Dissidia: Final Fantasy Review – The Infinite Illusion

When Square Enix announced Kingdom Hearts in 2001, people were skeptical.  Nobody knew what to expect out of a crossover between Square and Disney.  Flash back to 2007, when the announcement of Dissidia drew a similar response.  Many gamers remembered Squaresoft’s original PS1 fighter, Ehrgeiz, which became known as “that crappy Final Fantasy fighting game” despite merely featuring a few FF cameos, and were immediately repulsed.  From day one, the ball was in Square’s court to ensure that gamers wouldn’t reject Dissidia the same way they had Ehrgeiz.  A careful marketing campaign later, and the game released to blockbuster sales in Japan last December, though in honesty Square likely could’ve sold the game to people with nothing but a single billboard in Tokyo that said “You can play as Sephiroth” and nothing else.  Now, we cut to this week, where the game has been released in the US, and the real question is, has Square simply slapped together a meaningless, no-thought blob of fanservice nonsense, or could we have a worthy Final Fantasy successor to Super Smash Bros.?  Read on and find out.

A New Look At An Old World

It would appear that from the beginning, Square Enix knew that Dissidia would not be able to compete on a dedicated gameplay level with other, longer-standing fighting franchises like Street Fighter, Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Guilty Gear.  Because of this, they went back to the drawing board to create an entirely new type of fighter, unrestrained by the limitations of the genre.  Referred to not as a fighting game but instead a “Dramatic Progressive Action” game by Square Enix, the game has less in common with a traditional fighter and more to do with a madcap 3D party game like Power Stone, or perhaps the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi series.

Dissidia’s one-on-one battles are conducted in a fully explorable 3D field, full of walls to climb, platforms to jump off of, and objects to destroy.  Your objective, like in any other game, is to reduce your opponent’s HP to 0 without being killed yourself; but this is also where the system changes the most.  For those who haven’t followed my series of Character Profiles, Dissidia‘s combat is built on the Bravery system; the large number above the characters’ health bars is their Bravery stat, not their HP.  Bravery is essentially a measure of your attack power at any point in the match; your normal attacks will charge up your Bravery while leeching your opponent’s, while critical hits, destroying the environment, and special skills can help boost it further.  When either player is hit when their Bravery is at 0, they enter a state of Bravery Break, which gives the attacking player a large boost and temporarily weakens the Broken player until their Bravery has time to recharge.  As you build up your Bravery, you can use your special attacks on your opponents; connecting with one of these attacks will consume your Bravery stat and channel it into HP damage.  However, you can’t simply spam special attacks and hope to win – as soon as you connect with a special attack, your Bravery gauge will bottom out to 0, rendering you critically vulnerable to a counterattack and a Brave Break.

When it comes down to it, battles in Dissidia boil down to a flashy, over-the-top game of tug of war, with various Final Fantasy characters slashing, dodging, hurling spells, and slamming each other into the environment with reckless abandon.  It’s fun to watch and fun to play, but is it simple fanservice or is there some depth to be gleaned out of the flurry of Limit Breaks, Blitzballs, and Thundagas?

Blending RPG and Fighting

Dissidia features a cast of 22 playable characters culled from the core Final Fantasy series; this includes series veterans and “duh” inclusions like Cloud and Sephiroth, as well as some of the more obscure heroes and villains like Emperor Palamecia from Final Fantasy II and the Onion Knight from Final Fantasy III.  Even my personal favorite villain of all time, Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI makes an appearance.  Each character makes use of their own personal special attacks and signature weapons, with each character offering a vastly different playstyle.  Squall Leonheart from FFVIII specializes in remaining close to his opponent and knocking them into violent, multi-hit combo chains with his Gunblade, while Kefka relies upon tricking his opponents with wacky, out-of-control magic spells that move in strange directions and match his psychotic personality.  Each character’s moveset is tailored well to their personality, their style, and their game’s general aesthetic, making learning a new character an unique experience each time.  Expect to spend a while trying each character out before you choose the one that’s right for you.

