“Enthusiastic and direct, he likes to quickly make black and white distinctions.” Simply put, Nine takes on the role of the loud-mouthed punk in Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. Think of him as the Dragoon class of your party. Nine is one of the most durable cadets on the roster and he can deal a good amount of damage with his trusty spear. If you can get past his awful English dub, I promise you’ll get a lot of mileage with this character, yo.
First things first, Nine absolutely needs Accelerate and Slipstream if you’re planning on using him regularly. He may be powerful, but his attacks can be a little on the slower side and that often leaves him open to his enemies. Consider equipping Cure as his defensive magic instead of Block or Avoid. Given that Nine doesn’t really have many MP-based skills, you can save his tiny pool of MP for some emergency healing if you need to.
If you choose to purchase the White Knight ability however, then feel free to slap on Block as his defensive magic. By holding down the command button, White Knight allows Nine to conjure a field around him that restores HP to anyone within it at the cost of some of his AG. Of course, the field disappears once your AG runs out or if Nine gets hit by an enemy.
Despite his looks, Nine actually has the potential to be a decent support character but it’d be a waste to use him for the purposes of healing and backup – his strength and powerful attacks are where the party’s at. Jump is one of his first abilities you’ll unlock and you’ll be using it for at least the first half of the game. As the name suggests, Jump allows Nine to jump in the air and deal a devastating blow from above. Once you upgrade the power and critical rate of the skill, Jump becomes a pretty dangerous move. For your enemies, that is.
And then you’ll unlock High Jump, which is essentially a much stronger version of Jump. If you enjoy playing Nine as a classic Dragoon type, High Jump is the way to go.
If not, Nine has a few other abilities in his repertoire that may interest you as well. Javelin Throw and Laser Lance are both ranged abilities that allow Nine to launch his spear at enemies to damage them. This makes it much more viable for him to start hitting Kill Sights and Break Sights. Nine is hampered by his slower animation speed and a slight difficulty to control his spear attacks, so slapping some ranged abilities on him will definitely help you out.
Nine also has an ability called Whirling Lance that allows him to whirl the spear to damage nearby enemies. This is probably the only ability on his list that isn’t worth getting. The hit area is too small and the damage output isn’t all that impressive, especially when you compare it to his other abilities like Jump and Javelin Throw. Save your AP and spend it elsewhere instead.
If you’ve got a good healer on your team (Rem, for instance), feel free to swap out White Knight and fill his two command slots with Jump/High Jump and Javelin Throw/Laser Lance instead. Due to his high amount of HP, Nine is a great tank character who can absorb lots of damage and dish out an equally high amount as well.
Find out how to play as the other Class Zero cadets here, and you can check out our review of the game here.
Published: Mar 20, 2015 05:45 pm