Customer Reviews

Dissidia Final Fantasy

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Ok, so this game is indeed one of the finer games on the PSP, and with the slew of unlockables, story, different arcade modes, and multi-player, it's a game that one could happily spend hours upon hours playing.

The battle system is a little odd, as it's not a typical fighter. More of a action game, with fighting and RPG elements tied all together very nicely. It takes a few minutes to understand how everything works together in battle, but once you get the hang of it, you just keep getting better and better, and the battles become more and more enjoyable.

The story mode, admittedly, is actually kind of weak, for a Final Fantasy title (at least, every Final Fantasy before IX had a good story). I enjoy the story, personally, but it's not full of surprises, or played out in the greatest fashion. It's decent, but it could have been so much better. That, and the voice acting for some characters is a bit sad. It's almost embarrassing to listen to sometimes. But there are quite a few characters whose American voice overs were done perfectly (Sephiroth and Kefka come to mind).

The customization of your characters is un-effing-believable. None of the equipment you use will change your character's appearance, but the amount of weapons, accessories, equipment, summons and abilities you can learn, gain, create and buy are very nearly endless. Especially with the multi-player items you get just from battling. In that same field, there's a calendar system in the game that will give you rewards based on what day you play. By unlocking more bonuses through the catalog in the game, you can make these days occur more often, and yield much greater rewards.

The multi-player is 50/50, in my opinion. Yes, it's very, very nice, it works really well, and the rewards can be unique, but it's only Ad-hoc. There's no online multi-player, which is really disappointing. While my cousin and I played, we experienced a bit of lag, but it was hardly noticeable at all. Very slight, and it didn't ruin the battle, or the experience. It's quite a bit of fun, so if you have or get this game, find someone else who does too. The ability to handicap the level so it's an even match makes it much nicer as well, so that you can fight someone brand new to the game, without them having to spend hours leveling up first.

Arcade mode was a unique addition to the American version, and while it's a lot of fun, it's straight forward, with pre-set characters. No customization here. So, it gets old pretty quickly. However, since you initially only have access to the heroes (you have to unlock the villains via the catalog), this is a good place to go to get some practice with all the characters, as all 20 of the main characters are available to play right off the bat in Arcade mode.

Unlockables in this game seem endless. When you unlock new characters or items, more appear to unlock. As you progress through the game, you get random items and rewards, and more items appear for you to unlock through the catalog. The museum allows you to see all sorts of Final Fantasy info on characters, and, once you unlock it, the replay editor is here, allowing you to go back over battles you've fought and saved the replay for, and allows you to edit them, save them to AVI, and import them to your computer.

Over all, this game is an amazing package, and the only things that really hold it back from perfection are a few poor choices, and poor voice acting. Now, I admit that I'm a Final Fantasy fan, and this game is definitely a present for all the die-hard fans of the series, but the way the game plays, anyone who's a fan of action, fighting or RPG genre of gaming can enjoy this game for months to come. I cannot recommend this game enough. It's worth every penny.

Overall: 9.5 out of 10

Positivies:
+Amazing cast of fan favorites
+Unbelievable customization
+Almost unending unlockables
+Fantastic battle system that just gets better as you play
+Really great Ad-hoc battles
+Easily able to sink 100+ hours into this game
+Accessable to almost any gamer

Negatives:
-No online multi-player
-Story is a bit weak, but playable
-Voice overs are, more often than not, disappointing

Dissidia is the best Final Fantasy fighting game because it's the only FF dedicated fighting game. It can be played in Story Mode, Arcade or Online. I enjoy all three modes and I recommend it to all Final Fantasy fans and to those who love fighting games but not everything is perfect.


GAME MODES

It all starts with a movie that that goes through every main character from every Final Fantasy game individually. If you do the Story Mode you can be one of 10 'good' characters and fight your way to the finish.

When you play Online you can be a good character or play as the villains if you can afford to buy them for Perk points in the Perk shop.

