Final Fantasy: Dissidia NT Closed Beta Discussion

So this is just a thread to see what people think of the new form of Dissidia if they are able to get in the closed beta.

Personally it's a mixed batch for me. The production values are way up and the game looks gorgeous. Little details down to every character having unique dialogue for the summon they use is pretty nice, though I fear we may lose match-up specific dialogue in it's place.

However as beautiful as it looks parts of it feel very different. Only having one HP attack seems a real shake up from before and it might kill a lot of the fun of it for me. There's some characters I don't know how they'll even function with one HP attack.

Losing EX Modes and EX bursts is also pretty disappointing as I like flashy moves and power-up modes in fighting games. Sure some Ex skills function as EX modes (Terra still goes Trance after all) but for some people I'm not sure it's really anything special at all. Tidus and Lightning just get an extra brave attack as their EX skill.

The beta is also pretty horrible in showing movesets. None of the options show you what the character's 'unique' EX skill does nor what any of their regular bravery attacks do which can make it tricky to dive in with a character.

Most of all I hope there's still an RPG-style progression system and room to customise characters well from the old games. I might lose interest in it fast otherwise when the final game comes out.

I've heard it's a pretty different beast from the PSP games, and that it's more like the Gundam Versus games than Dissidia proper, which is a huge bummer for me. Also heard there's no equipment or anything.

:(

I played it for 3 days and I think it's kinda bad.

A little background: FF fan, played Dissidia for about 30 hours, own 012: Duodecim but haven't touched it.

The good:

• Nice to see all these characters rendered in HD.
• Zidane and Onion Knight are fun to play as and made me want to play their respective games.
• Haven't played as Terra but they must've taken the most time with her 'cause that's a great looking character model.
• Console controller feels a lot better than playing with the PSP disc nob.
• The deliberate attack movement can be fun to figure out and time.

The bad:

• The netcode seems to be GARBAGE. I don't have the best internet but shouldn't have problems playing online like I have with this game.
• I don't think there enough to the combat for a meaningful competitive game.
• Most of the characters have weird butterfaces with an off putting sheen on them and they just look not quite right.
• It's a hassle to try out different characters. There is no training mode so you can play against bots but then you gotta quit out of the game and go through that again just to mess with another character.
• The levels. They have to make it just big open spaces 'cause of the multiplayer nature of the game but in the PSP game, some of the levels had some enclosed spaces you can run on walls and stuff on and use the geometry to your advantage but that's basically gone.
• No rankings or any way to measure skill levels. Been getting matched with complete noobs or folks way too good.

Conclusion:

• The core gameplay isn't interesting enough to hold people for that long and I don't know what they can add around the edges to sweeten the pot. Netcode has to be fixed or the game isn't even worth touching. I'm guessing this game is going to tank hard

If you want to try out this game for a few days, here is an extra code D7L6-EFNC-L8JF [CLAIMED], the beta ends 9/3 (NA only). Please just let people know you used it.

Hrm I hadn't even considered the stages...they really were quite interesting in the PSP games.

I loved Doomtrain (as the Emperor), the Rift and the Crystal world stage in Dissidia.

I think some of the stages I've seen have had some obstacles on the ground but they don't seem AS varied.

@liquiddragon: I used the code, figure I'll give it a go myself. Thanks!

@theht: Cool. Oh, another bad thing I experienced with this beta was trying to redeem it. If the code doesn't work, keep trying or try it another time. They probably have it panned out by now but I could not get it to work for like a day when it first opened.

edit: Good, you already used it.

Not big on multiplayer games in general which really hurts my interest for this. Tried the beta for a bit, the 3 on 3 is too chaotic for my taste and it feels slow compared to the PSP games. I really just enjoyed the previous games mainly for the fanservice anyway. Between this and DB Fighterz, I'll certainly get a kick out of watching others play but have little interest in actually playing myself.

One nitpicky thing that really bother me is when you select a character, there is an animation and their mouths move to say something but nothing comes out, just seems bizarre and unfinished.

I do like that they have different voices reading the names of the companies and the game when you launch it.

I didn't get into the beta but I was expecting this to be just an HD update of the older games. It sounds like it took out a bunch of the stuff that kept me playing the original, so my interest level has plummeted.

That UI is still fucking disgusting. Is there really that much going on in the game that it needs 50% of the screen dedicated to all those bars and numbers?

I don't have any major problems with this game. I really can't speak to the netcode because I live in the US and only got one match where everything went to shit right out of the gate. The fighting seems solid and each character has a gimmick that makes them unique (Cloud has charge attacks but can cancel the charge by dodging, Squall can deal more damage with his attacks by pressing the attack button at the right moment, Warrior of Light is focused on protecting teammates). My only problem with the game lies in the summons. Your team collectively votes on a summon to use but the summon is almost always going to be Shiva or Ifrit if you aren't playing with a friend because of the passive bonuses both grant makes them shine far and above the rest of the choices. Shiva usually wins out because her active can freeze players. It's a fun game to play but I'll be surprised if the community it gathers sticks around long-term with it.

Tried a bit tonight, definitely feels like a mishmash of Dissidia gameplay with the team-based Versus stuff.

The main gameplay schtick of Dissidia is here, and still pretty enjoyable (building up/losing attack damage before executing an HP attack), but it feels pretty rough. The PSP games were spry and snappy, but combat here feels sluggish and a bit awkward. I'd blame that on it being a beta, but I've heard tell that this is basically what the arcade version was/is, and that the beta's basically for netcode stuff and not, you know, for fundamental shit like game feel.

Lack of items is something I've no problem losing, as fun as that was to mess around with; so long as I can customize my moveset it's all good. Or at least it would be if the game felt more responsive and the combat more fast-paced. Besides that core gameplay feeling off, I'm also not really excited about the 3v3 and greater emphasis on summoning.

Stylistically it's not nearly as interesting as the PSP games, which have an almost cartoony look to it. Here some of the characters almost look like old FMV renders (which woulda been fuckin rad if they went down that road), but overall it looks very... flat. These characters all, naturally, have very different looks going on, but the good thing about the PSP games is they also had their own Dissidia style that served to sort of unify all the disparate characters and their respective worlds. Here things tend to stick out as visually odd a lot more I've found, which is a vibe I got when I first saw footage of this thing, so yeah, nothing new there I guess.

All-in-all it's almost like a weird Dissidia off-shoot, rather than another proper Dissidia game.

It's all good though. I still got access to PSP Dissidia (and Duodecim if I ever feel like playing Kain; never much cared for assists though), so if I wanna play that still I can. Since 2008 though, the thought of a console Dissidia game was always the thing I wanted from the series. Ah well. I'll mess around with it a bit more to see if I warm to it at all.

@liquiddragon said:

It is a Beta, it is, quite literally, unfinished.

Unfortunately the 3v3 of it makes it of no interest to me, wish it was just 1v1 like DBFz as I love the way it looks.

@saispag: Na dude, the thing I'm talking about is something that, if it wasn't in the arcades already, is just missing and won't be there. There are voices in every other spot where there should be.

After multiple days of not being able to get into any matches, I finally get into some, only for them to lag out after at most a minute. Checked everything I could think of to make sure it's not a problem on my end, and not found anything, so I'm assuming the net code is real bad. I get that it's a test, but, it's been unplayable outside of the practice mode for me.

As for the game itself, it seems to have taken out most if not all of the stuff I liked about the PSP games. I'm hoping that it's just the lack of playing it that's giving that impression, but man, this has bummed me out no end.