The 1001 write up for Dissidia Final Fantasy does a far better job at introducing it than I ever could.
To paraphrase it, Final Fantasy combat involved characters standing in place, attacking nothing in particular, and watching numbers spring out of their opponent's heads, but Final Fantasy cutscenes or spin-off movies showed incredibly animated, over the top action where characters did the absolute opposite of sitting still.
Dissidia Final Fantasy is an attempt to merge those two things together. To let Final Fantasy characters fight it out in a way the RPG series hasn't seen before, all in a dense package on the PlayStation Portable.
It's one of the few physical PSP games I've got left, and coming to it 12 years late is better than never coming to it at all.
Fun Times
The game begins without hesitation, dumping you into the action between two Final Fantasy folks who I'm not aware of, with splash screens telling you the gist of how combat in Dissidia works - steal your opponent's bravery to boost the severity of your attacks.
Already, that sounded rather different from whatever it was that I was expecting. Not too hard, I suppose, as I didn't know what Dissidia was all about when going into it, but it wasn't long before it became apparent that we're not in an RPG here.
Apologies for the really useful screenshots, by the way. After a quick run through some of the modes on the PSP proper, I emulated it so that I could sit back and play it with a controller instead, but the action is often so quick, the camera so incapable of following along with it all, that what you get are the merest hints of gameplay, and not really demonstrative images.
The point is, hit the circle button a lot to deal attacks that don't do any damage but do sap your opponent's bravery, then launch into some proper attacks with the square button to deal damage equal to your current bravery, which then resets back down to single figures, though hopefully there won't be an enemy left standing to make that a problem for you.
There are a few modes to Dissidia, but the one I'm here for is the story mode, which is about as grand and elaborate as any other Final Fantasy game - Gods, epic showdowns, the fate of the entire world, yada yada...
Only this isn't a game that happens to be set in the Final Fantasy universe. This is a game whose Gods pull directly from that universe to stack their sides with recognizable talent from ten mainline Final Fantasy games - some more recognizable than others, but that is very much dependant on your knowledge of Final Fantasy.
It's good guys versus bad guys, and despite the Gods being of equal strength, the fact that more folks answered evil's call to arms means things aren't looking too pretty for the whole existence thing.
Luckily, after watching one of those over the top animated videos showing all these guys doing their thing for three minutes, we're told of the only way we can stop the bad guys from winning: collecting some crystals.
Ten heroes, ten crystals that need liberating from wherever it is they reside. Sounds like a plan worthy of a Final Fantasy game, rather than a fighter. I can't choose my character (yet?), so we're still going through as this dude. I still don't know where he's from. Hopefully, I've not played his RPG for this 1001 list, otherwise I'll look a right fool.
You can pick and choose which part of his story to go through, which seems a bit weird as they're all numbered from one to ten, so it should surely mean I play through them in order, right? But look at that difficulty rating. That's not 5 out of 10, that's 5 out of 5, and that's what I consider to be the first chapter. I'm going to get my arse kicked.
Dissidia isn't just a fighting game. The actual story is confined to these arenas, where you move your character towards spaces that contain fights or treasure before working your way to the end goal, a boss fight, I'd assume.
It gives you the freedom to explore how you want, but a set of Destiny Points keeps track of how efficiently you move through this space, and end of level rewards will vary based on how many of these points you have left, making this a bit of a game in itself - and that's before I mention that you can cast spells onto targets before facing them in combat, which is akin to punching your opponent on the character select screen.
When is the best time to use your skill? How long can you wait before using that healing item? Should you tackle every enemy on a level? Must you? Dissidia is coming across as a rather thinky game.
There's a lot more going on in combat than bravery and basic attacks. Collecting EX cores will enable you to launch into EX attacks, the kind of attacks where the entire sky rips open and fills with colour as the combatants are suspended in place while you hopefully input the right combination of buttons to chain together a couple of extra hits.
You can't really see what's going on in these moments because you're focused on the tiny bit of the screen that matters right now, and that's true even if you're on the receiving end of a powerful attack, where you have to bash the circle button to maintain your defence bonus, but not bash it so hard that you give yourself a penalty instead.
If you're not in the mood for EX attacks, you can leap into the air or run up walls in arenas that try to ensure everyone, no matter their combat style, can fight on a level playing field.
To tip the balance in your favour, level up your character and equip them with weapons and accessories, be they bought in the shop or found in a treasure chest. Arms and armour can boost your stats, new attacks can be learned and swapped out to the input of your choice, and you can push your chosen character into the direction that you prefer.
I have absolutely no idea what the hell that landscape picture is trying to tell me, though. I should probably have a read of the instruction manual sometime, or jab the start button to have a read through some descriptions. You know me, though. I just want to bash the hell out of whatever's in my way, brute-forcing a solution to the problem.
Frustrations
Annoyingly, that method wasn't working consistently. While you don't have many attacks to worry about, pulling them off requires timing and a good aim. My main attack (I guess, on account of how often I was pulling it off), had such a long wind up that enemies could walk around it to avoid the incoming damage.
A smart enemy would then use my entirely defenceless flank as a means of whittling away by bravery and making me less of a threat, but we're not quite into the territory of ridiculous enemies yet. We're getting there, though, so I would need to actually learn how to fight.