In the Arcade mode where you can earn Perc points and Gil if you fight well you can also be any of the 10 good characters or any of the 10 main villains.

Any battle can be replayed but that's not it. Once the battle is over it can be saved and then edited and saved as a movie. This works in any mode: story, arcade or online.


GAMEPLAY

Is different form other fighting games in that you have to use a combination of melee and ranged attacks. This earns you Bravery points. The more Bravery you have the more life damage you do when you perform a primary attack. You can also collect EXO points on the battlefield to transform yourself into a stronger form and do an extremely powerful attack.

You earn Perc points and Gil in the Arcade mode or in the Story mode and you can use them to buy equipment, summoning gems, cool costumes or to summon any of the 10 main villains.


THE GOODS AND THE BADS

This is a fun and addictive game and I've been playing it every day for a few days already. I found the 'Teen' rating to be appropriate because anyone younger would find Dissidia hard to play.

In my view, there are a few problems too. For example, you cannot play as Zack Fair form 'Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core' because he is considered a secondary character. It also takes some practice to get used to the battle system. Online battles can be glitchy sometimes with the game freezing for a second or two but that could be because of the Wi-Fi network.

______________________________________________________

Note: The above is mainly Bradd's review with me responsible for some edits. Bradd is my son.

Dissidia is blatant fan-service for the dedicated and faithful. But it is also blatant fun! Whether you are new to the Final Fantasy universe or a long time player, Dissidia has it for you! It takes an idea like Super Smash Brothers and widens it up. It isn't a 2D fighter but has 3D fully realized worlds for you to battle it out in! Players can stick to the ground and launch attacks at wide ranges, or fly to the skies to attack in furious mid-air frenzies! It is huge too! The game just keeps widening up as more and more features are unlocked!

Each character can be upgraded at will to the umpteenth level. All of the normal RPG stats are here: Attack, Defense, Luck and so on... but all the characters can learn new moves all throughout the adventure! Dissidia is amazing! Hours and hours of fun! I'd recommend it hands down!

I think most fellow FF fans can relate when I say that when this game was first announced, the anticipation was almost immediately unbearable. Well, fast-forward a year or so, and what do we get? More or less what most of us were expecting- a full fan-service action title with a negligible plot line.

True, there was that moment where I find myself saying "Hey! Awesome! I'm (insert favorite character here) in full 3-d with full-range movement in an ACTION game!", but that feeling soon wore off, and gave way to some disappointment at how this truly monumental game could have been much better.

That being said, is it really all that bad? The game clearly does SOMETHING right, otherwise online sales of past FF titles would not have increased as they did in the two weeks following the US release, and the Gamefaqs message board for the game wouldn't have as much activity as it does.

So, let's take a point-by-point look at what was done well, or not so well, in each of the following categories:

Graphics: 7/10
A good-looking game, with some minor problems in this department.
+All 2-d characters are fully re-imagined in 3-d in a way that does service (for the most part. Exceptions being Cecil and Bartz) to the games they hail from
+Attack animations are fluid. You also won't find yourself saying "Hey, that attack landed 2 feet from my character but STILL registered", as in many fighting and action games (ahem, Soulcalibur)
-Sometimes the characters' mouths don't move when they talk, which completely ruins all suspension of disbelief.
-Some different animations for different types of weapons would have been nice (i.e. axes vs. swords. Whichever the Warrior of Light or Cecil or whomever is equipped with, it's still a sword).

Audio: 10/10
The best-sounding game I've played on the PSP.
+Solid voice-acting of every single character in the game. It's really a pity that the voice actors weren't fed many good lines by the scriptwriters.
+There are remasters/remixes of themes from every Final Fantasy game 1-12. Just wait 'til you hear what they've done with "The Red Wings", "Dancing Mad" and "Battle at the Big Bridge". The unlockable songs from FFI-III are the classic NES tunes more or less untouched. My only real complaint would be the shoddy remix of the battle music from FFIV.

