Taken from Gamefaqs
Credits to Jahkeemyork
"Is this the Final Fantasy we Envisioned?"
So this is Square's response to Final Fantasy's 20th Anniversary, a Final Fantasy Styled Smash Brothers Brawl with less characters, no items and can't do four player on. This is what would first come to anyone's mind when they first saw the trailers to it. However this game is nothing like Smash Brothers Brawl and definitely will not dissapoint you. The question is though, is this game worth your money? The answer is in this review.
Plot:
This is one thing I can't really give a rating for considering I can't really understand the entire story in this game. However I can give a synopsis on it. Chaos and Cosmos are two entities at war with each other. The Main Protagonist and Atagonists of the Protagonists are summoned to fight this war for them. In order for the Heroes to get back to their world, they need to collect the "Crystal" that represents them. I'm not sure what the Villains are after, yet. However the plot already is an interest for me, and for anyone else that have played the Final Fantasy games. I'll have to add more detail to this after translations and/or the US version comes out, this might also change the final score.
Gameplay:
Dissidia's gameplay from trailers and just videos alone can confuse anyone, especially first timers to this game however here's the easy breakdown. The point of this game is to get your opponents HP down to Zero. However the only way you can do that is to attack them with BP attacks (The Circle button) to raise your Brave Points, which is the only way to inflict any damage at all to their HP. Once you have enough Brave Points you can do a damaging HP attack (Square button) which if it connects will knock your opponent down by the amount of BP you had.
The first reaction to this would be to "Just spam BP attacks and then finish them off with an HP" However the game is not as simple as that. First let's start with the actual content the gameplay offers. Players can dodge attacks, using the R button with a directional push. The moment they are in that roll motion or air spin they are completley invunerable to any attack. However they are left slightly open when the dodging animation stops. This sounds like a hindrance however it does add fairness to the game as it's your own fault if you roll right into your opponent only asking to be knocked down for a beating.
The second is the Guarding which is way more useful tool then Dodging when it comes to dealing with BP attacks. You tap the R button to Guard, however the Guard only lasts for a short two seconds. If you time this right your opponent will be left wide open for a short period of time allowing you to get a good combo off of him. If your opponent is on to you the moment you drop the guard you'll be opened to having pain thrown at you. Once again making this a rather fair fighting game still.
BP attacks are mostly combos done by pressing the circle button, or a direction + the circle button. These attacks can cause up to 400-500 (Depends on your character's level and equipment) BP points added to you. For each BP point you earn from attacking your opponent looses theirs. So it's best to always be prepared for standard attacks. The HP attacks when connected to your opponent trade in your BP points to subtract from their HP points. BP attacks are always harder to strike with unless chaining them with a combo and there are many reasons for that. First of all, the character says a line or speaks right before pulling it off, and the text for the attack pops up on the screen letting both players know a BP attack is going to happen. However all is not lost if you miss, you still keep your BP and you can use it again. If you do strike and your BP drops to Zero just wait a while and your BP should rise right back up to whatever your character's default BP is which is once again depending on your stats. However get attacked while your at zero, or get reduced to zero and you get something that's known as "Break."
Break is a new gameplay element added into Dissidia to make the game more hectic then other games. What happens is that your defense for HP attacks are the same however if your struck against something along the lines of a Wall, or ground you will receive nearly 5x as much damage as you'd normally do. However you can't die from hitting a wall so your HP might just drop down to one.
Ex Bursts is another addition to this game, that can play like the first Bloody Roar's beast mode, only a bit more simple and at the same time more advanced. When you attack your opponent there are little blue orbs that will float around your character. The goal mainly for this is to grab as many as those little orbs as you can to fill your Ex Guage, there are also Ex Orbs that appear randomly on the map which can only be found by either locking onto that instead of your opponent or following your blue ex mini orbs that are getting sucked into this main Ex Orb. Once you have enough you can enter the Ex Mode form which grants your character special abilities but on top of that the Ex Burst attack which is a very deadly attack that requires a different special input for each character depending on what Final Fantasy game they are from. The Ex Burst does big damage to your BP and then finishes it all off with an HP attack. Ex Bursts are initiated by hitting the opponent with an HP attack while in EX Mode. So the only way to avoid getting hurt is just to play dodge with them until their gauge drops back down to Zero.
