Dissidia’s story bases itself around a war between two Gods: Cosmos, the Goddess of Harmony, and Chaos, the God of Discord. Both have been warring for an eternity and neither side has progressed, that is until both introduced several powerful mortals from different worlds, in other words, the worlds of Final Fantasy. Chaos goes hardcore with his team of darkness and pretty much wipes the floor with Cosmos and her allies, and now it’s up to the forces of light to restore peace and order by defeating Chaos’ forces, lest the world be plunged into ‘True Darkness’.
Though it all sounds decent and a good enough excuse to bring Final Fantasy characters together, it’s executed poorly and is quite boring. The story mode lets you play as all the characters from the light side (sorry evil kids, no story progression for the dark side) and progress through a board game-esque kind of progression system, where you have a certain amount of destiny points at the start that dictate how many times you can move throughout the board. As you progress you fight ‘shadow’ forms of characters and this in turn levels you up and gives you items. There are also random assortments of items scattered on the board which can give you extra goodies.
You're the son I never wanted!
The problem with the Story Mode however is that it gets incredibly tedious. It feels like a chore, as all you’re doing is killing very weak shadow forms (that take a while to load up too unless you install data onto your PSP), and you’re doing this for usually about 5 stages before a fight with a real character begins. And when the game does get hard, it spikes badly, where you might face a shadow form that is suddenly 10 levels above you and asks you to play a hell of a lot harder than you normally would. Though a challenge in this game can be enjoyable, a sudden massive spike from simplistic enemies to complicated and difficult is irritating to say the least. You either persevere and with enough patience beat the enemy, or you quit the progression in Story Mode and go to Quick Play, where you can grind against selected opponents that also aren’t shadow forms, and level up high enough to be able to take the uber powerful enemies on. It’s an annoying set back however for someone who wants to progress through the story, and is completely unnecessary.
Apart from the very weak Story Mode, you’ve got your core combat mechanics, which is the star of the show. Combat works with three forms of attacks: Bravery, HP and EX. Bravery are attacks mapped to the square button, and when they connect with an opponent it lowers their bravery levels and increases yours, thus increasing the amount of HP damage you can deal in one hit. There’s a fairly varied assortment of dodges and blocks too, so combat can become decently tactical and fluid, with opponents constantly duking out to build up their bravery so they can do decent damage to each other. The EX attacks are the special attacks of the game, where once you’ve built up your EX gauge to the max, you can move into EX mode. This turns most of your bravery attacks into Critical Hits for a short duration and also gives you the ability to perform ultimate attacks, assuming you land a successful HP blow on the enemy. Ultimates are essentially fancy looking animations with big explosions and effects, coupled with you usually mashing buttons to maximise damage or defence, depending on if you’re attacking or being attacked.
The system also gives you the ability to mix and match with equipment, items and new attacks assuming you level your character, however half the time you’re not even going to bother much with items and abilities. Items are a little bit of a complicated mess, with several different types that do certain things to your character if you meet the requirements on the battlefield. Some offer base stats upgrades too, but most of it requires so much sorting out and thought that only the more hardcore Final Fantasy fans will bother really. Abilities too, don’t offer any real advantage in combat either, with most just giving off flashier effects and slightly different end results. Though you’ve got the option to diversify your character and make them a little more unique to your play-style, ultimately Dissidia’s combat boils down to button mashing, dodging and blocking, and only the hardcore will attempt to deepen the waters and push for a more complex combat system.
Scantly dressed women luring little kids in..what.
Level Design is also a big hit and miss with Dissidia, which further pushes you away from the Story mode as you don’t select what level to play on. The more open ended ones are okay, however the more cramped, multi-tiered ones are frustrating and often interfere with the camera, causing unnecessary frustration that puts you off playing them ever again.
The good news however, is that when Dissidia is customised to your liking when playing Quick Play, it can be really fun. Dream matches can be had between characters and there’s an assortment of music from most Final Fantasy games to be selected, so things can feel suitably epic and fast paced. The only downside however is that in order to unlock the Dark Side characters to level up in Quick Play, you need PP points, which are earned through playing the Story Mode and constant Quick Play matches. It’s a little disappointing as the evil characters aren’t even usable in the Story Mode, and it’s an even bigger slap when they’re not even accessible in Quick Play. Arcade Mode, everyone is accessible from the get-go, but you’re limited to 5 matches and they are fixed with level, so it’s nowhere near as fun.
From a technical standpoint, Dissidia is excellent. Featuring some very good texture work, animations and fantastic visual effects, Dissidia is certainly a stand out title when it comes to visual aspects on the PSP. There are no frame rate drops either, so the game is fluid all throughout. Sound is also great, with some excellent music choice throughout the title, both new and old, and sound effects sounding nostalgic and clean as you’d expect. Voice acting however is horrible and robotic, and is almost painful to listen to.
The scantly dressed woman just got a taste of not one, but two swords.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy is likely to sell a lot of copies, all because of its insane amount of fan service. Fans around the world have been waiting for such an opportunity with Final Fantasy, and now they have it. However, regardless of the years of nostalgia, plethora of famous characters and crazy wet fanboy dreams that this game can muster, it doesn’t protect it from being disappointing and somewhat of a missed opportunity. Moments of the game are very enjoyable, but they only happen in spurts, and make you wonder why most of the time you’re simply preparing to have fun. It’s Multiplayer will likely be an amusing romp between friends, and the mix and matching between FF characters in Quick Play will likely make some fans squeal, but that’s really all that Dissidia has to offer: something for the fans to smile about, but nothing much for anyone else.
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