Gameplay: 7/10
This is really a mixed bag. If you enjoy ridiculous anime gymnastics like that seen in "FF7: Advent Children", then you'll probably love the combat in this game. I, personally, did not like the film, but that type of combat IS better suited to a video game than it is to cinema.
+Simple, straight-forward controls that are easy to learn but take some effort to master.
+The characters all handle very differently from one another, and each has a distinct "flavor", if you will.
+Action-packed. In some of the tougher battles, your heart will pound and your palms will sweat before the final blow is struck, unless, of course...
-You figure out how to break the game. This is quite easy to do as...about 80% of the characters. It will take supreme self-discipline just for you to keep yourself from spamming the same attack until the other guy just croaks.
-Completely counter-intuitive camera angles. Prepare to go "Talking to a wall" as Squall puts it.
-Targeting system will sometimes cause you to be unable to reach parts of the stage that you want to reach. This only happens frequently on a couple stages.
-If you enjoy online play, prepare to be disappointed. You're going to need a PS3 (which must be the ONLY reason someone would buy a PS3), or a computer program called XLink-something-or-other. The developers could have just as easily included online functionality, but they didn't. Thanks a lot, Square Enix.
-Looooooong load times. Even if you use the "Data Install" feature to shorten load times, be prepared to wave bye-bye to hours of your life you could have spent doing something meaningful as you wait for the battles to begin, or end.

Story: 2/10
Ouch...I mean, ouch. But what were you expecting? Xenogears? There will be moments so sappy that you cringe. Especially when the deep-voiced guy recites verse for every story mode. Just don't think about it and you'll be okay.

Replayability: 8/10
When you get done maining one character, you'll be sure to say, "Hey, that was fun. I wonder what it would've been like as one of the OTHER guys." I would have enjoyed a story mode for the Evil characters, too, if only for ease of leveling, or for the hope that their stories would've been somehow more interesting than the Good-aligned characters.


So, there you have it. A game that keeps me coming back, and I don't quite know why yet. Call me "Conflicted". Or should I say, "Dissidia-ed".

I have owned this game since it came out, have played more than
100 hours already, and I must say, this game is H U G E,
believe it, ENORMOUS.

First the good things:

This is a Final Fantasy fan dream come true, the main characters
from the first 10 games vs the villains of the same games, and 2
bonus characters. That's 22 chars, and everyone plays different to
each other. From Cloud's crushing attacks to Kefka's trickery magic,
to Exdeath's counterstrike style to Zidane's aerial play you'll have
completely different experiences playing each character.

The presentation of the game is flawless, maybe the best graphics the
psp can show. The music is also gorgeous, with originals and
reinterpretations of classical final fantasy themes. The action is
silk smooth, there is no slowdown in single player, and some very
minor in multiplayer when the stage gets filled with debris, ex-force
sparks, and multiple magical effects, but it's very minor and doesn't
get in the way.

The play style is a lot of fun, at first you'll find it odd, and
your characters will lack movement, speed, and maneuvers, but later
with good leveled characters, the battles will start to look a lot
like advent children's battles, especially the last one (won't spoil
the movie to you). Battles can be truly spectacular, with both
characters running, flying, jumping, clashing swords, destructing
the scenery in the process with missing blows and/or by crashing
the opponent in the stage.

You also can endlessly customize your characters, the quantity of
equipment, accessories, summons is well into the hundreds, maybe thousands
of items.(However, the equipment doesn't change your characters look)
First you'll want just a better sword for your Warrior of Ligth,
then you'll want a Champion Belt accesory to deal 25% more damage,
later you'll want the Adamant Chains armor set, then you'll realize
that you can mix and match booster items for different effects in
different circumstances. Luckily you have 3 profiles per characters,
each with its own set of abilities, equipment, accesories and summons.