Attacks against both bravery and health are done by pushing the analogue nub in the right direction, toward or away from your target, while you attack. When you're locked on to them, that's no big deal, and it's probably the only way the combat system could ever work when displayed in this kind of 3D environment, but it didn't feel great to me.
I would have to get used to it, though, and would need to start learning the ins and outs of this character - and I still don't know my own name yet.
Ahead of me lay the first boss encounter.
Further Fun Times
Most of the fights in Dissidia so far have been rather quick affairs, if not in the fact that they ended in seconds, then for the fact that I was running and dashing and zipping around everywhere, but this one was a slower, cagier fight.
I guess I was actually concerned, for once, about getting the upper hand and keeping it. One lapse of concentration and you can be thrown into an invisible wall, knocked off your game and put on the back foot - only you're not, because no your opponent has very little bravery to attack again, and it's you who is (or should be) in a position to capitalise on that.
The fight took to the air for a short while before it got really flashy. I don't know how I was getting those critical - my main attack usually completely whiffs, as the windup is easy to see and avoid, but launching an EX attack sent me in the right direction, and it wasn't too long after that that enough damage was finally dealt to put Garland on his knees.
Behind him lay another board of opponents. He wasn't even the end of the first chapter. Not even close. I suppose this is where those five difficulty stars come in. I'm level three, four at most. This opponent up here is level 8. Do I try it?
Further Frustrations
I elect not to, heading to a level 3 minion of some description instead, where I get my arse handed to me. With subtly homing ranged attacks that stopped any momentum I had, this guy was buzzing around the stage, away from me faster than I go think of a plan to deal with him.
I could run up pillars and grind along rails, but those don't reduce his bravery to buff my attacks. My one ranged attack is on the slow side, but does work, provided there aren't a load of obstacles in the way for my opponent to hide behind, and it'd help if I was also close enough to close the gap between me and my target so that I could launch into some normal attacks to actually deal damage.
I don't know how I got the job done on the second attempt, but it wasn't looking good. Naturally, I thought 'well, why not face that level 8 guy and see what happens?'
About as well as expected, I suppose.
Luckily, Dissidia has an arcade mode to take a character through a run of opponents, and a straight fight mode to just duke it out with whomever you have unlocked or bought from the shop. Anything you earn in-game, however you earn it, can be spent upgrading characters for any mode you want to use them in. At least that's how it appears.
Time to hop into the arcade mode as Cloud and see how he differs from whomever I was playing as.
Flashy, but I would ultimately fall to my third opponent, the little dude from Final Fantasy IX. That's about average for me in arcade modes in fighting games, losing to the third opponent. Maybe I've just not found the right character for me yet.
Let's try some singles competition.
I'm sure that somewhere in here is a great little fighting game. I just haven't found it yet.
It doesn't matter that I had enough bravery to get the job done. It doesn't matter that I started with three times as much health as my opponent. It doesn't matter that my aim is locked onto my target. What matters is that no matter which way I flick and hold my analogue stick, I can only pull off this one utterly useless bloody Straightarrow attack which always misses. Always.
And then Tidus nabbed an EX core and launched an EX attack and that was that.
Final Word
All in all, I've played just under 2 hours of Dissidia Final Fantasy, split between PSP and emulation, and have come away from it with mixed feelings.
On the one hand, I like the interesting direction this game has taken the idea of fighting. There could have been a Final Fantasy spin-off that pitched parties against one another using the same iconic combat system, and it would have been fine. But Dissidia wasn't going to settle for fine. It wanted to be different, and not just a little, but a lot.
Mixing RPG levelling into a one-on-one arena fighter is certainly that, and were I to be the kind of person who sinks their teeth into all these customization menus to really maximise my character's abilities, and were I to be a huge fan of Final Fantasy, I could imagine myself playing this a whole lot more.
But then I remember the camera. It's not too bad but can struggle at times. And then I remember the movement. Pressing triangle to run up walls, and then losing track of where you are because the camera is having a hard time keeping up. And then I remember that my attacks are quite repetitive, often miss, and when they do hit they can be so flashy that I don't know what's going on and whether I did well or not.
To bring out a 3D arena fighter on the PlayStation Portable that brought together heroes and villains from the entire span of Final Fantasy history was ambitious, and largely successful. Consider my grumbles to be teething troubles and personal preferences, rather than game-breaking annoyances.
The presentation is nice, the soundtrack contains plenty of classics, the roster surely has something for everyone... if you're a fan of Final Fantasy, checking out Dissidia is a no-brainer, even if you don't think you'll like fighters.
And if you like fighters, this one is rather different than those you're familiar with, but might still interest you all the same, even if you don't care for the silly-looking characters.
On the whole, even though I feel defeated, I think Dissidia Final Fantasy has put on a strong showing, and I wouldn't be surprised to find myself giving it another go at some point. Just need to flip the reversible cover to its darker side to remind me how hopeless the task of saving the world will be.
Fun Facts
The initial idea was for Dissidia to be a Kingdom Hearts spin-off, with Disney characters smacking the hell out of each other, and a handful of Final Fantasy characters. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have wanted to touch that game with a barge pole.
Dissidia Final Fantasy, developed by Square Enix, first released in 2009.
Version played: PlayStation Portable, 2009, also via emulation.