Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Dissidia: Final Fantasy reminds me of Nintendo's Smash Brothers franchise in a couple of ways. First it's total fanservice. Terra and Kefka from Final Fantasy 6 (Final Fantasy 3 to some of you) along side Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7? C'mon, if that's not fanservice, I don't know what is. The other similarity to Smash Brother is, I'm not entirely sure I understand the battle system... (It doesn't help that the first few fights are usually over before you even realize what's going on...)

While Dissidia is being billed as a "fighting" game, it's unlike any fighting game you're probably used to. If you're expecting Street Fighter with swords or Soul Calibur with Final Fantasy characters, you're in for a surprise. (In fact, fighting in Dissidia shares more in common with one of Square Enix's other franchises, Kingdom Hearts , than it shares with any other fighting game.) The battle system is a little unwieldy at first but starts to make more sense the more you play it. You've got not one, not two, but three different meters! You've got your life meter (which should be self-explanatory), your bravery meter (which determins how much damage you deal out to the life meter) and finally you've got the EX guage (which, when filled, will allow your character to do powered up attacks and over-the-top EX burst moves for tons of damage). I don't think I have enough time or space to adequately explain exactly how all three meters interact with one another... it's like Square Enix took their extravagantly outrageous mindset from their cutscenes and applied it to a fighting game.

Even the stages you fight in are more excessive than other fighting games. Instead of fighting on a strictly two dimensional playing field or even a three dimensional arena, Dissidia's fights take place in stages with not only huge horizontal areas, but expansive vertical areas as well. The only problem with providing such a large arena is that it's really easy to lose track of where your opponent is. They could be hidden behind a column that you can't see past because you don't have x-ray vision or they could be what you thought was a speck on your PSP's screen.

There are ten initial characters to choose from, as well as twelve unlockable characters for a total of 22 characters. The twenty main characters represent antagonists and protagonists from the first ten Final Fantasy games (if you've ever wondered what it would look Cecil from Final Fantasy 4 would look like if they remade that game, here's your chance!). If you've played Final Fantasy before, chances are you'll find a character you like. Which is a good thing, because like their original roleplaying game appearances, you can level up your favorite characters. As you level up each character, they gain more abilities and you can customize them however you'd like with whatever skills and attacks you'd like. You can even obtain weapons, armor, accessories and summons to help you along the way. It's a nice way to add some customization in a fighting game, but I would have rather had a simpler system and actually feel like I know what I'm doing.

The game also features online play where you can fight against other Dissidia players. I haven't tried it out myself because, one I don't know anyone else with Dissidia and a PSP... and two, I think playing against someone else would be more frustrating than fun. But I can''t imagine that your leveled up characters would be available for VS play... that would just be unfair, wouldn't it?

Rating

Recommendations