Also, the more you play, the more the game keeps giving. You get
rewards for playing in your special day, (that you preset at the
beginning), for playing several days straight, for accomplish several
small feats while playing ( ex: finish an opponent 30 times with Ex-Burst),
he, even get a reward for NOT playing several days. You get items, icons,
reward multipliers, etc.

Multiplayer is also a lot of fun, you create a card to represent you,
and exchange it thru wi-fi. When you get another player's card, you
can battle online ad-hoc in a lobby, and after that, you get a ghost
of the other player's character that you can battle in an offline lobby,
with the chance to get some of the ghost's equipment and accesories.
Also in multiplayer you can get some of the most powerful equipment in
online battles,equipment that you canno't get in any other place,
in the form of artifacts. This are pieces of equipment that you name,
and are travel from player to player, keeping tabs of the history of
the travels. Some of these artifacts are uber-powerful so if you want
the best for your characters you'll want to play online.

The game have several modes, story mode, quick battle, duel coliseum,
(where you figth for items), arcade mode where you play with preset
characters, musem with theater, where you can see your battle replays,
edit them, (change camera angles, skip sections, remove bars)
and export them to video files for showing off., voice and music players,
icon library (to attach to your friend card in multiplayer), profiles
of the characters, summons, extra details of the story, view the in-game
cinematics, etc.

You'll get a lot in this package, I cannot see how they fit all this stuff
in such a small package (the UMD is NOT full).

Now for the bad:

This game is awesome, but there are two main flaws that keep it from being
perfect.

First: The Story sucks, badly. The story is very simple, good vs bad, and
save the world. Very straightforward, no plot twists, no surprises, no
nothing. All the characters personalities reflect the one they had at
the beginning of their respective games, some are doubting, some scared,
some irresolute, and they show very little character development. Very
different of what you would expect from a Final Fantasy story. It get's
a little better when you get close to the end, but it never really takes
off. And oh-god, some of the dialog is c-h-e-e-s-y, with take me to the
other flaw.

The voice acting.

Characters that have previously spoken in other games keep their original
voices from the english dub, but some of the character get AWFUL voice
acting, terrible, truly terrible voice acting. There are some nice
exceptions, but in general the voice acting is abysmal. You get used to
it after a while, but an option to switch to japanese audio track would
have been greatly welcomed. (Note: I think that in a next version of the
game, there will be an option for japanese audio track, but I cannot confirm
this).

This flaws may sound drastic, but they don't demerit the great game that
Dissidia is, mainly because they both relate to the story mode, and this
game has far more than that, especially in multiplayer. It's a great game,
it's a lot of fun to play, and it will keep you hooked for a long time
with it's stream of reward. I have already poured more thatn a hundred hours
on it, and just when I thougth that I had almost everything the game keeps
surprising me with more. I have friends that have also bought it,and with all
multiplayer stuff, I think I can easily get some other 50 hours more of the
game.

If you like fighting games, rpg games or collecting games, get this one,
you'll be glad you did.

I've played this game a good bit since I received it as a Christmas present. I love the gameplay, it's very accessible. I love the characters they chose (for the most part). I love the nostalgia I get from seeing some old friends (Cloud, Terra, Firrion, Cecil). It's a fun game. I bought my PSP specifically to play it, and I don't regret that decision.

Problems? Early model PSP owners will have to change the settings a little bid to accommodate hardware differences. Also, the plot is a very overdone GOOD GUYS vs. BAD GUYS one, and I think most of the games these characters came from weren't that simple. About 2/10ths of the characters have to deal with family issues over the course of the game, which can get very tedious. Most importantly, I think I would have liked to see some of the supporting character NPCs that they use as menu Q and A guides in a cutscene. Also, there is absolutely no explanation as to what these characters think happened to their worlds or how they think they arrived at their location. I kind of wonder if this game might have started as a potential Kingdom Hearts title that they decided would be better kept within the Final Fantasies.

