2010, four years after its first release in Japan. But after about 8 months, all NA servers closed down, looping back to No Export For You. - PVP Balanced:
- Classes are actually very well-balanced against one another, each having set rock-paper-scissor strengths and weaknesses; Warrior beats Scout, Scout beats Mage, Mage beats Warrior.
- Even with the introduction of the Cestus and Fencer classes, they have neither real advantages nor vulnerabilities against other classes. Although, they maintain disadvantages with their playstyle, such as Fencers having an advantage when it comes to one-on-one fights, but they'll have trouble against multiple opponents.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Warriors have damage bonus to Scouts, same for Scouts to Sorcerers and Sorcerers to Warriors.
- Shoot the Medic First: Averted. The developers KNEW this would happen so they simply omitted the healer class, forcing everyone to rely on foods and pots.
- Stripperiffic: A good portion of female armor gravitates toward this, but none fit this trope than nearly all Female Scout Armors.
- Useless Useful Stealth: It is very difficult to decide whether the Scout's “hiding” skill is useless or not. While it does turn the user invisible to enemies, if an enemy's crosshairs happen to come across your invisible character model, a target circle will still show. Moreover, your footsteps can still be heard (though it's usually drowned out in a crowd), if you get hit by a stray attack then the invisibility immediately cancels, and you still leave ripples when walking through water. That said, the fact that these are the only ways to actually detect a hiding scout short of a carpet bombing somewhat helps; curiously, you cannot hear the footsteps of characters behind you as they’re “not on your screen”, and what is certainly an advantage is that hidden Scouts don't show on maps, so as long as a Scout keeps track of their surroundings, they'll more than earn their name going behind enemy lines. In the end, it usually comes down to the Scout’s maneuvering ability versus their enemy’s scanning skill.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Crystals were required for buildings and summons. You harvested said crystals by crouching next to a big crystal.
