Well its been a while but I dusted off the cobwebs from my PSP case and decided to go ahead and give Dissidia Final Fantasy a good try. I didn't really bother reading up on the game, in fact I didn't even watch the whole cinematic trailer until I actually got to it in the game. On the other hand I did watch a few youtube video's and was pretty shocked right off the bat. A Final Fantasy Fighting game?!?! I had to rush to the store right away to grab it.

I really have to say that I love the pace of the game. At first I was just randomly choosing characters in the arcade mode and just going to town. As I got a handle on the games tactics I started to jump into the story mode. The first day, after a good 4 hours on the game I decided that I should put it down. Thats when I realized it happened, something that has not happened to me in a long time. I realized that I had controller thumb. I have to admit having that sore thumb from a fighting game was a big reminder of when I was younger thrashing on my brother and his little chump buddies in Street Fighter 2.

Besides the nice graphics they designed a calender system that pulls you back in every day. One of the first things the game has you do is pick a day of the week that you play games the most. On the day of the week that you choose they give you a bonus to everything from money, weapons and experience. Apart from Experience are AP and PP. AP allows you to equip better skills while PP allows you to unlock all kinds of different options like an alternate outfit for each character.

It seems that every few minutes there's something new that is unlocked. There's so much unlockable content it seems that every few battles the little chocobo pops up and lets you know that something new is in the shop. One of the great things about the items is that you don't need to get new items for every character, the items are shared between all characters, even summons.

One of the things that I really enjoy is how you can equip your character and level it up. You do this by fighting battles in the Quick Battles or by participating in the main Story. Experience is gained by when ever you do damage to an opponent. Like most final fantasy games there's the basic things you can upgrade, like summons, weapons, shields, armor and also helms. As far as I can tell though your equipment does not change your appearance as you equip new armor types. The selection of characters is great as you can play a ton of hero's as well as villains from most of the Final Fantasy games. Want to play and level up Sephiroth and just own everything? Well you can. I'll leave a link at the bottom of the page so you can check out the selection of characters from the main site.


Sepiroth in his awesomeness.

I have to say the gameplay in this game is great. Most of your time is spent trying to find your opponents weakness and exploiting it. Fighting is a game of cat and mouse as you and your enemy go through a series of attacks, while blocking and dodging. At first it seems a little intimidating but as you get better at it, it becomes second nature. Each of the characters has a limit break where you can do a ton of damage to your opponent. Each character has Bravery and health. Bravery is how much damage you do per HP attack. Once you hit with a HP attack your bravery drops down to 0 and needs to charge back up. There are also bravery attacks where you can assault your opponents bravery while raising your own. Each fighter has a bravery meeter which when it goes all the way down breaks and gives you or your opponent a ton of bravery where they or you can do a devastating attack on their next HP attack. Sometimes it can be tough to actually connect though as you only have a limited amount of time.

As I started earlier there are Quick battles. In this area you can choose your conditions such as your opponent, the area, the difficulty and your opponents level. I thought this was a great option so you don't have to play the story if you don't like that type of way to advance.

The one bad thing about the game is that it has a ton of inappropriate pauses with the voice acting. Its like someone was using a misplaced comma every other sentence. Usually SquareEnix is pretty good in this area which is why I even mentioned it. I'm just not sure if they were rushing, or if its the power of the PSP showing its limits. Either way I love the story and am looking forward to finishing the game.

I have not had a chance to play against anyone head to head. I've heard that it works really well but can get a little sluggish when there's too many particles.


As you can see there can be a lot of particles on the screen.

Overall despite the Voice acting mishap, the game is fun and was a really great way to pull me back into the Fighting game genre. Good luck gamers this ones a must have.

Website: Dissidia Final Fantasy