I’ve had a whole month to play Dissidia: Final Fantasy, the newest cash-in tie-in to the almighty Final Fantasy franchise.  Unlike most of Square-Enix’s FF side stories, you get to play as the main heroes and villains from all of the numbered FF titles up through X.  Why they decided to leave out XII, I don’t know.  They probably realized they had enough skinny, fair-haired, androgynous* characters for one game.

I’m bashing the series, yes, but in all honesty, I love the Final Fantasy games.  Actually, if I had to choose a favorite Final Fantasy title, Tactics would be it, but that’s besides the point. The main games of the series are excellent.

Notice how I said the “main games of the series.”  That’s because, so far every off-shoot, side-story, or sequel, while seemingly awesome in concept, has never quite panned out in practice.  There are a few worthy ones (Tactics Advance comes to mind), but mostly the series does its best when the games are properly numbered.

So how does Dissidia fare?  This hodgepodge of familiar faces that seems to have been developed for the sole purpose of exploiting the Final Fantasy fanbase?

Well, you get to kick Tidus’ ass, and any game that lets you do that is okay in my book.

Dissidia plays like your typical arena-style brawler.  The fighting system is fairly simple. There are two methods of attack:  Bravery attacks (performed by pressing the O button) and HP attacks (press the Square button).  Bravery attacks deplete your opponents Bravery Points (BP), while increasing your own.  While HP attacks directly damage the other characters Hit Points.  The amount of damage done is correlated to your total BP.

With only two main attacks, you may be asking “what keeps this game from being just another mindless button masher?”  The answer to that is the fact that Dissidia is much slower paced than your average fighting game.  Battles consist mostly of dashing around the huge, open stages and trying to land a hit on your opponent.  This has it’s pros and cons.  There’s more time to think about what type of attack you want to use, but there’s also stretches where you’ll end up chasing your opponent for minutes at a time trying to hit the bastard.  This is especially true if you’re playing as, say Firion from FFII, who uses a lot of close range attacks, and you’re fighting Kuja from FFIX, who likes to throw projectiles.  Most of the fight will be you chasing his pansy ass around.  However, I do like how they made each character fight differently.

With all the flying around, the game demands a tight camera system, and unfortunately, Dissidia falls flat in this respect.  Strange angles, getting stuck behind walls, and general disorientation make dodging and timing your attacks difficult, which as I’ve mentioned is crucial.  There is a lock-on system for targeting your opponent, but this doesn’t do much good when the camera is pointed at a wall and you’re getting your ass handed to you.  Hey, at least you can’t lose track of your opponent in those huge open areas, though.

Each character has his or her own special attack related to their game.  Cloud and Sephiroth have limit breaks, Zidane and Kuja enter Trance, etc.  Usually you will have to enter a button combo that appears on screen within a certain amount of time, or rapidly press a button.  If this is done correctly you unleash a world of hurt on the enemy with flashy special effects to boot.

All of your attacks, with the exception of the specials are customizable through the Abilities menu.  As you gain levels with your characters, you unlock more attacks which can be swapped in and out of attack slots.  This can be done at any time in between battles.  You can make a character completely your own once you’ve unlocked enough moves to play around with.

In fact, customization is a huge part of the appeal of the game.  Each fight you win earns you Experience points that level up your character’s stats just like in any RPG.  Items, weapons, armor, and accessories can be freely swapped between characters.  This is a welcome feature considering how much of a bitch it was in proper Final Fantasy titles to have to go through and un-equip stuff from certain characters if you wanted to use it on another.

Cameos abound!  All of the tutorial menus feature both main characters and supporting characters from all the proper FF titles.  Biggs and Wedge even make an appearance and crack a joke about the “Vicks” mistranslation (All you FFVI fans out there know what I’m talking about).

While the cameos are fun, it would have been nice to actually play as these characters.  Let’s face it; the most interesting characters in the FF series are the secondary ones.  Where’s Vivi?  Where’s Rydia?  Shadow?  Yuffie?  Cait Sith???

Okay, maybe not Cait Sith.

The game loves to reward you just for playing, too.  When you begin, you choose a play plan, which can be changed at any time.  After picking what type of gamer you are (basically how long you think you’re going to be playing the game on any given day), you’ll then receive bonuses and items depending on the number of battles you fight that day.  There’s also an Accomplishments list similar to PS3 Trophies or 360 Achievements.

Overall, if you are a fan of the Final Fantasy games, you’ve probably already picked this up.  For those of you who are still on the fence, the game will give you plenty of hours of stuff to do.  All of the Accomplishments and items you can unlock are really the draw here.  How far the game actually takes you will depend on your affinity for these arena brawler type games (or the rabidness of your FF addiction).

As for me, I think I’ll just replay Tactics until XIII gets here.

*except for Terra; she’s all woman

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