What is this? PSP Coverage? Well when it bears the name of Final Fantasy it deserves to be covered I say. After a few hours of high-flying acrobatics, flashy attacks, beautiful CG, and a corny story I have my quick review of Final Fantasy Dissidia.
Time Played: 4 hours
The game is intended to be a fighting game, but it seems to be fighting with itself. There are 3 basic elements that make up Dissidia: Fighting, RPG-like development, and the story. It seems the dev team battled over what to place the most importance on that in the end everything was just average.
First and foremost there is the fighting. You can choose from 10 Heroes on the Cosmos (good) side from Warrior of Light (FF1) to Tidus (FF10) and all the main heroes in-between, one from each FF. And of course composing the Chaos side of things are their arch-enemies. You can only originally play as the 10 heroes but can purchase the 10 villains to become playable as you progress through the game’s story mode. There are also 2 secret characters that become available after progressing through much of the game’s story mode, one for FFXI and one from FFXII.
Next up comes the story. To me it comes off very Kingdom Hearts-esque, but sadly without being as good as Kingdom Hearts, most likely due to the fact there are no original characters here to tie all the stories together. Instead Cosmos summons the 10 Heroes to fight Chaos and his 10 summoned villains, and you must bring peace and harmony back to the universe. Of course the only way to do this is by playing through each of the 10 hero’s stories and reclaiming their crystal to give Cosmos her powers. It’s all a bit cheesy, and gets a bit cheesier as you play through the characters and get their stories as well. Now I only played through as Cecil, Cloud, and Firion, but I doubt the story development is much better for any other characters.
Lastly comes the development for each character. As you battle you gain experience points and level up just like in every Final Fantasy. As you level up your stats increase and you learn new abilities and attacks. For story mode you must end up playing as each of the 10 heroes, which is a good thing as you will learn who you are most comfortable playing with. Because as the game progress you eventually unlock the final story/world and must do battle with the final boss who is level 110, your max level is 100 by the way. Now in the story maps you see each encounter and every action you take uses destiny points, The more destiny points you finish a map with the better the reward at the end of the stage. Also you’ll find treasure chests strewn about the maps which contain equipment for your fighters, some equipment is universal and you can use it on any of the 10 heroes, other equipment is character specific such as Cecil’s dark armor set.
In the end, I do appreciate the fact that it is broken into 10 different stories, and yes you end up unlocking more stories from their until you make it to the final one. Since the game is on PSP it does lend itself better to just shorts spurts of playtime. Complete a story and call it a day, otherwise the game becomes trite quickly. So if you don’t mind voice acting ruining your favorite childhood memories of the FF games and perhaps finding out you were wrong in pronouncing their names as well, Dissidia is a good game and still retains that Square-Enix polish that makes you want to keep playing.