Fun game overall. Very different from the turn based strategy games. Fast action, lots of characters, and great multiplayer.
Only negative is the gameplay is very repetitive so after a few weeks you'll be a master at it, but by then you'll also start getting a bit bored. Also the "story" is incredibly terrible.

Just as the title of this review reads. If you're a old school gamer that played at least Final Fantasy (FF), FFII or FFIII or a more recent gamer that's played FFVII or FFVIII there are characters you are sure to recognize. Graphics are clearly some of the best on the PSP representing the characters and environments very well. Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core players will recognize the 3D engine used here. The soundtrack consists of remixes of popular songs from FF - FF10 as well as at least two tracks made solely for the game. In short, top notch presentation that Square is known for is well represented in this title. The intro only is an excellent example of superior production values.

Now to the meat of it all. The Gameplay. FF: Dissidia has a steep learning curve. It's not for the timid and it's not unreasonable to expect at least a few hours of hard (sometimes quick) battles with you on the receiving end before you to come to grips with the gameplay. Combat is best described as a game version of Final Fantasy: Advent Children. Meaning characters can fly, air dash, air combo, counter, air counter, run along the side of walls, smash through walls etc. with reckless abandon. To perform these feats is not difficult. Knowing WHEN to perform them is the tricky part. So if you're fighting Golbez and just can't seem to dodge his attacks, it's not the game, you just need more practice. Dissidia has a Brave Meter and a HP (Hit Point) meter for each character. Attacking with the circle button depletes your opponents brave meter while increasing your own. Attacking with the X button depletes your opponents HP meter. The idea is to build your brave meter because whatever number your brave meter is on when you do a HP attack, that's the amount of HP damage you will do. For instance, you do a combo and deplete 800 brave points from your opponent while you already have 300, your brave points will go up to 1100. If you do an HP attack after that an it connects, you'll do 1100 points worth of HP damage. If your opponent has anything less than that, then you can kill them in one blow. 0 HP equals death but equal brave points cause a "break" which leaves you open to attack, granting additional attack bonuses to the aggressor.

There are other traditional role playing elements to the game such as leveling up characters (which makes them stronger), learning new techniques, buying new weapons, items and armor and there are even achievements in the game, called "accomplishments. There's a lot of game in Dissidia so if you want a game that's going to give you your money's worth, this is it. There are other aspects to the game worth mentioning but this the review would be too long if I described them all in detail. But there is the standard Quick Match mode, Arcade Mode, Story Mode and the Wifi multiplayer mode. Special note, if you have a PS3 with adhoc party, you can play Dissidia online through your PS3 complete with lobbies, voice and text chat support.

Negatives, would be the steep learning curve and leveling up some characters can seem like a constant grind as well as trying to gain all of the accomplishments. Basic premise is good but the actual story mode's story is absurd.

Pros - total fan service for Final Fantasy fans

Great presentation and sound work

In depth gameplay

Accomplishments

AdHoc Party Support

Voice work is good overall



Cons - Steep learning curve

Certain characters should have been included (Kain from Final Fantasy IV, Black Mage from Final Fantasy etc)

Ridiculous story

Leveling up and opening all Accomplishments can be a grinding tedious affair.

I played the game for like 3 hours and this game is honestly fun and it's super fast paced.
The graphic is really good and watching/playing with FF characters is fun.

Btw there is a new version coming out in japan soon with extra stuff but english voices/text will be available so I'll import that too!

I recommend the game for FF fans, watching Terra from FF6 or cecil from FF4 in PSP graphic made me happy somehow (lol what can i say I'm a FF fan!).

I have not played most of the games represented by the characters of this one, but Dissidia is a fun, and rather challenging, "fighting" game in its own right. Final Fantasy (-ies?) VII and IX are among my all-time favorite games, and I have some very fond memories associated with X and the remake of III; I wish I had played a few of the others as a child, but regardless, the characters in Dissidia are just as endearing here as they were in their original games. Great music, original, reworked, and remixed. Worth a try at the very least!