If the action is too fast for you don't worry, Square-ENix knows there are RPG fans out there so you have the option to turn it from an action game, into an RPG by adding a command menu onto the screen where you just choose your option and press X.
I don't want to get too far into the characters, however each character plays very differently from the other causing you to want to use a certain strategy with each one. One of the most unique characters is Exdeath due to being more of a counter kind of character then a brawler.
The final thing I want to get into is Summons, there are over 40 different summons in the game and what they do is give you special BP conditions or damages your opponents BP. Some do nothing but just hide both of your BPs while others copy. You can only have one summon on your character. Mix all this together and you have one major fighting game with gameplay that requires a thought process of a Final Fantasy boss battle.
P.S.:The English Version of this game has been out for quite awhile incase some people didn know.
Content:
Next we go to the Content of the game, and I have no idea where to start from but here's a run down on each of them.
1. Story Mode
Story Mode, which just as it sounds is a Mode to help progress your character, learn about them, level up, obtain items summons and more. The Story Mode takes place to what's best to describe a board game. The point is to move your character from Point A, to Point B by any means. The game makes it easy for you at first by giving you a tutorial of the run down on how this works in the Prologue. However even the Board Game requires strategy, you have a set amount of DP (Destiny Points) which don't effect the story at all but effects the rewards you reap. Now you are looking at a map with 4 enemies, 3 treasure chests and you only have 4 turns. How are you suppose to do this? Well this is where planning comes in. Certain enemies have DP chances which give you special conditions in order to raise your DP by 1 point. Though that alone isn't enough which is where chaining comes in. This is where you position yourself between two enemies and that allows you to take them both on at once without losing another DP. If they both have DP points then that means you can leave with 2 extra moves on your set which will allow you to reap the rewards.
However Story Mode does come with it's quirks. As you begin to beat it with each Final Fantasy Hero (as the villains have no Story Mode) you begin to find out that this is all a chore for you. All the enemies start off very weak and simple no matter who you choose and get harder near the end. Personally I see this as a problem because it just feels like you're doing the same thing over and over again with a different character. They try to mix things around like Onion Knight you don't know where the enemies are, and Tidus gives you way more enemies then normally however it's the exact same feel. There are a few extra modes after you beat all the Heroes that make it worth it, however nothing more then Inward Chaos mode in which you can finally put what you've learned to the test in really hard battles. However you need to be at least Level 98 or higher if you even want to survive it.
The other problem is that the Boards make you have to return if you want to unlock everything by special gold blocks that can only be cleared by getting the star for that part which requires 1000 points to unlock all four. So it becomes more of a chore.
2. Duel Colliseum
This is what you get when you're not strong enough for Inward Chaos, what this mode does is allow you to select 4 options depending on your level. From there you battle it out in an endless brawl to raise your points up, level up and earn new items. You only have 3 chances to lose, unless you pick up a "Job Card" which grants you special conditions. Making this a tournament..with strategies and many rewards.
3. PP Store
Now this is what I'm talking about, a store in the game with actual worthwhile stuff. Although I can't understand all of it, you can buy characters (The villains and a few secret characters), alternate costumes, music CPU level capping and much more. This store will take a while to get as much points as you can to buy everything you could ask for.
4. Vs Mode
There are two versus mode, one for playing against CPU, which is the basic set yourself up against a computer, set their difficulty, level, and Behaviour. Choose a map, and then choose the music you want with it. There you battle it out, however the CPU's A.I becomes a problem as they are always either too easy, or so hard that the fun's taken out as you play a camping strategy to beat them. If you want a fun fight that doesn't include running CPU's and blocking crazy ones go for a level 7 behaviour.
The second mode is Adhoc matches where basically you can play online against other players, and also have "ghosts" which are specific A.I controlled CPU's following a specific pattern of the one it was chosen to record. Square-Enix has also released a few set of codes to pit you against ghosts they've made in order to unlock special items. Such as a snowboard that's held by a rough level 45 Cloud, ect, ect.
