Review of Dissidia FF

"Dissidia: Final Fantasy, the battle between Chaos and Cosmos"

Dissidia: Final Fantasy is a game that acts as fan-service and celebrates over 20 years of Final Fantasy games by bringing together heroes and villains from each game from I to X, with an appearance from FFXI and FFXII added to the mix. Together the heroes and villains take sides and battle it out for the fate of the universe. With such a tall order to fill, can Dissidia really rise to the expectations of the fans and to non-fans alike? Short answer: maybe. Long answer: not really.

Game Play

Each character plays out very differently due to having different abilities, gear that can be worn by certain characters, accessories that everyone can use and summons anyone can equip. Though there is variation between each of the characters, essentially, you'll be using much of the same tactics over and over again with whatever character you use.

As mentioned before, each character gains a selection of abilities either through leveling or mastering abilities through ability points (AP). Each ability can be assigned to a analog stick position and button (either up/toward the opponent, down/away from the opponent, or stationary with the circle button or square button). However, you cannot equip as many abilities as you like. You're limited to the number of abilities (albeit battle abilities, extra abilities, etc.) by CP, which will increase as you level. Certain battle abilities can be combined together to chain attacks. However, the game doesn't do a good job of explaining how to execute these moves. You must first check the ability off in the customization menu, and to properly chain the attacks, press a certain button more so than usually, instead of just going from one attack to the other. Example: Terra's holy combo requires you to keep pressing circle so she fires off fire, then it chains to Ultima.

Summons are quite useful in battle, and can be triggered automatically or manually. Certain summons can hinder the opponent, boost your bravery or turn the tides of a battle. Summons keep things on edge, but can only be use once per battle, and have a certain amount of uses before they recharge.

In battle, you'll have a few things to keep track of. Your HP, bravery and EX bar are all on display as well as the enemy's. You have two basic types of attacks, HP attacks and Bravery attacks. HP attacks go straight for the opponents HP. Bravery attacks go for your opponents bravery, and if successfully damaged, adds to your bravery. Your bravery determines how much damage you can do to your opponents HP, so the more you build up your bravery, the more damage you can do. After every successful HP attack, your bravery resets to 0, allowing the opponent a brief window to break your Bravery. If your or your opponent's bravery is broken, a bonus amount of bravery will be awarded according to the number displayed between the opponents' and the players' status bars. If your EX gauge fills up, you can unleash EX mode and EX attacks. While in EX mode, your HP (or later you can have your bravery) regenerates slowly and, if you land a successful HP attack, you can opt to enter an EX attack. During this attack, your bravery resets and you begin damaging your opponents bravery. You'll also be able to participate in a mini-game, often resembling something from the character's game, like Squall's R trigger, and for the most part, are very appropriate. Also, at certain times, you may perform an attack that allows you to follow up by charging your opponent into a mini face-off in which both characters are locked in close quarters combat. Whoever initiates the face-off attacks first, using either an HP attack (which are slower) or Bravery attack (which are faster). The name of the game is which one you choose and how your opponent will dodge. The opponent can either dodge slowly, forcing your HP attack to miss, or vice versa. These little face offs are a nice break from the frantic combat and are often just as intense.

The AI in Dissidia has some quirks about it. The famous max difficulty, Exdeath AI is still as exploitable as ever, as well as some of the other enemies in the game. The harder enemy AI seem to be unrealistically difficult at times, often reacting to the very, split second you perform an action, and they'll always use the same action based on whatever action you choose. This leads to players thinking of ways to exploit the poor programming of the AI rather than getting caught up in moments of the battle. The later parts of the game also start to slant heavily towards the usage of dodging and counterattacking rather than just attacking.

The camera for the most part, captures the action well enough. However, if an enemy is below you or above you, it keeps pointing straight forward unless you start attacking, which can lead to some off-screen cheapness. The camera especially suffers on the battlegrounds that are indoors. Occasionally getting caught up on a wall or not following the action when too close to the ceiling.

Dissidia offers a decent amount of game play modes. The story mode lets you pick one hero and journey down there path. Each path is broken up into 5 chapters which plays out over a grid system. Each grid has many pieces; a represention you, an enemy encounter, treasure, healing items, etc. The way you move about this grid is through Destiny Points (DP). If you leave the grid with more DP than 0, it'll benefit the score after each chapter, and vice versa when you run over your limit. You can gain extra DP by fulfilling special conditions during battles like; breaking bravery in under 10 seconds, not taking any damage or triggering EX mode in under 10 seconds. Some of these conditions, however, seem to rely more on luck, like critical hits, but the grid allows for you to prepare your best chances through scanning mode. While scanning, you have examine each piece and plan your way through the grid. At the very end of the journey, the scores from all 5 chapters are tallied, and your performance is give a ranking using stars. These end rankings stack each time you complete the journey, and unlock new sections of the grid and new enemies. You'll need to replay each journey more than twice to get all of the treasure and DP items. This drags the game play on due to the lack of variation traveling from grid to grid.

