Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy
Jan. 20th, 2013 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroBefore the warriors of various Final Fantasy titles managed to break free of the cycle of conflict between Chaos and Cosmos, there were many repetitions of the cycle. The first game told the story of the final cycle. This is the story of the one before it.
The majority of the systems from the first game stay the same: All of the character-development stuff, the setup and controls for battles, the Battlegen item system, the various modes of play; they’re all still there. It also lets you carry-over character data (including levels and abilities learned) and PP Store data (including character, stage and calendar unlocks) from the first game.
The first and most obvious addition is that half a dozen new characters were added, and the new story mode focuses on them: Lightning is probably the most original of the new characters, as she can switch between three paradigms that get her different sets of Brave attacks (including Medic, in a game where healing is virtually non-existent). Of the others, I found Laguna hardest to use, because his attacks all have very specific distance ranges to them and it’s often hard to get him to just the right spot to hit. On the right maps, Kain can be totally broken just by spamming his Jump attack.
This new story is a story that carries an impressive amount of pathos if you’ve played the first game, because you know they’re doomed to failure. They don’t survive until the next cycle, so their resolve to march into a hopeless battle to save their fellows is touching.
Finishing the 012 campaign unlocks the 013 campaign, which is basically the first game with the new systems added in. This mode is for people who really love the game or who didn’t play the first, because it’s not adding enough new stuff to really warrant a replay. (If you love this game, there are enough scenarios, unlockables and extra modes in this game to fill hundreds of hours of play time.)
The second set of new stories are the “Reports” – extra cutscenes and battles for characters who don’t get them in the main story (and some who do). We get to see a lot more of the “behind the scenes” politics and get a lot more clarity of who knew what during the 12th cycle that set the stage for the final battles in the 13th cycle. Warriors who survive the previous cycle retain their memories. Warriors who die in the main conflict are “purified” and revived with memories lost. The six warriors of Cosmos who die stopping the tide of Manikens into the realm are seemingly lost forever. And it’s pretty clear by the end that the Chaos warriors were playing the Cosmos warriors for most of the last cycle, because they knew that getting the heroes to succeed was the way to break the cycle and get themselves home.
Anyway, in new system additions:
Battlegen-specific accessories are more streamlined, as every character now has three that are specific to them and are always unlocked in the same sequence and earned the same way (Brave-attack, HP-attack, Brave-Break); and each stage has one accessory you can acquire by breaking stage elements.
The battles add “Assist” commands that let you call in another character to do a Brave or HP attack on your behalf, which makes better use of having characters traveling together in the stories. There are also Party Mode stories and battles allow you to take up to five characters, and choose “tournament” (everyone takes turns until an entire side is dead) and “round robin” (everybody fights one opponent, best 3 out of 5).
The world of Dissidia has also gotten a world map—which is suspiciously (deliberately) like the map, including locations, of the original Final Fantasy. The explanation of the stages from the first game is that they are enemy-infested “gates” between areas of the world map. The world map also provides a new way of getting skills (for healing yourself between battles or chaining together fights) by finding them in chests or striking mysterious balls of light.
Instead of DP that you get for defeating enemies under certain conditions and completing the stage in fewer moves, you get KP (“Kupo Points”) for chaining enemies and fulfilling their special conditions. Those can be used at a Moogle Store on the world map and exchanged for weapons, items and accessories. Once you get through the first campaign, you can choose to deliberately reduce your character’s level, and going into gates below their “bonus line” gets you extra KP right off the bat.
If the system isn’t complex enough for you, you can also add “Rules” to your characters, which change the way stages behave or the elements of the game interact, providing a different rhythm to fights. If you’re really patient, there’s a campaign creation mode that allows you to make your own scenarios and trade them online. There’s an online multiplayer system (which I didn’t get to try), an arcade mode, and a “Labyrinth” mode that lets you explore a dungeon via a card-based, pseudo-roguelike system. And there are 100 new Accomplishments that you can prove you’re crazy by getting every one of.
Overall: I found this game almost as addictive as the first one, as it adds a lot of variations and maintains the sheer volume of reasons to keep grinding. I was frustrated that more than half the story (by hours of play) was just a re-hash of the first game. If you’ve never played the series, you can comfortably start here and not play the first game at all; or play the first game and only follow it up with this one if you love it 30+ hours worth.
