Dissidia: Final Fantasy

N

Nemphtis

Hunter
Picked this up last week and was expecting a shoddy fighting game, but I've been pretty addicted to it for the past four days. Now the mechanics aren't as deep as Capcom fighting games for example, but they lend themselves well to a portable system. As someone who is most familiar with VII in the franchise, my primary is Cloud with Sephiroth as my secondary. Has anyone else been enjoying Dissidia?
 
CitizenGeek said:
Nemphtis said:
Picked this up last week and was expecting a shoddy fighting game
Click to expand...

Why would you buy a game if you were expecting it to be bad?
Click to expand...

Primarily because I have money to burn, with the addition of other factors such as me buying it on impulse, me being a little bit of an FF7 fan and wanting to play as Cloud/Sephiroth in a fighting game, my friend owning it so I wanted to kick his ass on a PSP game we both have and so on.
 
It just doesn't follow that you'd expect a game to be awful and still go out and spend a considerable amount of money on it is all.

I've actually read the reviews and listened to the fan reaction and all of it seems very positive (where did you get the impression it was a bad game?) and so I'm looking forward to eventually picking it up. I don't really like fighting games, so the only appeal is that it's by Square Enix and the greatest appeal is that it's Final Fantasy. I understand there's a decent amount of actual story in there (as opposed to most fighting games which either don't have a story at all, or don't put any effort at all into an already thin plot that links the fights together). What do you make of the story so far?
 
I know that question wasn't directed at me, but thought i'd give my opinion on the story anywho. Basicaly from what i've played, its not exactly the best story ever, but its decent enough. Now i've completed all character story parts and moved onto the part where you can choose who to play as, and the story picks up a little from there, but its still not amazing quality. It'll do fine for what the game is though.
 
CitizenGeek said:
It just doesn't follow that you'd expect a game to be awful and still go out and spend a considerable amount of money on it is all.

I've actually read the reviews and listened to the fan reaction and all of it seems very positive (where did you get the impression it was a bad game?) and so I'm looking forward to eventually picking it up. I don't really like fighting games, so the only appeal is that it's by Square Enix and the greatest appeal is that it's Final Fantasy. I understand there's a decent amount of actual story in there (as opposed to most fighting games which either don't have a story at all, or don't put any effort at all into an already thin plot that links the fights together). What do you make of the story so far?
Click to expand...

I don't really find £15 to be a considerable amount of money. Perhaps if I were unemployed it would be so, but in my current situation it's not exactly a big investment.

I've read reviews and what not too, but when it comes to fighting games, I don't trust my fellow journos one bit unless I know them personally and can be certain that they understand how fighting games are meant to be played. Based on my experiences, nearly all gaming journalists are hardcore gamers but hardly competitive players. To put it in a very vague way, there's playing a game, and then there's playing a game.

Dissidia is a fighting game, and what I look for in this genre is balance and competitive depth. Story is a bonus at best, I'm not going to lose sleep at night because I didn't know why M. Bison is a villain or why Dhalsim can stretch his arms, I just accept what they are at face value and think more about how to kick other people's asses with them.

So looking at Dissidia's gameplay videos, it seemed very much like a 'casual' (I use this term loosely) fighting game aimed towards hardcore RPG fanatics more than fighting game enthusiasts. An RPG fan will play Dissidia the way it was meant to be played; not too seriously, just having fun with the fact that they can control these heroes/villains in real-time and pull of crazy looking attacks whilst doing what they love most - levelling the characters up and customising equipment and such in menus. Since Dissidia is a mixture of the RPG and fighting game genres, the story is indeed more fleshed out which the RPG fans will appreciate, but the fighting game fans will feel indifferent since to the vast majority, it's a bonus at best like I said.

Now I have quite a few friends IRL who are unfortunately fighting game whores, and they play competitively. When we hang out on most days of the week, we spend a lot of our times playing SF2, SF3, SF4, BB, SSBM, CvS, MvC, TK6 and if I'm lucky, I can convince them to play some Call of Duty since I'm an FPS whore, and don't spend six hours a day in SF4's training mode like they do. When we saw Dissidia for the first time, it had many signs of being a casual fighting game in the eyes of genre 'veterans'.