There's also the standard arcade mode and a duel colosseum mode, the latter acting like a card game. You start out picking a character you want to play as and you're given a hand of 3 cards. Like the pieces on the grids in story mode, each card represents enemies or treasure. There are also cards that allow you to increase your hand capacity or some other effects. Each time you win or lose a battle, coins are exchanged. You can use these coins to buy the treasure on treasure cards, or convert them to PP at the end of the card game. This mode offers a little more room for fun than story mode and allows for a fair amount of strategy whether it be choosing which difficultly of battle you want to fight, or when to spend your coins.

Quick battles are the bare essentials of the game. You pick a hero, a place, the background music, an AI setting and an opponent to fight it out. Here you can just duel any opponent you like for however long you like while still receiving awards. There are a few nitpicks about this mode that can be discussed. After each battle, the option to do a rematch is 2nd while the option to go back to battle setup is 1st. It feels like these two options should have been reversed. The gear selection of the enemy also resets each time you go back to battle preparations, which can be annoying if you're hunting specific gear pieces.

Items can be won throughout these modes, but they can also be dropped in battle. Battlegen items can be collected by performing certain actions against certain enemies. The battlegen items are rather difficult to get mainly because you have to check in a menu outside of battles on how to get them instead of there also being a quick hint somewhere closer to each battle. The same can be said of items you use for each battle that can be purchased in the PP catalog. The catalog is the only place you can buy these items and check how many you have left, which is a great inconvenience. Each enemy also has a very rare chance to drop one or more of their gear. These drop rates are very low and feel more like farming in older RPGs rather than something that belongs in a game released nowadays. Items can also be bought in the customization menu through a shop. The shop sells some items directly to you for gil, but the majority requires you to trade in materials found throughout the game, furthering the notion of farming.

A problem with the summation of these game mechanics, is the in-game tutorials only tell you so much. A lot has to be discovered by the player, and some of them are rather esoteric.

Story

The story is very poorly written, so much so that its often very hard to take seriously or get immersed. Usually fighting games' stories are not that great, but Dissidia throws so much of it at you with cutscenes and dialogs outside of battles, that it becomes a major focal point. Each character re-enacts their personal conflicts from other games, but without the context of their games, this comes off flat and cliche. The personal developments don't evolve naturally and the character's dialog are often silly or confusing. All in all, it fails to make the battles to end all battles scenario seem real, and more like feuding grade-schoolers on a playground.

Graphics

The graphics are very polished and battles flow very fluidly. Each character is represented faithfully to their older counterparts and are surrounded by a decent amount of special effects. Sometimes the screen flashing can be distracting, but all of it is very pleasing to the eye. The battlegrounds however only get the job done part of the way. Certain original areas like the Crater from Final Fantasy VII and the Moon from Final Fantasy IV succeed in capturing the feel they had in their games, while others like the Throne Room from Final Fantasy I and the Castle from Final Fantasy V only seem like shells of their older selves or just plain generic. Sometimes you have to read the descriptions of the battlefields to know what area they're supposed to represent.

The original soundtrack is well done, all the sounds are very listenable, even outside of the game. However, the remixed versions of some of the older songs don't get translated well, like Terra from Final Fantasy VI. These remixed, retro songs don't feel complete enough to really capture how they sounded on the other consoles.

Re-playability

Good news is, there's a lot of items and gear to collect in this game. The PP store allows you to collect icons, music, unlockable characters, etc. that ensures that you'll always have something new to strive for. Unfortunately, the game play isn't varied enough to justify the sheer amount of content there is to unlock. You'll usually be grinding out game play modes to death just to uncover everything there is.
Conclusion

The game has a lot to offer but the game play doesn't have enough variation to justify the amount of gear and items to collect and things to unlock. There's also a steep learning curve about the mechanics that may put some people off, and most of the mechanics themselves are not explained properly in-game to begin with. Dissidia does manage to offer some fast paced battles, but after the novelty of the experience wears off, the game tends to feel more like a grind than action-packed game. Fans will most likely enjoy playing as their favorite characters and beating up other characters from the Final Fantasy universe, and that's who will get the most out of this game. To everyone else, it might put some people off who aren't familiar with the characters, due to the story/characters not being substantial. All the setbacks mar the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.