Dissidia - The new crack
I have never thought of owning a Playstation Portable. I've never been much of a handheld gamer, with my busy schedule, college, family, friends, girl friend, etc. The list goes on.
And then I heard about Dissidia: Final Fantasy, and my thoughts about handhelds swiftly changed.
Dear Friends, I have been a Final Fantasy fan since I played Final Fantasy IV (known as FFII in the US at the time) back when I was nine, at a friend's house, going through games he was ready to pack up and sell in his family's yearly yard sale. Since that fateful day, I have been hooked, so logically my opinion is biased, right?
No, it isn't. Final Fantasy VII is not the greatest game on earth, or even in my top 3 for the series. I feel the series has been getting stale ever since six (although I will freely admit that I was in love with Celes, and there was never a character that did it for me like she did, sorry Aerith fans).
With those two issues in mind, and setting aside my own personal bias and dissatisfaction with the series, I want you to know that this, Friends, is how a handheld game should be.
Dissidia breaks the mold of traditional Final Fantasy games in a host of new ways, the least of which being that it isn't really an RPG. It's more of a fighter; however, unlike Tekken or Soul Calibur, the game takes a turn towards Arcadey-Academy (I'm going to have to trademark that after this review) by introducing us with a simple control scheme and gigantic arenas.
The rest of the game adheres to the rules of traditional fighters, in that there are two combatants, each with X amount of health, and the match is won when one combatant drains his or her opponent's health down to zero. The player does this by using the O button to perform "brave attacks" to drain a shared pool of strength, dubbed "brave," and when you have enough brave you pull off an actual HP attack using the square button. As the battle wears on, you can grab EX orbs and EX cores to go into EX mode, which make you even stronger and gives you the chance to do a special, flashy uber-attack (similar to a limit break) if you land a successful HP move. Simple, right? Real "pointy end goes into the other man" kind of thing?
And at first, it is. But then the game remembers that it's a Final Fantasy game and throws in stats that raise when you gain levels by defeating opponents. This also unlocks more moves that you can add to your repertoire, which is about as customizable as the rest of the game (meaning, very) and gives you access to new weapons and armor. Add to this the fact that each character can be decked out in a ton of accessories that you can unlock, and the game gives you many ways to make your favorite characters your own.
But that's not the end of it. When you start a new game, you enter a mandatory tutorial. Anyone who ever played Kingdom Hearts probably loathes these damnable sections by now, but Dissidia thankfully keeps it brief, giving you all the info you need to start kicking ass in no time, not to mention giving a nice introduction to the story. From there, you have 10 characters already unlocked - the Warriors of Cosmos, each being the main character from Final Fantasy 1-10 - that you can play through the story mode with. Each character has their own story, and you need to play them all to get the full deal, which isn't much of a hassle seeing as how each story can be bested in about an hour even if you suck at this type of thing.
You also have quick battle, which is exactly as it sounds: you take your customized dudes from story mode and duke it out with a computer AI with randomly generated equipment. However, even these battles can be customized, with you choosing the stage to play on, the level of the CPU, the strength, the play type (valiant, extreme, etc), and, later on down the road, the ruleset by which you play with.
As you progress, you unlock additions to the story mode - which sort of help even things out as far as epilogues go - as well as Arcade, a game mode where you use preset characters and battle for practice and PP. PP is the sort of currency in the game, used to unlock more characters, new variations on stages, and extra stuff like voice bytes from the different characters and icons from each of the main games in the series up to XII.
This is where Dissidia staggers, if only for a bit. There is simply too much content in this game. I have over 100 hours in this game thus far, have completed all of the story modes (I think), and unlocked at least a couple hundred items, and I feel I haven't even scratched the surface. It's daunting, but not in the bad way. It does, however, feel as though the developers focused so much in putting in tons of content in this game, and pushed some things that they really should have worked on longer to the side. Being a Final Fantasy game, one expects an epic of high quality from the story, but it really failed to grab me when it should have. Every character feels melodramatic, and are constantly revisiting old demons from their own respective games. Terra is afraid of her own shadow, Cloud's a big pussy who can't move on, Cecil's kind of stupid in that sort of gullible fairy-tale knight kind of way, and Tidus can't get past his stupid father issues. These are certainly good grounds to lay the foundation of character development on, but the developer only has about 30 minutes to an hour worth of story mode time for each character, which makes their resolutions (if any) feel forced and plastic.
Not to mention some of the items have absolutely no value at all. I have two pieces of armor that have the exact stats, and the only substantial difference between the two is if you use them with their respective sets, and even then it's a minor difference. Don't get me wrong, the amount of items in this game is great, and the story is respectful, if a bit melodramatic. It just feels like they could have done more with the story, and tweaked the items' effects a bit before release.
Online play, though, is where Dissidia falls on it's face (although it has the courage to stand back up and keep at it). I have played against three other people, and we all encountered a pretty heavy amount of lag in our sessions. It happened only in certain stages, but was noticeable, and made one of the game's characters - Jecht, the father of Tidus and one of my main dudes - nearly unplayable. However, given the fact that the game was juggling our individual stats, our items, our summons, and the level's own crazy-ass variables, it's understandable, if a little disappointing. However, when we removed the aforementioned items, summons, etc., we found online to be just as enjoyable - if not more so - than single player. And the fact that you can exchange friend cards to battle "ghosts" of your friend's, completely mimicking their own fighting styles, and gain special rewards from these matches made it even more addictive.
On the audio-visual side of things, Dissidia is a treat. On the handheld the models come across exquisitely detailed, and the environments all exhibit a scale that makes the world feel big and you feel small, with each stage having their own special effects and breakable landscapes. The in game cutscenes are nice (although it's awkward when the characters speak due to lip-syncing being a bit off-base), and the pre-rendered and CGI scenes are truly sights to see on the PSP. The bevy of tracks included with the game bring back fond memories and come through nice and clean, with some being completely remastered - and thankfully so! - from their original games. And while some of the characters' voices are annoying, the majority of the cast do admireable jobs portraying their respective characters (although Kefka definitely needs to shut up).
So there you have it. On consoles, Dissidia wouldn't of worked, due to an overly simple control scheme and dumbed down gameplay mechanics, but as a handheld it's near perfect for long and short stretches of playtime. If you own a PSP, well, you should have this game.
