Dissidia: Final Fantasy Gets Upgraded For the West

Dissidia: Final Fantasy, the surprisingly excellent crossover fighting game from Square Enix, was released in Japan this past December.  Despite this, its Western release still has yet to surface.  Why is that?  Square’s answer may surprise you.  In a surprisingly revealing three-part interview published by Final Fantasy Union, the team behind Dissidia has explained a few reasons for the game’s long localization track.  The most obvious reason of all is simply the fact that the game features a large amount of voice acting that all needs to be translated, much like any modern RPG.  However, the game is being developed by members of the Kingdom Hearts team, and much like the original Kingdom Hearts, the US version will contain several gameplay tweaks and new features not found in the original Japanese release.

• First off, a new Arcade Mode has been added to the game; it’s not yet known what this mode entails, though it stands to reason that it will feature a structured set of battles with no cutscenes in between.
• The game’s in-battle tutorial has been revamped since the original release; originally the tutorial, if completed entirely, would take roughly an hour – the US version is said to have been shortened to only last about 10 minutes.
• Several other gameplay and battle engine tweaks have been implemented, based on feedback from the Japanese release.
• The existing characters already in the game will be rebalanced, as well as given new attacks and abilities.
• New story scenes not present in the Japanese version will be added to flesh out the narrative even further.
• New characters that “do not appear in any events in the Japanese version” will be added to the US version.

There’s no word on who these new characters might be, or even if they’re playable at all for that matter, but one thing’s for sure, Square Enix is definitely not pulling any punches for the Western release of the game.  All in all, with the amount of tweaks being added to the Western versions of the game, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is looking less like a straight port and more like a “Super Turbo” edition of Square’s first actually successful (sorry, Ehrgeiz) fighting game.  These tweaks may not make the wait for a Western release any easier, but if they result in a better version of the game, I’m not complaining.  For more information on the Western version of Dissidia, as well as the team’s thoughts on a prospective sequel, check out the full text of the interviews at Final Fantasy Union, linked below.

Source: Final Fantasy Union