What’s truly intriguing about Dissidia, though, is the way in which it incorporates RPG elements into the battle system, and not in just a superficial “you get a new weapon that makes your attacks slightly stronger” manner; the RPG elements are Dissidia. During every battle, you’ll be gaining EXP, Gil, and AP just like any Final Fantasy game, powering up your characters with new weapons, armor, accessories, special attacks and passive skills.  Alongside the obvious levelling and progression systems, Dissidia also incorporates several features that expand the RPG elements even further; the Battlegen system allows you to create special items and crafting components simply by fulfilling specific conditions in battle, EX Burst super moves lend a considerable amount of flash to finish off battles, while equippable Summonstones introduce unpredictable elements and special effects, making everything even more chaotic.  You can even create your own weapons and armor pieces to help power your characters up even further.  Needless to say, there’s a huge difference between a Cloud at level 1 and a Cloud at level 100.

Style Over Story

And of course, just like most fighting games in the modern era, as well as all RPGs, Dissidia has a story mode; quite a large story mode, in fact.  Here’s the gist of Dissidia‘s plot; for ages, a war has been fought between two cardinal deities, Cosmos (representing order) and Chaos (representing discord), and the two gods have summoned heroes and powerful beings from across the multiverse to serve as their warriors and end the conflict forever.  Essentially, it’s sort of a Final Fantasy version of the Norse Ragnarok.  When you first start the game, you are given access to ten story modes, one for each of the game’s playable heroes.  These story modes involve you moving your hero around a board-game styled “world map” (complete with game-specific world map music), engaging enemies, watching cutscenes, and finding treasure.  While this mode initially seems a bit silly, it’s a nice way to ease players into each character, introducing them to progressively stronger enemies as they learn new attacks and unlock more powerful equipment.  It even offers hidden superboss enemies and treasures for players daring enough to replay each story.  Where the story mode suffers, ironically, is the story itself.

Each character’s story features the selected hero (and often a few of his or her friends) moving through the game world, interacting with each other and the villains, and eventually gaining the confidence to fight before defeating their villain and gaining a Crystal.  While each story mode features unique events and cutscenes tailored toward the selected hero, there really isn’t very much deviation from form throughout the 10 stories, and playing through them all can start to feel a bit repetitive.  Truth be told, the biggest flaw in the story mode is a lack of gravitas; with the exception of a few scenes, the story simply doesn’t have the typical Final Fantasy level of emotional involvement.  You never fear that the characters might fail, there are few betrayals or truly shocking moments, and the story essentially plays out the same almost every time.  This changes slightly, however, when you unlock Shade Impulse, the final story chapter.  This mode is considerably more difficult than the original story mode, and features a more linear plot that allows you to use any character you want.  Because the game is done essentially replaying the conflicts between the heroes and villains from the first 10 games, the story in Shade Impulse is a bit more intriguing, focusing more on the villains and the conflict between Cosmos and Chaos.  Because it’s not retreading already-covered ground, Shade Impulse at least offers an unique series of cutscenes, and its unlockable Cosmos and Chaos Reports hint at a potential sequel with a far more complex story.  A few more story modes are unlocked after completing Shade Impulse as well, though their importance to the overall storyline is understated at best.

All in all, the story mode is at least amusing on a superficial level, though it won’t push the boundaries of storytelling by any means; before Shade Impulse, it’s essentially a long series of fanservice scenes meant to show off the characters and their motivations to the fans, while simultaneously replaying their key emotional developments and personality traits to players who might have missed specific entries in the series.  However, there are several scenes that a diehard Final Fantasy fan will grin when they see, though I won’t go into them so as to avoid spoilers.

A Love Letter 20 Years in the Making

Existing as Square Enix’s celebration of the Final Fantasy series’ 20th anniversary, Dissidia is one massive block of fanservice.  While the game would’ve simply sold as a barebones fighter with Cloud and Sephiroth in it, every single aspect of the game has been built for Final Fantasy fans, from the Chocobo theme that plays during the game’s optional disc install to the myriad of series staple items and weapons; even the in-game tutorial menus are given by cameo appearances from past Final Fantasy characters, personality traits and quirks intact.  Even the EX Burst super moves work identically to their original games; expect to be pulling the R button to simulate Squall’s Gunblade triggers, or timing a quick O button press to help Tidus boot a Blitzball into his opponent’s face.  Virtually every voice actor from the past Final Fantasy games has returned to voice their characters as well, though one or two of the new actors for previously unvoiced characters might sound a bit out of place.