To name a few quick issues off the top of my head, the 'chase' mechanic is nothing more than visual eye candy because you just need to memorise voice data and you'll have no trouble dodging enemy attacks in chase. My friend downloaded the Japanese version on his hacked PSP the day it launched there, and within a day he found an infinity combo loop for Sephiroth that is probably not impossible to escape from, but I highly doubt a casual player will know how to escape from it when my friends even had trouble doing this. One of the biggest fails is levelling characters, it throws the concept of balance right out of the window, even an opponent who is five levels higher than you will have a noticeable advantage in matches against real people.

The levelling issue also applies to items, equipment makes a huge impact in battles, a fighting game veteran wants to spend hours practicing advanced techniques in training mode, which by the way doesn't even exist in Dissidia, a guy who has played Capcom or SNK fighting games for many years isn't going to be thrilled about the idea of being forced to grind his character of choice, try and acquire the best items in the game just to be on even ground against his opponent, and only after all this does skill actually come into the equation.

So yeah, like I said, Dissidia is a good game for RPG enthusiasts, which I am, but fighting game veterans will not be too impressed, which I also am. Don't expect this to be a featured game at the next Evolution fighting game championships, it's not competitive enough for that, the best you'll ever see is a couple of fan-made tournaments on Final Fantasy fansites with little to nothing in terms of prizes or recognition. If Street Fighter II: Super Turbo was Football, Dissidia would basically be table football in comparison. A fun game to play, but not to take seriously.

I could get into more detail but I've already written more than most people will care to read. I hope this at least gives you some insight as to why I thought Dissidia would be a flop much like Dirge of Cerberus but like I said, I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was when I picked it up. This is mostly due to the addictive RPG elements and the amount of content this game is packed with, but I only play it casually and wouldn't dare to spend any time 'playing to win' against real players online.

Arbalest said:
I know that question wasn't directed at me, but thought i'd give my opinion on the story anywho. Basicaly from what i've played, its not exactly the best story ever, but its decent enough. Now i've completed all character story parts and moved onto the part where you can choose who to play as, and the story picks up a little from there, but its still not amazing quality. It'll do fine for what the game is though.
Click to expand...

The story is really nothing more than cutscenes that will appease the series fans, don't expect grand schemes that are eventually revealed and what not, it's only a small improvement to the garbage stories other fighting games come up with. There are hardly any big revelations in the plot for me so far, and the only reason I even touch story mode at all is because I have no choice if I want to unlock better equipment and get summons etc.

By the way, I love how they let you save your replays after battles. This alone would give a smile to my face, but the fact it lets you convert it into a .AVI file and transfer it to your PC to easily upload on YouTube and what not is something I wish all fighting games would do. Saves me from having to use my Dazzle for such things, since I'm not thrilled about all the wires when using it.
 
By the way, would be nice to play those of you who own the game online in some casual matches if anyone is up for it. I just need to sort my PSP out first, since it's giving me an error code when I try connecting online with it in any way.
 
Your 'review' more or less sums up exactly what I was expecting, and what I think everyone was expecting. It's a fighting designed for RPG players. It was always obvious that it would be that because the only people interested in a Final Fantasy fanservice game are Final Fantasy fans. I like the sound of what you've described though, so I'll be picking it up for sure even though fighting games aren't usually what I would ever play.
 
CitizenGeek said:
Your 'review' more or less sums up exactly what I was expecting, and what I think everyone was expecting. It's a fighting designed for RPG players. It was always obvious that it would be that because the only people interested in a Final Fantasy fanservice game are Final Fantasy fans. I like the sound of what you've described though, so I'll be picking it up for sure even though fighting games aren't usually what I would ever play.
Click to expand...

Yes, but that is why I thought it would be a shoddy fighting game. The game is clearly not designed to compete against other fighting games, but merely appeal to Final Fantasy fans who have had wet dreams about playing as their favourite hero or villain in real-time, and it does this rather well. As VII is my favourite in the franchise, I mainly use Cloud and Sephiroth, but if I were to play this game seriously I'd be bumming Exdeath or Golbez since they are godly in Dissidia.
 
Oh yeah, it's sequel time, baby.

Kind of crazy that this is being announced in (I assume) next week's Shounen Jump rather than actually at TGS.

Lightning in the game = awesome.

Lightning also in The 3rd Birthday, as suggested in the box-out highlighted at the bottom of that page, = a little bit weird.
 
Dissidia is easily worthy of a home console release IMO. I hope this eventually happens. On the other hand, the PSP needs good games like this to keep it going.
 
The 3rd Birthday bit, it looks more like an alternate costume, but i could be wrong. Still, this'll be nice. I wonder who else they'll include in the game bar Kain and Lightning.
 
Back
Top