Dissidia: Final Fantasy Review

What would happen if you crossed an RPG with a tournament fighter? This is the question that Square wanted to answer when they came out with Dissidia. They crossed the action based one-on-one gameplay and added in a whole lot of customization. Throw in a quickly created plot for why we're bringing together the heroes and villains of the first 10 editions of Final Fantasy and what do you get? Well, let's take a closer look and find out.

The plot of Dissidia: Final Fantasy is as follows. There exists a world of constant conflict with two gods, Cosmos and Chaos. These two are in eternal struggle, however, it seems Cosmos may finally be failing. She recruits ten warriors to seek out the Crystals. They succeed, but in doing so, Cosmos is destroyed as the Crystals actually each contain the remaining essence of Cosmos herself. With Cosmos destroyed, the world is set to disappear into the Void, however the Crystals are able to hold off this apocalypse and give the warriors a chance to reach Chaos itself. The warriors defeat Chaos and are able to return to their home world... however, in defeat Chaos retreats to a place in which he wishes nothing but pure destruction. The warriors must infiltrate this place and defeat him one last time.

That's the main plot, but there are some other points to touch on. The world is populated with mannequins, basically copies of the different heroes and villains of the area. These, we discover were created by Cid. In fact, in the Cosmos and Chaos reports that can be gained, it is told that Cid (a citized of Lufenia from FF I) is the one actually responsible for the creation of the entire world, as well as the god Chaos as well as the dragon Shinryu and the eternal conflict. It is theorized, though not directly stated, that the heroes and villains you play as are actually advanced versions of mannequins and not the actual characters themselves.

The presentation of the game is truely wonderful. Square really achieved a level of mastery with the PSP hardware that few others were able to. The game contains many FMV cutscenes which look wonderful, and would look so even on today's hardware. The actual gameplay is done in full 3D environments with destructible elements, quite advanced for the time, and it still holds up today. The models are slightly blocky, but again, good for the hardware it is running on.

The game contains multiple tracks from each of the games represented, and they all sound okay. Honestly, the fault with music in this game is how the difficulty swing in the game. You are either going to go through really short battles for grinding at which point you are hardly hearing any of the track, or really long fights which require alot fo concentration, during which you are most likely not paying attention to the track. Nevertheless, having all these tracks is a great thing and there is always the music player to listen to if you really want to.

Now we get to the game play section... and this is going to take a while. Let's start with the main gameplay. You choose a fighter from 22 possible candidates and face off against another character. You attack with either weak attacks which damage the character's bravery, or strong attacks which will directly attack their HP. Why would you want to use a weaker attack? Well, taking an opponent's bravery to 0 transfers a pool of Bravery into your pool, and the amount of damage you do on a strong attack is equivalent to the amount of Bravery you currently possess. The battle ends once someone reaches 0 HP.

Your character can be equipped with different attacks which are learned through levelling, and various traits and skills as well. These abilities and skills are equipped using CP and you have a maximum amount of CP that can be used at once. This is increased through levelling or by equipping certain accessories. That's right, your character can equip various weapons, armor, and accessories as well. These increase your stats, and there are also various sets of equipment which can bestow additional bonuses for your character and greatly affect your play style. Your character can also block or dodge attacks

Now, say you're not very good at fighting games, but can't pass up the Final Fantasy fighter, well Square has thought of this as well. They included a mode that turns the game into a menu based fighter. The game will do all the movements for you, and you can select when you want the character to use weak attacks, strong attacks, defend, dodge, etc.

The first thing I want to say, is that Square did a wonderful job making 22 characters with 22 different play styles. Each character really feels unique. Some are very stationery and rely on just using their strong attacks over and over. Some are fast and rely on combos. If you can't find a character that fits the style you want to play in this game, then you are just not looking hard enough.

When you start the game, you are most likely going to begin going through the Story modes. The story modes tell the story I spoke about above, with each character having a various little story about how they go about getting crystals. You have to fight many mannequins along the way along with the forces of Chaos. As you fight you will gain EXP, AP, PP, and Gil. Exp is what increases your character's level up to 100. Obviously, as you level you will gain various stats as well as access to different skills and attacks. AP goes to your equipped attacks and skills, and after enough AP you will master them, making them cost less CP to equip and sometimes unlocking other attacks or skills. PP and Gil are currencies that are used in two different shops.

The PP shop is where you unlock different things from the game. You must purchase the ability to use the villains in the game, as well as the ability to fight harder enemies in quick battles, or getting better bonuses, more music, stages, icons, etc. The gil shop is where you purchase the equipment and accessories in the game. Simple equipment can be purchased with just gil, while the better equipment uses a synthesis method where you need gil as well as other specific pieces of equipment to craft the better version... we will talk more about this later.

So, after you complete your story mode, you unlock a new story mode called Shade Impulse. This story mode takes place after all the warriors have obtained their crystals and follows to the final battle against Chaos. The mannequins here are much stronger than the ones in the initial stories as well. Defeating Chaos will unlock a new game mode as well as two new tales. These two tales introduce two characters, Shantotto from FF XI and Gabranth from FF XII. Completing these tales unlocks these characters for play as well as unlocking the final story tale called Inward Chaos. Here you fight super powerful enemies and is meant to be played at Max Level. The chaos at the end acts as kind of a super boss, and must be defeated to unlock some of the most powerful equipment in the game.