5. Museum Mode
This is where the Story Comes together, and a place you'll visit more frequently then other games. There are the normal Museum things in typical games such as look at characters, and summons to learn about them. Read Cosmos and Chaos reports look at icons you obtained and stats. However there are two you will be visiting most frequently. First is their media center where besides listening to music and hearing voice you can view every single cutscene. Not only that these cutscenes all appear to be in Chronological order of the events of Dissidia. So when you pick up the english copy of the game, unless you understand Japanese this is going to be your first step after you unlock every single (Over 200) cutscenes.
The second thing you'll be going to often is Replay Mode which works kind of like Halo 3's only much better. You have the option to turn off status, and then control the camera to your liking. There are also a lot of preset angles to fit the style of recording you want and if you have enough skill you can create one rivaling that of Advent Children's gameplay. There are a few flaws I've noticed though. The first being that you can't choose the camera to cut at certain ones and then combine angles at other points. It chooses which ones to combine and cut by itself. This can cost frustration and lead to going through angles that don't show either character. The other flaw is that there will be some points where the camera will get stuck, mainly FF3's Gimmick version stage where when it turns into a small box. Your camera will sometimes be behind the game wall and can't zoom in at all to the battle, and you'll have to just restart the replay to that point and fix it.
Then comes the best option AVI Export, that's right the first PSP game, that I've played anyways that allows you to Export your Replay into a format that you can soon encode and upload to Youtube or any other streaming site for everyone to view. This is the best option I've seen any game offer.
Sound:
There is no problem with the sound, at all I play with really good sound muffling headphones on and they added perfect detail to every sound. Giving nostalgic sounds depending on that Final Fantasy Character, and you can hear how far and which direction your enemy is in making it even more useful. In replay mode the sound density and direction changes as well depending on where the camera is.
The music features 1-2 remixed songs from each Final Fantasy, all remixed to fit fighting in Dissidia in which succeeds. There are also non-remixed songs used in the game to keep nostalgic feel to the game. However the two secret characters from their respected Final Fantasy games have no remixed songs, or stage. So it's unfortunate but nothing that creates a problem in the game at all.
Graphics:
The Graphics are still something you would expect from Square-Enix, eye catching, beautiful and even better looking then Crisis Core. Many people say this looks like a PS2 game, or better then a PS2 game. I have to disagree there to a point. The game looks like one of the middle ages of PS2 games however it's more like an era between the PS2 and the PS1's capabilities. The stages are huge and very destructable, there are gimmicks in each stage that you can tun on and off. However there are also commands you can do in the stage, much like Kingdom Hearts reaction commands just not as cheap.
Customization:
This is the last thing I want to bring up, that I nearly forgot to mention. Final Fantasy Dissidia features a major customization rivaling that of a standard Final Fantasy RPG. However the customization is really just like Kingdom Hearts. You can customize which button to do which move, and learn new moves as you level up. You can also add certain abilities to characters which take up (AP) points, just like in Kingdom Hearts. You can't grab every single ability because you don't have enough AP to do so. You can also change your equipment however certain equipment you can't attach at all while others require you to be at a certain level. That's all I can really say about the customization due to the fact that english will be needed to fully go into detail of it.
Overall:
This is not one of the best fighting games out there, but it's definitely one of the best games I've played on the PSP, and is solid Fighter with many RPG elements in there. Every online battle you face may play the same but there will always be different equipment, move lists, and summons that will change the battle around and cause you to change your strategy. Same with CPU's. This is also the first Fighting Game to have so many options and content in it. Is this game worth a buy, definitely. However only in English because unlike most fighting games this one has so much content and plot you will have to understand it's language to truly enjoy it.
The Good:
Solid Fighter with many RPG Elements
Story Mode that has over 200 Cutscenes
Customization mode rivaling that of an RPG
Extra Modes to keep you busy after beating the Main Story
22 Characters which all fight differently.
Museum is worth visiting way more then once
Replay Mode
Nostaligic Music for old time, and new time gamers.
The Bad:
Story Mode's board can feel like a chore after a while.
A.I can become unfairly hard ruining an epic experience with camping.
Replay Mode has limits that are uneeded.
Story Mode cutscenes are not in any real set order, (However this is fixed with Museum Mode's cutscene viewer)
Final Score: 9/10