The majority of the systems from the first game stay the same: All of the character-development stuff, the setup and controls for battles, the Battlegen item system, the various modes of play; they’re all still there. It also lets you carry-over character data (including levels and abilities learned) and PP Store data (including character, stage and calendar unlocks) from the first game.
The first and most obvious addition is that half a dozen new characters were added, and the new story mode focuses on them: Lightning is probably the most original of the new characters, as she can switch between three paradigms that get her different sets of Brave attacks (including Medic, in a game where healing is virtually non-existent). Of the others, I found Laguna hardest to use, because his attacks all have very specific distance ranges to them and it’s often hard to get him to just the right spot to hit. On the right maps, Kain can be totally broken just by spamming his Jump attack.
This new story is a story that carries an impressive amount of pathos if you’ve played the first game, because you know they’re doomed to failure. They don’t survive until the next cycle, so their resolve to march into a hopeless battle to save their fellows is touching.
Finishing the 012 campaign unlocks the 013 campaign, which is basically the first game with the new systems added in. This mode is for people who really love the game or who didn’t play the first, because it’s not adding enough new stuff to really warrant a replay. (If you love this game, there are enough scenarios, unlockables and extra modes in this game to fill hundreds of hours of play time.)
The second set of new stories are the “Reports” – extra cutscenes and battles for characters who don’t get them in the main story (and some who do). We get to see a lot more of the “behind the scenes” politics and get a lot more clarity of who knew what during the 12th cycle that set the stage for the final battles in the 13th cycle. Warriors who survive the previous cycle retain their memories. Warriors who die in the main conflict are “purified” and revived with memories lost. The six warriors of Cosmos who die stopping the tide of Manikens into the realm are seemingly lost forever. And it’s pretty clear by the end that the Chaos warriors were playing the Cosmos warriors for most of the last cycle, because they knew that getting the heroes to succeed was the way to break the cycle and get themselves home.
Anyway, in new system additions:
Battlegen-specific accessories are more streamlined, as every character now has three that are specific to them and are always unlocked in the same sequence and earned the same way (Brave-attack, HP-attack, Brave-Break); and each stage has one accessory you can acquire by breaking stage elements.
The battles add “Assist” commands that let you call in another character to do a Brave or HP attack on your behalf, which makes better use of having characters traveling together in the stories. There are also Party Mode stories and battles allow you to take up to five characters, and choose “tournament” (everyone takes turns until an entire side is dead) and “round robin” (everybody fights one opponent, best 3 out of 5).
The world of Dissidia has also gotten a world map—which is suspiciously (deliberately) like the map, including locations, of the original Final Fantasy. The explanation of the stages from the first game is that they are enemy-infested “gates” between areas of the world map. The world map also provides a new way of getting skills (for healing yourself between battles or chaining together fights) by finding them in chests or striking mysterious balls of light.
Instead of DP that you get for defeating enemies under certain conditions and completing the stage in fewer moves, you get KP (“Kupo Points”) for chaining enemies and fulfilling their special conditions. Those can be used at a Moogle Store on the world map and exchanged for weapons, items and accessories. Once you get through the first campaign, you can choose to deliberately reduce your character’s level, and going into gates below their “bonus line” gets you extra KP right off the bat.
If the system isn’t complex enough for you, you can also add “Rules” to your characters, which change the way stages behave or the elements of the game interact, providing a different rhythm to fights. If you’re really patient, there’s a campaign creation mode that allows you to make your own scenarios and trade them online. There’s an online multiplayer system (which I didn’t get to try), an arcade mode, and a “Labyrinth” mode that lets you explore a dungeon via a card-based, pseudo-roguelike system. And there are 100 new Accomplishments that you can prove you’re crazy by getting every one of.
Overall: I found this game almost as addictive as the first one, as it adds a lot of variations and maintains the sheer volume of reasons to keep grinding. I was frustrated that more than half the story (by hours of play) was just a re-hash of the first game. If you’ve never played the series, you can comfortably start here and not play the first game at all; or play the first game and only follow it up with this one if you love it 30+ hours worth.
