The special reversible game box cover put together to form the mega cover.

I know that you must be wondering, “who would win in a fight: Cloud of Final Fantasy VII or Tidus of Final Fantasy X?” If you weren’t before, you probably are now. Finally, there is an answer to the fanboy question. Actually that’s a lie, but you can make your own answer in Square Enix’s interesting fighter: Dissidia: Final Fantasy.

Story

The story is about the war between the side of harmony and chaos. Cosmos, the goddess leading the fight for harmony of the world, has the help of the protagonists of each Final Fantasy starting from FFI to FFX. Chaos, the god leading the fight for the discord of the world, has enlisted the antagonists of the series to fight their respective counterparts. The beginning of the game reveals the fall of Cosmos, and the separation of the protagonists. It is then that Cosmos sends our heroes to find their own crystal, as it is the only way left to end the war. It is then the responsibility of the player to follow each character on their journey to find their crystals.

It’s Final Fantasy. There must be a good story right? Well, I hate to burst that bubble, but after a few hours, I almost wished that there was no story. Watching the story pretty much tripled the loading time, but I’ll get to that later.

The game tries to do too much with individual stories for each character that is related to their respective games. Then try to integrate each characters story into the main story arc of the game. Ultimately, it’s a mess of events that barely makes sense.

Story mode is filled with personal drama. Too bad they couldn't convince me to care.

Adding to the sense of confusion is the fact that the story unfolds in an episodic manner. You would finish one character’sstory, and suddenly, the game reveals a short story clip that could have happened in the future or the past and it’s almost never about the character you just played. Luckily, you are not playing the game for its story; you are playing the game for the overload of Final Fantasy content.

Gameplay

While the story may be questionable, the core fun of the game is based on beating on other Fantasy stars and unlocking the countless amount of Final Fantasy throwback that you could of.

Dissidia is a free-roam fighting game in which two fighters goes into battle and is free to run around on the battlefield all they want. As a Final Fantasy-related game, you can still level up and customize you characters, but the battle mechanics is based around a bravery point system and characters have a variety of two types of attacks based on that system: Bravery attacks and HP attacks.

 Run, jump, and frolic all you want on the field, just watch out for people trying to bump you off the road.

Bravery attacks are attacks that reduce the enemies’ bravery points, while raising your own. HP attacks are, as the name implies, attacks that damage the enemy. The amount of damage done is based on how much bravery points you have accumulated, so the more bravery points you have, the more damage you do. If you ever drain your opponent of his bravery points, or break him, then you will get a significant boost to your own points in which to cause damage with. In addition to the two types of attack is the special EX burst. Each character will have their own unique EX Burst, which they can unleash when they are in EX mode, after they have collected enough energy. The short story about EX mode is that it increase a fighter’s damage potential and helps them regain HP. An EX burst is unleashed after successfully connecting with a HP attack. Players will be prompt to start the EX burst if they want, and when they do, the player will have to do the correct input to devastate the opponent. The burst will knock you out of EX mode but you will have done some impressive damage.

EX Bursts are extravagant but they can bring the pain like nothing else the game.

There are so many things to unlock. There are famous weapons, accessories, summons, and even attacks to customize your characters with. It was definitely entertaining to find the item “Sexy Cologne” as a weapon that can be used by Cloud and female fighters. There are plenty of modes to wet your whistle with, a butt load of characters that make cameos, and what seems like an unending story mode. Just when you think you reached the end of the story, you find out that there is more story and more characters to fight with. And just for the hell of it, the game even includes accomplishments, for the obsessive perfectionist, which unlocks even more stuff. You just don’t know what you might unlock next.

Unfortunately, there is so much content to unlock, the game will take forever to load, and this is after you do a data install. You are allowed to install the game data onto a memory stick to make the load time faster, just like certain console games do. If you do perform a data install, you might as well go make a sandwich, or send few text messages, while the game loads. For a handheld game to take a long time to load is a really big buzz kill. When you add in the drivel of a story that you are trying to skip, the downtime between matches really adds up exponentially.

Graphics

The game looks pretty good. Fighters and summons have impressive hand-drawn illustrations. Each fighter’s 3D model has been re-imagined to look familiar but fresh. I can’t say that online images do the game any justice though.

"Flame on!" Let summons do their job while you enjoy their art.

Battle animation on the other hand is quite fluid and varied. Each character has their own set of attacks and movements, all of which are animated well. It adds up to a lot of details. Unfortunately, the camera may cause trouble when you move in a direction that is not toward your opponent. For most of a battle, your fighter is locked-on to direction of the opponent, so if you are trying to move yourself to an advantageous position, you will have some trouble, maybe even run into walls or traps.

The cut scene animations are nothing to special. I might even say it’s barely adequate. Good thing the story is not a very big factor for playing the game, so gamers don’t have to stomach the thought of a good story with average animations.

Audio

I can’t say that I agree with the audio coming from the game. Don’t get me wrong; the battle music is wonderful, and made me quite nostalgic about the good old days of playing Final Fantasy. There are battle and field music from each game. Some were recreated to reflect contemporary technology, instead of the 16-bit sounds for the older games. They sound great but still felt familiar. It was the voice acting that rubbed me the wrong way. Understandably, before FFX, there was no voice acting, but that doesn’t excuse the choppy monotone that is delivered by most of the cast. At least I can’t complain during battle when there is good music and no talking.

Even Squall is upset with the dialog. Then again, he was never a big fan of talking.

Multiplayer

As a fighting game, multiplayer modes are definitely available, in both online play and ad-hoc play. Unfortunately, online play was rather hard to do when nobody is playing online. You would need to know people that have the game and arrange to do battle over the web to use the feature. Same goes for local ad-hoc play. After all, not much people in America actually play multiplayer games on handheld. If you do happen to know people that plays the game too, you can make friends with them and connect their ghost data. Essentially you get to fight a simulated copy of your friends, based on the character and behavior he chose to let people fight with. It’s a way of fighting with other players without connecting with them, if you will.

Summary

The game is a tribute to the Final Fantasy series, made for fans and fanboys that have stuck with the series for so many years. That is not to say that the game was not fun to play. It was definitely fun and enjoyable, but it felt like the game was mainly about packing as much Final Fantasy content into one game as possible. In that regard, it was definitely a success. While the story may be subpar for a game related to Final Fantasy, there is plenty of content to keep you preoccupied and enjoying the game. If you have ever liked the Final Fantasy series, you should definitely give the game a try. The chances of you liking it are pretty good.

Share