Dissidia: Final Fantasy — Wherein Light and Darkness Get Physical

When you look at the concept of Dissidia: Final Fantasy at a glance, you know it’s a game bound to receive some early criticism solely for what it represents. The game itself is borne of the fanboy wars that take place across the internet, and Square Enix realized that, hey, they could literally cash in on it with a game of their own. Upon its unveiling, comparisons to Ehrgeiz and word of Square Enix’s less-than-stellar track record with genres not within the RPG genre arose, with the game itself looking like a fighting game. Square Enix referring to it as a “Dynamic Action Game” didn’t help matters, which made them seem pompous about its inevitable potential for greatness.

But they weren’t, really. Upon seeing and playing the game, there really isn’t any better way to precisely describe what it does succinctly. Dissidia is actually a strange-though-logical amalgam of an action game, an RPG, and a fighting game. Classifying it as all three in its description would be ridiculous, but it would help in preparing a player for what they should expect. What seemed like a bunch of genres thrown together haphazardly actually turned out to be a quality and addictive product, with enough fanservice to appeal to people who will eat anything tangentially related to the franchise up, but also with enough substance to appeal to gamers who care about the underlying product.

Dissidia assembles the most recognizable heroes and villains from the Final Fantasy universe, from The Warrior of Light to Tidus on the heroic side, and from Garland to Jecht on the malignant side, numerically. The story has the heroes fighting to help Cosmos and the world she exists in from being taken over by the main villain, Chaos (also the final boss of Final Fantasy I). It seems like it has the grounds for an, at least, entertaining story, but it’s actually one of the most insipid thing ever conceived; there is some of the worst dialogue in any medium ever. Really. Fanfiction writers could’ve done better.

But it’s not all bad. The story mode itself has you playing each of the heroes and going through fighting both clones of all characters and the villains. It’s here where Dissidia reveals its most appealing and addictive qualities. Not only do characters have HP, but BP as well, which stands for Bravery Points. When BP attacks land, a character’s Bravery will decrease as yours increases. The higher a character’s bravery, the more HP damage that character’s next HP attack will do. Each character has HP and BP attacks mapped to the square and attack buttons, respectively, which change depending on whether you have the analog nub pointed forward or backward. Complicated? Absolutely.

But after fighting through a few of the character’s story modes, or fooling around with the Arcade Mode, it begins to become second nature. You really don’t need to study each character’s attack methods to counter efficiently, as the game is pretty good at easing you into its rhythm. You do want to do that as you venture into the higher difficulties, though, so with a game like this it’s best to pick one character and stick with them to level them up and gain EXP and AP. As you level up, you obtain new techniques, and you’ll be able to assign which BP and HP attacks you think are best for that particular character. It’s micromanagement that encompasses all of the above that makes Dissidia feel so addictive and easy to lose yourself in for hours at a time. And above all, it’s fun.

There’s also PP to acquire as well, which are “Player Points” that you can acquire through multiple ways. PP can be spent in the PP Catalog, which you’ll use to unlock new modes, characters, items, alternate outfits, and features. If you’re fastidious enough to acquire everything, well, it’s going to take you a while with all of the grinding you’ll have to do.

As you’d expect from a Square Enix game on PSP, it’s a sight to behold graphically. The character models and environments are just as good as, if not better than, Crisis Core, and many of them rival the company’s PS2 titles. But with a top notch presentation comes some bothersome loading times…though that depends on how much space you have on your memory stick. The UMD version game comes with an option to install a portion of it to your memory stick, but it unfortunately doesn’t completely eliminate any loading times. Fortunately, they’re only before and after the matches, so nothing will break the tempo of an actual match.

Though the game itself is loaded for fanservice, all of it isn’t aimed at the fans you’d expect. The characters themselves will constantly reference the stories of their respective games, though there are plenty of times where you won’t get everything unless you’ve played through them in their entirety. Of course some of them are completely silly, but they’re entertaining for nostalgia’s sake. The best moments, however, are the subtle references to the older games, and how the newer designs from Tetsuya Nomura are faithful to Yoshitaka Amano’s originals.

Like that, that’s just fantastic. There are plenty of other nods that are worth looking out for too.

Dissidia also has some fantastic music, the majority of which are remixes of specific themes from previous Final Fantasy soundtracks. The original tracks are done by the venerable Nobuo Uematsu, but the best remixes are done by Takeharu Ishimoto of Crisis Core and The World Ends With You. He did a great job keeping the tracks familiar while giving them a different feel. The voice acting is also great, with mostly various actors and actresses returning to provide voices for their characters. Veronica Taylor provides an excellent voice for Cosmos, while the always-excellent Keith David provides a fittingly menacing voice for Chaos.

If you’ve been a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise for a good deal of time, you’re bound to derive some form of enjoyment from Dissidia. Beneath the thick layer of fanservice resides a game whose multitude of features are bound to keep you bush for hours and days on end. It’s the kind of game that reels you back in when you think you’re finished with it, and before you know it, the timer will reveal the many hours you’ve been playing it.