As I’ve said multiple times before, Dissidia could’ve very easily have ended up a quick, cheap crossover game thrown together to gain a few extra Christmas sales out of a public starved for a new Final Fantasy game.  However, the sheer amount of content jammed onto the UMD is truly staggering.  The game features an absolutely overwhelming amount of unlockable content, delivered through the game’s PP Catalog system, allowing them to purchase unlockables using in-game currency, as well as an in-game Achievement system that rewards the player for completing certain objectives over time.  Completing every Story Mode will take a good few hours, while the unlockable modes yielded after doing so will add even more playtime to the game.  Dissidia spits in the face of almost every “current-gen” game, featuring literally hundreds of hours of optional content, simply waiting to be experienced by anyone patient enough to unlock it; it can also, however, be as short as the player wants, as the end credits will likely be viewed after about 10 hours of play.

The game even includes a built-in Battle Replay system the likes of which hasn’t truly been seen since Halo 3; this mode allows you to view, edit, and export videos and screenshots of your favorite battles, even knitting them together with special camera angles and edits.  Many of the screenshots in this review, as well as the videos posted here on OLC for the Character Spotlights, were created using this feature.  If anything, the inclusion of this feature only speaks to the amount of effort put into the game by the studio.

The Power of Friendship

As with any fighting game worth its weight in, well, anything, Dissidia also offers a multiplayer mode.  Gamers with PSPs will be able to wirelessly battle against friends and opponents who also have the game, allowing a gamer to see if his or her Squall is better than their friend’s Tidus, while simultaneously gaining EXP and items to help power up.  The game makes use of an interesting Friend Card system as well; whenever you battle against an opponent in multiplayer, you’ll be given a Friend Card for that particular player, containing information and stats, as well as a personalized AI-controlled Ghost that fights according to their actions in the game.  As you play against people online, you’ll also gather special Artifacts, viral pieces of equipment only unlockable through defeating opponents in multiplayer.  These Artifacts offer special stat bonuses and can be personalized with names and special stat boosts, making collecting them an interesting metagame on top of it all.  The only real downside is that the game only supports AdHoc multiplayer; there is no online Infrastructure mode.  Gamers with a PS3 will be able to use AdHoc Party to play online with friends and strangers over the PSN, but players without a PS3 and without friends that have PSPs won’t be able to make use of the multiplayer features, aside from unlockable Friend Cards given to them by the game.  This is truly a shame, as Dissidia is quite fun with friends; provided you’re not fighting a Cloud player that spams Braver every two seconds, that is…

The Fantasy Never Ends

In the end, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is a game made by Final Fantasy fans for Final Fantasy fans; while it’s certainly a very fun, intriguing title, you simply won’t get the same effect out of it if you’re not a fan of the series.  The battle system is interesting, but gamers with little interest in the FF franchise will likely have little tolerance for the oceans of fanservice, the admittedly underdeveloped storyline, and the hours of effort required to unlock some of the hidden content.  Series veterans, however, will undoubtedly find something to love on this UMD, be it the dozens of gorgeously remixed tracks from FF history, the wide variety of unique characters, or Kefka’s maniacal overacting.  Featuring dozens, if not hundreds of hours of replay value, Dissidia is the ultimate portable love letter to Final Fantasy fans, and those with a PSP would be doing themselves a disservice by skipping it.

Pluses
+ Entertaining, energetic combat system featuring a wide variety of unique takes on the fighting genre
+ Wide variety of playable characters from every current Final Fantasy game
+ Expertly composed soundtrack composed of new tracks and remixes from past games
+ Unparalleled amount of content, both hidden and easily available
+ Largely solid voice acting gives each character an unique personality
+ A vast array of fanservice for FF veterans supplements the gameplay, rather than overwhelming it

Minuses
- Wireless multiplayer mode is considerably less useful without a PS3 and AdHoc Party
- Most references and inside jokes will be lost on new entrants to the series
- A massive time investment is needed to unlock some end-game content
- Story mode doesn’t take nearly enough risks with the crossover aspect, rendering it rather shallow and repetitive

Available now exclusively on PlayStation Portable
Rated T (Teen)
Players: 1 (2 via AdHoc multiplayer)
Played Japanese version for over 100 hours; completed all story modes in English version, played several multiplayer matches and experimented with several unlockable modes.  Levelled Squall to 96.
Final Verdict: Dissidia: Final Fantasy is the Smash Bros. to the Final Fantasy franchise; featuring a smorgasboard of content in an expertly-made portable shell, it offers countless hours of gameplay for the consummate Final Fantasy fan.  If you’ve got a PSP and like the Final Fantasy series, it’s a must-buy, but non-fans beware; while the gameplay is quite fun, it won’t have the same effect unless you’ve played the games before it.