(Not So) Mini-Review: Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Despite calling this a mini-review my look at the newly-released Dissidia: Final Fantasy runs a bit long. I don’t quite spill over into novel territory, but after typing this whole thing I wondered where the last few hours of my life went.

• Square Enix
• Dissidia: Final Fantasy

To avoid death threats from Alison “Orphan Knife Fight” Hallett, Kiala “Furble Sodomy” Kazebee and all the other Blogtown writers who you’d wrongfully expect to be as polite as Swiss kittens, I pushed the whole thing past the jump.

Wondering how Square Enix’s latest handheld thing turned out? Click the link.

• Square Enix
• The Warrior of Light

Dissidia: Final Fantasy — $40 — PSP

I’ve never been one of the scary-obsessed fans of Final Fantasy that have lined the pockets of Square Enix over the past few decades.

Yeah, I beat Final Fantasy VII and the Super Nintendo cart us gaijins know as Final Fantasy III, but you won’t find a picture of me on cosplay dot com sporting a single black wing and doing my best brooding pout. I’ve barely been paying attention to the development of Final Fantasy XIII and honestly, I put Final Fantasy XII down after only 6 hours of the meaningless political rhetoric that passes for in-game cutscenes these days.

The PSP on the other hand, has seen some really excellent entries (read: one entry, singular, Crisis Core – Final Fantasy VII) in the Final Fantasy genre. Yes, I say “genre” and not “series,” because while these games are in the “Japanese roleplaying game” style, they’ve done as much to define that phrase as any other dozen games from other development houses and the pretentious, existential angst Final Fantasy has become known for may as well include gigantic “TM” symbols after each pregnant ellipsis.

Plus, as the latest entry demonstrates, Final Fantasy is no longer a collection of roleplaying games (though each shares a near-identical thick varnish of overwrought emotion).

Dissidia: Final Fantasy ditches traditional roleplaying game elements in favor of a fighting game/real-time cinematic/zero-gravity shooter gameplay mashup. Confused yet? Watch this gameplay clip from the Japanese version of the game and see if it helps any:

It didn’t, did it? That feeling of confusion is a tenacious one. I had the same reaction after watching that footage. Then, again after playing the demo. Twice. Even after the first three fights of Dissidia’s story mode I was scratching my head wondering how exactly I’d defeated FFVI’s Kefka, FFX’s Tidus and some kid called “Onion Knight” who was neither and onion nor a … no, wait, I guess he was a knight. Nevermind.

Anyway, the game’s concept is confusing as hell. No one is going to deny that, but after you spend about an hour with it everything just starts to click. You still won’t be able to explain it to people — I’m going to give that a shot in just a second to show you just how difficult it is — but intuitively you’ll understand how to swing your sword, throw your fireball or run up the side of the nearest brick wall.

• Square Enix
• Onion Knight Vs. Cloud of Darkness

Now an attempt at explaining gameplay: Dissidia gives you two attack buttons, a jump button, what I’m calling a “move” button, and two shoulder buttons — one that locks onto either your enemy or an EX potion and another that essentially tweaks the functionality of all the other buttons.

The square button does damage to your enemies while the other damages their morale. By damaging enemy morale you add to your own. The more morale you have, the more damage you can do to your enemy’s life, forcing you to use both attack buttons throughout each battle.

While your health meter is pretty self-explanatory, your morale meter, once filled, lets you go into EX Mode. In EX Mode you do more damage and can launch into special EX Attacks. These attacks are unique for each of the game’s 24 characters and function like the Overdrive/Limit Break/whatever attacks from previous FF games, complete with ridiculous, overly long animations.

Movement in Dissidia is complex as well, but it basically boils down to running around a 3-D, multi-tiered stage while locked onto your enemy. As soon as one of you goes airborne you can use a combination of sprinting up walls, clicking your “move” button to slide along railings, and auto-dashing to turn the game into kind of a zero-gravity dogfight. Think Virtual On meets Super Smash Bros. and you’re halfway there.

Likewise, the game’s Story Mode is a mashup of two distinct gameplay styles, namely board games and roleplaying games. You maneuver your character around a large board, and every time you land on a special spot you either enter one of the game’s 3-D fights, score an item or some other random, plot-enhancing event occurs. It’s really just a fancy way to extend the gameplay present in a standard 3-D fighter, but since it gives players an excuse to visit shops, buy performance enhancing gear and learning new skills, it has tons of appeal for Final Fantasy junkies worried that all the sword fights and fireball duels might be overshadowing their beloved roleplaying game conventions.

• Square Enix
• Tidus Vs. Jecht

Okay, that pretty much covers the basics, but since Dissidia is the spawn of a long-running roleplaying game series, winning a battle earns experience points which can be used to boost your characters stats. Likewise, you can acquire new equipment, and call on FF series standards like Summons. In a game that exists almost entirely to appease fans, this is the catnip icing on a cake made of strawberry-flavored PCP.

In all there is a ton of extra content beyond just the combat. For the fighting genre, it’s an almost unprecedented level of bonus gameplay, but will still seem a bit small to those hoping for a 40-hour-long, epic, Japanese-style, medieval, fantasy, blah blah blah whatever.

Those people though, the aforementioned devotees of all things “final” and “fantasy,” have more than enough in this package to wet themselves over. To wit: 24 characters from throughout the history of the series (er, “genre” — dammit I’m losing track of the concepts I’m inventing here) with multiple costumes, unique signature attacks and spells taken from their respective games of origin.

As if that wasn’t enough to ensure the money of FF fans, Squenix threw in a ton of really fantastic minor touches. Launch into the Onion Knight’s EX Attack and you’re given a SNES-style RPG menu from which you have to select the proper attack before assaulting your foe. Final Fantasy VII protagonist Cloud has a similarly nostalgic attack, in which players are asked to mash the circle button before he draws his Ultima Weapon, and, depending on how successful your button mashing was, performs one of his Limit Break combo attacks.

If you’re the sort of person who understood all of what I just said, you should really see it in action.