Game Dissection: Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP)

Just to make it clear, we here at BC don’t “Preview” or go “In-depth”, we dissect games that are about to come out so that you see more into the game than just us saying some crazy summary of it. Don’t get us wrong, this might look like a review but we’ll save some things for the review so that we don’t spoil anything (since we already have the japanese version of the game) . So with that said LET’S GET TO IT!


The Final Fantasy series has always been not to improve on sequel upon sequel, even those that are “spin-offs” manage to be great to play by the least, but none the less the Sony PSP is about to get its taste of a highly anticipated FF (Final Fantasy) Title (even though there was one before).


So what is Dissidia Final Fantasy? Well let’s put it this way: What if you took all of the main heroes and villains of the FF series from 1-11 (including Dissidia) and just put them in a world where they can rip each other apart? Well the answer of course is Dissidia Final Fantasy and a very FREAKIN’ AWESOME COOL GAME! (Hopefully)




-Story:


The story goes that there are two gods on the world of Dissidia, the God of Harmony: Cosmos and The God of Discord and all evil etc. etc: Chaos. Basically the two Gods have been in eternal conflict with each one balancing the other to make sure that there’s not too much good or evil, then the balanced has been tipped by Chaos and the two Gods called and summoned upon great worriors from other worlds to settle the conflict once and for all.( So they basically summond the most badass people they could think of) In story mode however, plyers follow the path of the heroes of the FF series with each character having their own story.

-Presentation:


Seriously, do we really need to question the people in Square Enix in their presentation? Yeah, we didn’t think so either, none-the-less, Dissidia looks phenomenal. We didn’t expect to see our classic Onion Knight and Kefka to look really cool in 3D but the people from Square Enix managed to pull it off. You know those pictures you saw when the first few heroes and villains from FF came out? They really brought it to life, plus the animation of each character really contributes to who they are. The music score is also Final Fantasy with the famous Nobuo  Umematsu as the person in-charge of the game score. The cool thing about that is the fact that the previous FF scores have been redone for this game.







-The Game:


The cool thing about the game is that it features SO FREAKIN’ MANY FEATURES! It’s rediculous to see the amount of things you can do with the game (though it doesn’s go as far as create play share)


1. Customization and Leveling Up - The biggest thing about FF games is the RPG elements that are found in the gameplay, don’t get us wrong, the game plays like a cool action game, just that you can customize any FF character in the game with their own moves, summons, equipment, costume etc. there’s a lot of things you can do with each character in the game so that it suits your own play style. Leveling up is also a big part of Dissidia FF, basically each time you level up, you gain equipment, new moves, items, etc.





2. Control Scheme - Why are we giving you the control scheme? Because we can, so here it is, this is for the action par of the game, the part where players beat the crap out of Final Fantasy characters:


X - Jump


Square - Attack HP


O - Attack Bravery Points


Triangle - Environment interaction (grinding on rails,wall run, etc.)


R Button - with X dodge, with Triangle Speed toward opponent.


L Button - Lock-om


Directional Pad - Camera Control


Analogue Stick - Move Character




3.  Gameplay - The game has two parts to it, but since we don’t want to spoil anything, we’ll just discuss the huge part of the game: one-on-one battles. If you have played the demo or have seen gameplay of Dissidia FF, you can tell what the people at Square Enix were trying to do: Make the gameplay look like the fight scenes in advent children, well we played the demo here at BC and to tell the truth, they pretty much nailed it. It’s fun to just soar towards ur enemy and pull of some cool combo moves, plus the fact that each character has their own fighting style is BADASS! So when you fight an opponent, usually the goal is to get the other person’s HP to 0 first right? Not in ths case, Dssidia FF has a thing called “Bravery Points” or “BP” for short. It’s basically points you gather up so you can do damage to your opponent’s HP equal to the number of BP you have obtained. To obtain BP you must attack your opponent with BP attack (meaning you press the O button) and when you get the opponent’s BP to 0, you would gain bonus BP to attack with. (We know, it’s confusing, so just bear with us) Players also hav access to the “EX. Meter” or what we here at BC like to call the Pwnge Meter. When this meter fills up, you can activate what is called “EX. Mode”, where your character’s attacks have been juiced up to “BEAT-THE-CRAP-OUT-OF-YOUR-OPPONENT” mode, so all your attacks are 3-5 times more powerful than your normal attacks and if you happen to attack your opponent with the HP attack, you have the option to press the square button to unleash your special attack with a mini-game  which can LITERALLY change the tide of battle. If you’re at the recieving end of the special pwnge, you can tap O button to increase your defense. There are also “EX Core”s that appear around the levels from time to time to fill the EX Meter quicker.





4. Multiplayer- Sad to say that there’s no online infustructure for the game, but it des feature some unique multiplayer experiences. Aside the VS. Battles, there is a card collecting feature where a player can collect another player’s character cards, which is a customized FF character that mimics the player’s gameplay style and saves it to your game so that you can battle your friend anywhere you go (in virtual form of course).


Well there’s a lot to expect from this game when it comes out on August 25th adn we promise to give a full written and “dissected” review of Dissidia FInal Fantasy here at BC. Oh and here’s a Dissidia Final Fantasy PSP Bundle