Nerd Mentality

PSP REVIEW - Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Posted September 15th 2009 by Will Davey.

With Square Enix's success in the RPG genre, it may seem odd that their most recent release would be a fighting game for the PSP. Whilst the game jumps right into the wildly popular Final Fantasy universe, this particular genre isn't something that Square Enix is known for. That being said, there's a first time for everything. By cleverly combining the genres of RPG and fighting, Square Enix has managed to create a game that not only plays very well, but also offers quite a unique experience on the PSP system.

Although Dissidia is a fighting game, it's not a traditional game in the genre like Street Fighter or Tekken. Instead of battles taking place from a side-on perspective, you'll be freely running and flying around some appropriately sized environments, akin to the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi games. That's pretty much where similarities with others in the genre stop, however, because Dissidia really is as much an RPG as it is a fighting game. You could be the best Dissidia player in the world, but if you haven't levelled up your character and given him some good equipment, then you'll have plenty of trouble.

When you start out, the battle system can seem quite intimidating, but the prologue of the game does a fair job of teaching you the very basics of the game. Each battle will consist of you trying to raise your amount of "Brave" as high as possible, and then attacking your opponent to decrease their HP.  Brave itself is just a number, much like your attack and defence stats. It gets larger as you level up and get better equipment, so obviously you want that to be as high as possible. You have two types of attacks: Brave attacks, which are used by pressing circle, will steal your opponents Brave and add it to yours. HP attacks, used by pressing square, will hit your opponents HP directly. Once you get your opponent's HP to zero, you win. There's a lot more depth to the system, and if I were to go into it I'd probably never stop, but that's the gameplay described as simply as possible.

One nice addition to the game is that on nearly every menu screen, you can press Start to bring up the "Manual", which essentially goes into much greater detail about whatever is on the screen at the time. Once you start out you probably won't need to use this feature, but as you level up your characters more and start to face increasingly difficult AI opponents, you'll want to know how to get the most out of your characters and equipment.

Having put around 30 hours into the game now, I'm fairly confident in saying that I could double that figure. The battle system, as good as it is, isn't as balanced as you'd expect from a fully-fledged fighting game, so it's a good thing that the RPG side of the game is so substantial. After each fight you'll earn EXP to level up your character, AP to level up your character's skills and abilities, Gil to spend on new equipment and accessories in the Shop, and PP to spend on new characters and much more in the PP Catalogue. If anything, depending on how much you actually enjoy the game, the amount of content to purchase might actually outlast your interest in the game. All of the RPG-style play takes place in menus outside of battle, so when it comes to the actual fighting, it's down to you to knock the other guy out without getting beaten yourself. It's a well thought out system because, during gameplay, the extensive RPG-side of the game doesn't interfere with the fast-paced action, and vice versa.

There are also a total of 22 playable characters in the game, though only 10 of these are unlocked at the start, so you'll have to play through all of their Story modes to earn enough PP to unlock and buy the rest. All of these characters play quite differently too, so there's plenty of choice when it comes to finding a character that fits your style of play. Sadly some characters are better than others, but in the right hands, most characters should have a fighting chance in any situation.

Dissidia is also impressive from a technical standpoint. The visuals aren't the best on the system, the most disappointing thing for me being the lack of facial expression from characters. The character models themselves are very good, but when you're playing through the story mode for a character, and during an emotional scene their face is expressionless, well, I expected more with the game coming from Square Enix. Special attacks are great to look at, and if you've played through the Final Fantasy games then you'll love how the iconic special attacks for each character have been re-imagined for the PSP, and the new ones thrown in look just as good. The environments are well constructed too, all of them being iconic locations from each Final Fantasy game. The soundtrack isn't too hard on the ears either, featuring some remixes of some classic Final Fantasy music from each of the games, and you can also buy a few more extra tracks in the PP Catalogue. Being able to choose the music for custom fights is a nice touch as well, particularly if the Final Fantasy fan in you suddenly wants to recreate an epic battle between the hero and villain of one of the games.

To close, Dissidia: Final Fantasy is a quality title, but it's also a huge fan service. The fighting system in general isn't deep or balanced enough to qualify it as a fighting game on its own, but the additions of the extensive RPG elements to the game add a lot of depth to what could have been a stale formula. If you're a Final Fantasy fan and you like fighting games, this is a match made in heaven for you. If you're not one of those people, then I'd highly recommend that you at least try out the demo and see what you make of the gameplay mechanics. Even if you have no idea who Cloud and Sephiroth are, that's not to say you can't enjoy it.

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Tags: PSP, Final-Fantasy, dissidia

Posted in: Reviews, Gaming

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