There was a day-night cycle tied to the real-world time of day, and it featured a social element whereby talking with and befriending certain characters advanced the player's ranking in the game.

The story was seen through the eyes of a player-created Cadet entering the Rubrum Magical Academy during a time of war, and chosen to become the Agito, a figure destined to save Orience from destruction.

The story was intended to be played repeatedly, tying into the nature of the game's world and the eventual culmination of a player becoming the Agito.

Upon release in Japan, the game had 500,000 registered users within a week, and one million by November of the same year, but apparently numbers dropped after later negative impressions.

Final Fantasy Agito was a role-playing video game where a player-created character, the "Cadet", sets out on missions across the world of Orience.

The player could choose the gender and physical appearance of their character, along with their style of clothing, hair color, skin tone, voice and weapons.

The game employed a leveling system whereby interaction with students and teachers, combined with performance during missions, raised the Cadet from their starting rank within the Academy.

[2] Navigation was handled either by a virtual control stick on the touch screen, or by tapping an area of the visible game environment.

The Cadet's bedroom acted as a central hub, while the fountain area within the Academy was where many non-player characters (NPCs) could be found and talked with.

During missions, the companions could be issued with Team Commands, which could either order them to attack or increase healing abilities while lowering their defensive capabilities.

[4] The game used a job system similar to other entries in the Final Fantasy series, where different equipment and weapons alter a character's abilities in battle.

The land of Orience is locked in a stable time loop, whereby events repeat constantly, then reset and begin all over again with minor variations.

[13][14][15] The main character is a player-created Cadet selected for training as Agito, a prophesied messiah said to prevent Orience's destruction during an event known as Tempus Finis.

[17][18][19][20][21] In the final chapter, Rubrum's victory over the other Crystal States causes the arrival of Tempus Finis, and Miyu is made into a l'Cie and renamed Judge Myuria: her mission is to test the Cadet to see if they are worthy of becoming the Agito.

The Cadet is victorious, but it is judged the Agito has not appeared and Tempus Finis consumes the world, resetting it for a new cycle of history.

[26][27][28] Type-0's director Hajime Tabata still liked the "Agito" title and the original concepts for the game, which included an episodic storyline that hinged on player choice and day-night cycles linked to real-world time.

[31] In contrast to Type-0's dark and serious storyline, the team decided to give Agito a lighter atmosphere, although serious dramatic scenes were still present.

The previous game's level designer, Masayasu Nishida, returned to direct, and original character texture artist Sayako Hoshino became art director.

[35] The battle music for the weekend multiplayer segments was augmented with vocal work by Japanese rock band Dazzle Vision.

[42] Originally scheduled for release in the winter, it was delayed due to development problems concerning environment sizes, which needed to be scaled down.

[46][47] The base game was a free download, but players had the option of buying items, restore health and speeding up re-spawn time via microtransactions.

[48] Final Fantasy Agito was published in chapters, with decisions made by the player base influencing the events of the next installment.

[3] The final portions feature "subjugation" multiplayer missions, requiring players to work together to battle powerful bosses.

[12][50] After all chapters were released, the team focused on improving the experience, introducing a higher difficulty setting, and incorporating a grander sense of scale.

[54][55] Agito's original release was plagued with multiple issues including long load times, which the team sought to rectify through updates.

[32] While originally scheduled for release in January 2015, it was delayed due to a problem with the development environment with the Vita, which left the team stuck until Sony could update the system and provide them with suitable support.

[71] After the cancellation of Agito+ and the end of Agito's service, refunds were offered to customers who had bought items in-game or preordered the Vita port.

[79] Famitsu, in a review of the game shortly after release, praised the combat and graphics, but found the touch controls difficult to handle.

[81] Shaun Musgrave of Touch Arcade praised the game's graphics and combat, comparing the battle missions to Puzzle & Dragons.

[70] This updated version was revealed to be Final Fantasy Awakening, a multiplayer game for similar platforms to Agito.