I bought my PSP a few years ago. Originally I intended to wait until Birth by Sleep came out and get the Japanese bundle to get a Kingdom Hearts-branded console but when I had the extra money in 2008 and wanted to play Crisis Core, I broke down and bought one. I didn’t use it much at all until Birth by Sleep came out. I finished Crisis Core that summer and went right back to playing DS. But last year, Gamestop had a pretty good Boxing Day sale. Dissidia, a game I’d been eyeing (but wasn’t going to pay full price for) was only $20 so I went ahead and bought it.
I played it a bit at the beginning of the year and then set it down for quite a while but it’s still a really good game and a must-have for anyone with a PSP. I think it’ll be a game like Smash Bros. that I can pick up and play every so often for some no-strings-attached gaming and not feel bad to set it down again for months at a time.
So here goes my kind-of review, mostly rambling post!
Gameplay
I heard somewhere that the whole point of Dissidia is that someone (Nomura? Probably.) wanted to make a game that mimicked the over-the-top fight scenes you always get to see in cutscenes but never play. And if that was indeed Dissidia’s goal? It achieved it well. It’s actually amazing to sit back and think about the battles because while you’re in them, you’re just so immersed in trying to win and staying on top of the opponent but if I were watching a battle later on (a feature I admit I have not taken advantage of), it would probably play out like an action cutscene.
There are two types of attacks: HP and Bravery. HP, like it suggests, diminishes the opponent’s hit points. Bravery affects your attack power. Each bravery attack you inflict raises your Bravery (and depletes the opponent’s) and you do damage equal to your bravery. Or something like that. Some attacks are long range, some are close range, and some even have a “chase” feature where you hit the opponent away and then “chase” right after them to inflict another attack (which they can then dodge and turn right back on you with good timing).
It’s very action-oriented. You run around and attack in real time, timing your attacks and outright dodging and blocking those turned against you. You can run up the walls, slide across energy on the stage, and even break parts of the stage away as you fight. When you slam an opponent into the ground or a side of the stage, you inflict extra damage so the whole point seems to be as theatrical as you can, going over the top to create an interesting battle.
Each character also has a special attack. When you collect enough EX points (scattered around the field after attacks, or collected in an item that appears at random on the battlefield), you can go into EX Attack mode which is basically your overlimit/overdrive. Regen activates and several exclusive abilities come into play. It culminates in your special skill that you manually activate after an HP attack. The opponent has to tap X repeatedly to raise their defence while you enter a series of commands to raise your attack power for a final blow-type of move.
The playable characters are the main characters from each of the Final Fantasy games from I through X, as well as the main villains. Some, like Cloud, Squall and Tidus (arguably the most popular characters in the FFverse) are pretty easy for a beginner to pick up and use and others require a little more ability and practise. But everyone has their place.
Plot
It wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy game without a convoluted plot and despite being in the fighting genre rather than RPG, Dissidia does not disappoint. The basic plot revolves around an eternal fight between two gods, Cosmos and Chaos. Cosmos summons 10 warriors (our heroes!) and sets them on a quest to obtain their crystals the empower them to overcome Chaos and his 10 warriors (our villains!). That’s pretty much it.
I did play through each character’s story but I still found a lot of it confusing. To be fair, I played it with a huge gap… since I originally started the game as a way to kill time in the days before Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep arrived on my doorstep. I played in order of difficulty and got up to Odyssey IX (Zidane’s story), which was just over halfway. And then I dropped it when BBS came out and didn’t pick it up again until now. So that’s January to August. Oops.
But still, I’m sure the plot ties together fairly nicely but each story on its own is pretty boring and I must admit I never did care about the plot. Mostly just about fighting (because it was fun!) and getting my Beaten status on Backloggery. Once you beat the Odysseys, you get the final chapters and that was pretty bland. There wasn’t much story between the first chapter and the last chapter and having to go through 3-4 stages for each was pretty annoying. I would have preferred they just lessen the level of the final boss and shorten that final set of chapters instead. :/
Graphics & Sound
If there’s one thing they did absolutely right, it’s the graphics. Everything looks great, the stages are great, and despite looking solid, the framerate never suffers like it does in some other PSP games when too much is going on at once. But Square-Enix is always pretty top-notch when it comes ot graphics so that’s no surprise.
I really liked the music in this game too. There’s a selection from each of the games featured. Typically one calming background music, a battle theme, and a final battle theme. So X has “To Zanarkand” as its general BGM, “Normal Battle” as its typical theme, and against Jecht, you hear “Other World”. Music was all fitting, obviously, and the original tracks were good too, if a little generic. I think the themes for Cosmos and Chaos were done by a Canadian band, too. They seemed sliiiightly out of place amongst everything else but are still solid songs imo.
It’s not a very memorable soundtrack, though. I’ve listened to it all the way through a few times and find myself blanking out for 6 tracks at a time before remembering to pay attention. As background music, I suppose this means it’s very fitting but it’s only worth listening to it outside the game, imo, to hear the rearranged versions of some of the tracks. (I really like the Dissidia version of One Winged Angel.)
Rambling!
I didn’t really have any preferences through most of the game. I think I liked using Cloud but he was a January character so I don’t remember much–I only assume I liked him because he was the only one to ping LV15, with the next closest coming in at LV12. Hopefully that means I was good with him and not that I just gave up repeatedly and had to rebattle a lot. Who knows.
I left Terra for last because her plot intrigued me more than Warrior of Light’s. I’m so glad I did because she ended up being my favourite to use. I vastly prefer standing back and pummelling from afar than risking my neck to get in some close hits. As a magic user, she was a perfect fit for me. So upon finishing her Odyssey, it was easy to just continue right on into Shade Impulse to finish up the game. :) I ended with her at LV50. My next highest level is still Cloud at 15, haha.
The final chapters were super easy so long as I avoided the random level 60s or whatever. :/ I hit the final boss at around level 41 and quit and retried a few times until I finally managed to beat him at… level 48? Whatever level I was at, I levelled to exactly 50 afterwards. I was pretty cheap for the fight, using mostly the Tornado attack to deflect his magic and draw him into my attack but oh well. He was cheap too. >:[
I haven’t done any endgame stuff, nor have I played much of the other modes aside from Story. I’ll get around to it eventually but likely not until someone wants to play against me… so I’ll need to either level up or get used to the game again, haha.
Anyway, it’s a great game and, as mentioned, is definitely worth owning for anyone who has a PSP.
