Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Aug. 5th, 2012 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroIn a mysterious world outside of time, an endless cycle of battles ranges anew as the forces of Cosmos, goddess of harmony, fight the forces of Chaos, god of discord…Okay, you know what? This is all just an excuse to take the heroes and villains of the first ten Final Fantasy games and make them fight.
There are a whole lot of gimmicks to make this feel more Final Fantasy-esque that your average fighting game. You have a Brave meter, which increases with most successful attacks and decreases when you take hits (if you reduce the enemy's Brave to 0, they “Break” and your Brave skyrockets); then there are special HP attacks, which deal your current Brave in damage. There's an Ex meter that fills up over time and if you collect Ex Cores; when it's full, you go into Ex Mode, where your critical hit chance is higher and, which a successful HP attack, you can do an Ex Burst super-attack (most of which are Limit Breaks and similar moves from previous games). Characters gain levels and have double-unlock equipment (you need to unlock it as inventory at the store, then buy it; there's also a level limit to use most equipment); so you can grind your way past troublesome fights, if you're so inclined. There are summons to find in the story stages that you can have auto-activate when you’re in trouble during battle. New accessories and materials are created via "Battlegen", which gives you a percentage chance of items appearing if you Break the opponent, or do an Ex Burst attack, or destroy scenery. There's a chocobo that gives bonuses based on how many battles you fight in a row, and a calendar/Mognet system that gives you bonuses depending on the day of the week. There's a long, long list of accomplishments that reveal themselves as you play, usually when you're 50% towards completing one of them.
The final boss (the god Chaos, which really isn't a spoiler) is a three-part nightmare of a battle that sends you back to the beginning of it if you lose on any segment. I could have finished the game a week earlier if I had been able to get past him, but I gave up to go grind after a dozen tries barely got me past the second form once. Before that, I'd retried a lot of tough fights (one against Jecht at least 7 times), but never had to give up to grind. The game allows you semi-infinite retries, but your bonus points at the end of the stage decrease every time you do.
The plot sets up as each character trying to find a crystal, which pretty much requires finding the power of friendship/love/self-confidence and defeating their opposite number on the villains’ side. The optimal story order to play them in also happens to be the order of increasing difficulty, which works out well--the later characters have gimmicks to their stages (invisible enemies, mystery squares), but are also the more "technical" characters, who require more strategy to play as. Terra and the Onion Kid frustrated me when I first tried them, but Terra's long-distance style really grew on me. The Warrior of Light is amusing as a starting and ending character, because his Brave attacks are really easy to work with, but his one HP attack is short-range and hard to aim. The enemy characters don't have story modes, but they can be fun to play anyway because they tend to have nastier attacks that are harder to dodge and easier to spam.
The thing about this, though, is that if you haven’t played a given character’s game, you have no idea who they are or what’s going on. If you haven’t played every character’s game, you have no idea what going on in most interactions. This was made for FF fanboys (…like me) who want to know if Cecil can take down Sephiroth and if you can trounce Exdeath with an Onion Knight.
Overall: I think this is a pretty solid fighting game that gives you a reason to keep playing it--there are so many unlocks and secrets and items to generate or find--but the plot is incomprehensible if you're not a Final Fantasy fan already. Needless to say, I loved it.
There are a whole lot of gimmicks to make this feel more Final Fantasy-esque that your average fighting game. You have a Brave meter, which increases with most successful attacks and decreases when you take hits (if you reduce the enemy's Brave to 0, they “Break” and your Brave skyrockets); then there are special HP attacks, which deal your current Brave in damage. There's an Ex meter that fills up over time and if you collect Ex Cores; when it's full, you go into Ex Mode, where your critical hit chance is higher and, which a successful HP attack, you can do an Ex Burst super-attack (most of which are Limit Breaks and similar moves from previous games). Characters gain levels and have double-unlock equipment (you need to unlock it as inventory at the store, then buy it; there's also a level limit to use most equipment); so you can grind your way past troublesome fights, if you're so inclined. There are summons to find in the story stages that you can have auto-activate when you’re in trouble during battle. New accessories and materials are created via "Battlegen", which gives you a percentage chance of items appearing if you Break the opponent, or do an Ex Burst attack, or destroy scenery. There's a chocobo that gives bonuses based on how many battles you fight in a row, and a calendar/Mognet system that gives you bonuses depending on the day of the week. There's a long, long list of accomplishments that reveal themselves as you play, usually when you're 50% towards completing one of them.
The final boss (the god Chaos, which really isn't a spoiler) is a three-part nightmare of a battle that sends you back to the beginning of it if you lose on any segment. I could have finished the game a week earlier if I had been able to get past him, but I gave up to go grind after a dozen tries barely got me past the second form once. Before that, I'd retried a lot of tough fights (one against Jecht at least 7 times), but never had to give up to grind. The game allows you semi-infinite retries, but your bonus points at the end of the stage decrease every time you do.
The plot sets up as each character trying to find a crystal, which pretty much requires finding the power of friendship/love/self-confidence and defeating their opposite number on the villains’ side. The optimal story order to play them in also happens to be the order of increasing difficulty, which works out well--the later characters have gimmicks to their stages (invisible enemies, mystery squares), but are also the more "technical" characters, who require more strategy to play as. Terra and the Onion Kid frustrated me when I first tried them, but Terra's long-distance style really grew on me. The Warrior of Light is amusing as a starting and ending character, because his Brave attacks are really easy to work with, but his one HP attack is short-range and hard to aim. The enemy characters don't have story modes, but they can be fun to play anyway because they tend to have nastier attacks that are harder to dodge and easier to spam.
The thing about this, though, is that if you haven’t played a given character’s game, you have no idea who they are or what’s going on. If you haven’t played every character’s game, you have no idea what going on in most interactions. This was made for FF fanboys (…like me) who want to know if Cecil can take down Sephiroth and if you can trounce Exdeath with an Onion Knight.
Overall: I think this is a pretty solid fighting game that gives you a reason to keep playing it--there are so many unlocks and secrets and items to generate or find--but the plot is incomprehensible if you're not a Final Fantasy fan already. Needless to say, I loved it.
