Dissidia Final Fantasy - Sony PSP

Thrilling and daring, Dissidia: Final Fantasy offers a new way to experience and enjoy (some of) your favorite Final Fantasy characters! With a well-designed and balanced battle system, an exciting gameplay, and some astonishing difficulty levels (for the times you want it to be difficult), Dissidia is an elite when it comes to portable gaming. Here are my main points:Concept: Bring together characters from Final Fantasy 1-10 (one from 11 and one from 12 are also unlockable), redesign their sprites into full 3D, and bring them to life with voices, character interaction, and fierce battles. For the Final Fantasy enthusiast, this is awesome! One complaint is that there are only 22 characters. When spread across twelve games... it might have been nice to have some more! It's better than Ehrgeiz, though!Battle system: The battle system is the shining star of Dissidia. Completely redone, the system focuses on a sort of tug-of-war system called Bravery. Attack and Defense statistics now refer to your Bravery attack and defense, instead of HP (which is still present). The game is played with two attack buttons: one for Bravery Point (or BP) attacks, and one for Health Point (of HP) attacks. HP attacks deal however much Bravery you have, so if you have 5 BP at the moment, you deal 5 HP. If you have 5000 BP, you deal 5000 HP. When your opponents bravery is completely drained passed zero, they go into Break mode, and you get a bravery bonus.When you hit your opponent with an HP attack, it expends your Bravery -- and you are vulnerable at 0 BP. Luckily, once this happens, you return to your base BP level after a moment (the BP you started with at the beginning of the battle). However, making a successful HP attack, while it won't deal any damage, will return you to Base Bravery, so the game is constantly rewarding you and challenging you to be at risk to strike your opponent with an HP attack. This risk-reward system is prevalent throughout the game, and brings a lot of excitement to a genre that seems to have lost it recently.Story Mode: The story mode is a high point and a low point. It is fun to see your favorite characters rendered in 3D, voiced, and interacting with each other. While it is enjoyable to see the characters, and remember the personalities of the characters, as many other reviewers have commented, the characters are not the ones we left at the end of their respective games. This may have been on purpose, but with a game completely centered on these twenty characters, it may have been nice for the characters to have made some of their developments from their respective games already, so that, for instance, we don't have to rehash Squall's rebel-rouge side for the second time.Versus: As always, versus mode gives you a chance to really know how good of a player you are. Unfortunately, versus mode is only ad-hoc, so you must be in proximity to your opponent to play. However, if you are, this makes for a fun and enjoyable add-on to the game. You also can build your characters in some ways during Versus mode, giving you a reward for enjoying yourself with your friends. As with most games, this is sort of the end-game content, and with a battle system like Dissidia's, it's all fun. It would have been nice for infrastructure play, though.Presentation: Graphically, Dissidia is a powerhouse. Probably the best looking game I have played on the PSP, well above several PS2 games, it brings the characters to life with true-to-vision designs. The battles are outstanding, with great magic effects, good character design, and exciting sequences. Audibly, the game fares great. While the initial offering of background tunes is somewhat poor, in that it simply plays the theme song of your opponent, it does add to some exciting sequences (like when fighting Sephiroth as Cloud for the first time). However, you can expand your set of songs as you continue through the game, and this fleshes out some of the problems. On the SFX end, some are poor, such as some of the losing sounds of the heroes (Onion Knight's is especially annoying). When you're fighting the same opponent over and over again because you're being persistent and refuse to lose against a character that is ten levels stronger than you, these sounds get old. However, during battles, the sound effects are great, and they help bring a sense of immersion to the fights. I would suggest headphones or external speakers, either with nice bass, as the PSP speakers and headphones don't have enough kick for some of the nice bass melodies and SFX (at all).Camera/Playability: The camera is the WORST part about this game, and it isn't even that bad. On several occasions, the camera can get stuck behind pieces of the level, which is annoying. However, in general, the camera doesn't cause any problems, and it pretty much keeps a good lock on your character and your opponent. One problem I have noticed, and it may just be me or my PSP, is that sometimes I will hit a button, and it will not do anything. This seems to be especially prevalent when switching from a BP attack to an HP attack (which is, of course, the most important part!), and since this seems to be a software-oriented environment, I think it may be how the game registers and dolls out BP attacks. However, these are small problems, and in general don't interfere with the overall playability of the game.Overall: The risk-reward systems built into the battle system and story modes drive this game. It is fun to play for five minutes, and fun to play for hours on end. Buy this game -- you won't be disappointed!

Having spent a good part of my teen years with the Final Fantasy franchise, I was worried that throwing this kind of party together might not be such a hot thing to do. So I waited for the price to drop to the "just try me" price, and was very satisfied.I would highly recommend the "install" function which will increase your play time, and avoid the 10-30 seconds you might have to wait between arena loads. (This works best if you have a high speed pro-duo stick intended for Video Cameras) But also note that the time it takes to "install" data will approach 45 minuets. [Dissidia Final Fantasy UMD is still required to play the game.]As for the game it's self, there is a great number of topics to get into. For starters, I will talk briefly about the differences from the demo version and the retail. Having played the demo more than a few times, I was happy to find the slight strategy element of the "board game" setup. In the demo you were just able to play area mode, but the main game takes place inside the stories of each of the different hero's. (Be warned that each hero's story has a varying level of difficulty, you might not be able to just jump into your favorite character's story and expect to live.) Only the hero's stories are available from the beginning, you must play the game to earn "PP" to unlock a number of extras. This was kind of a bummer, but it gave me a reason to stick with the game long enough to really get to enjoy the full scale of things it had to offer.Equipment and summons are kind of a let down, but it's rare for such things to work perfectly in a fighting game. So I don't want anyone to come to this expecting "this will be the bomb" because it really is a fanboy game. I don't think this game is for everyone, but IT IS for anyone who has been enchanted by the magic of the Final Fantasy series.Graphics: 9 / 10 (Close to the best seen on the PSP)Sound/Music: 10 /10 (Buying the full sound track has crossed my mind more than once.)Content: 9 /10 (There is a lot to do in this game, but grinding is still a small issue)Writing/story: 8 / 10 (You have to work at the game to put the full story together)Final note: Recommended