The new mode that is unlocked after beating Chaos for the first time is called Duel Colisseum. Here, you fight a never ending stream of enemies to gain medals. You can use these medals to purchase unique items and materials needed for crafting new weapons and armor in the shop. There are various levels of difficulty here each which carry their own unique items.

This all sounds simple enough, but let's go through what must be done if you wish to collect all the achievements in this game. To obtain all the achievements in the game, you must collect all the items in the game. All the weapons, armor, accessories, and materials. Your first step will be to finish the story modes for each character. Now, this must be done multiple times. Another system contained within the story modes is the DP system. Some mannequins have an addition objective such as defeating them without getting hit or within a certain amount of time, doing so will gain you DP at the end of the fight. Each time you open a chest or fight someone you will lose a DP. Each story mode has a reward for completing an area with each of 0-7 DP, these must all be collected, as well as every chest as some can contain unique items.

Next, obviously, you'll want to go through Shade Impulse and do the same thing, collect all the items and DP rewards and beating Chaos at the end to unlock Duel Colisseum and the two poistgame tales. These must also be completed and the DP rewards obtained.

At this point, you probably are not strong enough yet, so you should start going about collecting some better weapons, armor, and accessories. You'll find you need some specific materials for them, Most of these materials are obtained using Battlegen. Battlegen is a system where if you perform a specific action in battle such as hitting with a strong attack, sapping all of a foe's bravery, using a super move (called EX Burst), or destroying parts of the stage will give you a chance to obtain an item if you win the battle. The chance is based on how strong the enemy is and can be modified with certain accessories which will grant you a multiplier if certain conditions are met. These accessories are obtained from completing various achievements. These achievements range from completing story modes to reaching certain level milestones to performing 5000 blocks or destroying 20000 stage elements.

Yeah, here's where Square got a little crazy. Some of these achievements are so incredibly grindy. Some of these can be achieved with certain equipment setups and just leaving the game on in command mode, but there are two in particular, the dodging achievement and the stage element destroying achievement which you really have no choice but to grind for hours just to complete them. It is incredibly annoying and there's no way you'd reach these through the natural course of playing, you HAVE to go out of your way to complete it.

Anyway, you may discover that some items you want to create require colored gems to create. How do you get these? Well, every day you play, you will receive letters from Mognet, a cute little reference to FF IX, and the moogles will sometimes quiz you with questions on various things from any Final Fantasy game from I-X. If you get these quizzes correct, you will receive friend cards. Friend cards are a way that if you had friends that had Dissidia that you could store your information on another player's game to practice fighting against their character. The game also includes 8 NPC characters, each that associates with a specific color that contain unique battlegen items. Actually, this is not entirely true. There are also PASSWORDS you can find and input as your outgoing message, that will unlock other various friend cards that contain completely unique items to create unique weapons and armor in the shop. Thankfully, these are not required for the achievements.

You may notice that the shop contains some weapons that make reference to weapons from the previous Final Fantasy games. These weapons are very powerful and speicific to a character, but they require materials I've never seen before? Well, now's the time to head to the Duel Colisseum... you are going to spend HOURS here gaining countless items that only appear here. In fact, I have a bit of a grudge here. The PSP has great battery life and all, but this mode does not lend itself to portable play very well. You'll quickly find that you spend the first 15-20 minutes getting a really good setup with various job cards to the point where you can just keep purchasing items with running out of medals. It's far more effective to keep one run going and get ALL the items you need then to start over all the time... meaning you'd have to keep your PSP on the whole time, since you can't save in the middle of a colisseum run.

So, you're finally ready to take on Inward Chaos, and you win... you finish all the achievements you can think of, but you're still misisng some items... what's going on? Well, beating Inward Chaos unlocks the final mode in Duel Colisseum. The Blackjack course. If you want to get everything in the game, there are 22 items you can ONLY obtain here, and in a method we haven't talked about. When you defeat an enemy there is a SMALL chance you will obtain one of the items that character is equipped with. You see their equipment before you start any fight. The 22 pieces of Lufenian equipment here can only be obtained in this method. Hopefully, by now you've gotten very good, and have learned some setups to make defeating very powerful enemies quickly, because you'll need it. These characters are all Level 130... 30 levels above you.

This game may be a completionist's nightmare, but don't let that fact cloud the fact that this game is incredibly fun, and incredibly addicting. It was a very ambitious project for Square and they came through with flying colors. It is a very skill based game, and you'll really find yourself getting better as you continue to play. No fight shows this more than the fight against Chaos. When you first encounter him, he seems impossible except for brute strength, but eventually you'll learn his attacks, and he'll be nothing more than a minor nuisance when you face him the duel colisseum for the 357th time. I highly recommend that all Final Fantasy fans give this one a shot... at least through Shade Impulse. The completionist aspect of this game, while addictive, just takes too much grinding and frustration. That said, this game certainly holds up today, and I really look forward to the sequel and the improvements they made for it.