HP attacks use the bravery you’ve built up to actually hurt your opponent. Bravery attacks are strikes that add to your own bravery and subtract from your opponent’s. Characters have hit points which govern how much life they have, and bravery points. Watching the particle effects from every strike is stunning, as characters fly through the large creative arenas while engaged in combat.Īlthough this title sports the name Final Fantasy, Dissidia 012’s game play blends its familiar RPG elements in with a fighting system unique to any game out there. Seeing characters from older Final Fantasies who used to be confined to crummy pixels and low quality sprites fully come alive on the PSP’s screen is also a treat. Every character and battlefield are faithfully recreated from their respective game and brought to life again here. Square Enix has always known the importance of great visuals, and they definitely delivered in terms of eye candy. The huge roster doesn’t lend itself to much development, other than background information any Final Fantasy fan would already know about.
The true appeal to this game is seeing a representative from each Final Fantasy on the PSP screen. However, with the amount of fights between each plot point, it was a chore to bother keeping up with the story, other than the fact that there were good guys and bad. The disjointed narratives in each characters story offer a small piece in this puzzle of a plot, and the differing perspectives certainly keep things fresh.
The premise is simple enough, but still succeeds at being more convoluted than the games it pays homage to. To settle their eternal conflict, they summon various warriors to fight in a battle that seems to last forever.
Dissidia 012’s name comes from the twelfth cycle in this war. Two gods, Cosmos and Chaos, are perpetually at war with one another. The main storyline of Dissidia 012 is actually a prequel to the first game. When it comes to sequels to fighting games, the best solution to improving on a great formula is to simply add more of everything, and Dissidia 012 does just that. Judging by the hundreds of hours I’ve put into the first Dissidia Final Fantasy, it’s clear that this game will always be known as one main reason that I own a PSP. Although triple A PSP titles have been few and far in between, when they do show up, the competition can’t help but blush. While a lot of handheld gamers are flocking to the recently released 3DS, people are quick to write off the PSP as yesteryears craze, thinking it has nothing left to offer.
A noteworthy movement of the PSP’s swan song.