Dissidia: Final Fantasy

Dissidia: Final Fantasy - Demo

It’s been a while since SquareEnix has bought out anything that was truly original. There have been plenty of ports and remakes going on but nothing fresh and exciting. That is until now; coming soon to a PSP near you is Final Fantasy: Dissidia.

Dissidia is not your traditional Final Fantasy game, it’s what I like to call a story driven Beat ‘em up. Dissidia pits your favourite Final Fantasy characters against each other in a bitter fight to the end. Series favourites are divided into two teams: Team Light fighting for Cosmos, the goddess of peace, and Team Dark fighting for Chaos. That’s all the detail I have on the story at the moment as not much is given away in the demo.
The demo itself gives you a choice of six characters to try out, these being Squall (FF8), Cloud (FF7), Terra (FF6), Onion Knight (FF1), Cecil (FF5) and good old Sephiroth (FF7). The demo gives you 4 stages each character so you can get a good feel for what the game is about and how it handles.

Right from the start it thrusts you into the action, no tutorial just wham beat your first opponent (Tidus from FFX in my case). I found it very it very easy to get used to though as the controls are simple. X to jump, Circle and Square to hit and Triangle to dash to your enemy/power up (whatever you’re locked onto with the L1 button). Circle gives you an attack which steals your opponents ‘bravery points’. Its not really explained what these bravery points do, but they essentially make your attacks more potent.
Attacks are very showy and each character has their own fighting style which seems to be nicely executed. For example, Cloud has his buster sword so you run in and slice your enemy apart with a bright and flashy Omnislash move, whereas Terra is a mage so her attacks are mostly long range. All of their signature moves seem to be there.
Along with attacking there is a power up that will put your character in “EX Mode”. This activates the unique skills your character has and increases the power of your attacks tenfold. Getting these power ups are crucial and most the time make the difference between winning or loosing the match. For example, EX Mode when using Cecil turns him into his Paladin persona that is seen in FF5.

All the action is very fast paced and looks amazing for a handheld game. There appears to be no slowdown at all and everything runs in a very fluid manner even when you’re darting around. Running up and down walls amid a flurry of shining magic and crossed blades sparking, this is easily one of the best looking PSP games I have seen.
I am looking forward to the release of the full game later this month where I can explore the story mode in a lot more depth.

This demo is available from the PlayStation store for free on your PSP.

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