Dissidia Duodecim

Dissidia 012: Duodecim: Final Fantasy (hell of a title) is a PSP game which, conceptually is the Super Smash Brother of Final Fantasy in that a bunch of Final Fantasy characters from differing games are brought together in a fighting game with a ridiculous and nonsensical plot, but plays more like an arena fighter. However, how many arena fighters are there that actually work well in a 1v1 combat setting? (The answer is exactly two,  and one of them was the first Dissidia title)

If there are any Final Fantasy fans reading this who have not played the first Dissidia title on PSP, well, first of all, shame on you! But aside from that, you can safely skip it and go straight to Duodecim, since all of the original storyline is contained inside of it. While this is a cool feature and all, it frustrated me to no end that I had to play through a storyline that I had already covered from start to finish again - and its not a short one by any stretch of the imagination!

The plot of Duodecim has some kind of croc-bullshit about the Goddess Cosmos and the God Chaos locked in an eternal war on some world, and summoning warriors to fight for them. These warriors are the main heroes (and villains) of Final Fantasy games I through XIII, with some notable additions and exceptions (there are no villains at all from XI or XIII, and the XII villain is an extra hidden along with two heroines from XI).

This is everyone. I think

The storyline of Duodecim is a prequel, adding in a bunch of extra characters (namely Kain from FFIV, Tifa from FFVII, Laguna from FFVIII, Yuna from FFX, Vaan from FFXII and Lightning from FFXIII). However, there are multiple story modes in Duodecim - just as there was in the original Dissidia title.

Duodecim's initial story mode (012) focuses entirely on the new characters, and their actions (and some kind of explanation as to why they weren't in the first game, since this is a prequel). However, I found this story mode to be a little bit heavy handed on making you play as Lightning. It makes you play 3 chapters solo as Lightning, while everyone else gets a single solo chapter each, and a final chapter where you take all 5 in the newly featured party battles (you're not allowed to take Kain in this particular chapter - which I find highly unfair considering he's one of the cooler characters who was brought in).
This means that in the entirety of the first story mode, you can play as Kain once, everyone else twice, and Lightning 3 or 4 times.

The second story mode - unlocked by completing the initial one - is the story mode from the first Dissidia game. However, the difference here is that it contains the new features from Duodecim - those being Assists, the newly redesigned World Map, and party battles (which are just round robin 1v1s, or a winner stays on form of the same thing). In this story mode, you play as all the old heroes once, bar the Warrior of Light (FFI), who you play twice. You then play the final chapter as a party of 5 characters of your choosing (restricted to heroes from the original game).

Once the second story mode is completed, you unlock yet another story mode title 000 - Confessions of the Creator. This one is an extra one without any real bearing on the plot, and you are allowed to use any unlocked character at all in your 5 person party. This includes villains. However, at this stage in the game, if you have played through the Story Modes and only the story modes (like I did), your villains will be level 1, the heroes you used in the later stages of the second story mode will be approaching level 50, and Lightning will be around level 30. Kain was level 14. This makes taking anyone else a much more difficult option - particularly in this story mode, since the weakest enemy you will find is around level 50 - so you will need to grind in other gameplay modes if you wish to take, say Sephiroth (though why you would take him over Squall is beyond me).

Squall is more badass than you

Gameplay wise, it plays much like the first. If you haven't played that, as I said earlier, shame on you, but it does take a bit of getting used to. It is an arena battler where you fight in one on one situations. Hitting with a standard attack or combo (which can be physical or magical, depending upon how you've set up your character and which character you're using) will deal Bravery damage. This is not "real" damage, but it does reduce the large number on the other character's gauge (you can see both combatant's gauge sets). Dealing Bravery damage to a character reduces the enemy's bravery score and adds the same amount to your own.
However, this alone will not kill a character - it does not act as a health gauge, but more like a momentum gauge than anything. When you reduce a character's Bravery to zero, you inflict upon them a status known as "Bravery Break", awarding you bonus bravery (from a central pool held by the arena itself), as well as rendering the enemy's HP attacks harmless as long as the status persists.
A HP attack is how you actually damage a character in Dissidia - it essentially is a large attack (occasionally a Limit Break pulled from the character's respective game). Connecting with one of these deals HP damage to the enemy equal to the amount of Bravery you have at the time, however it also empties your bravery gauge, allowing the enemy an opportunity to break you, and counterattack. Your bravery regenerates to its initial state after landing a HP attack, however the bigger the blow you dealt, the slower it regenerates.
As you can see, this can lead to some interesting tug of war style battles. I liken the system to an old wrestling game's momentum meter, where you can deal more damage if you have the match leaning in your favour from the regular hits you are dealing out - otherwise you can turn it around in your favour by playing skilfully and not losing your head.

Aside from this, there are other features such as Assists, Summons (though they're reduced to status effects for everyone other than Yuna), the EX gauge and so on, but I'll be here for a week if I try to explain them all.

Not to mention that outside the battles themselves the game is an RPG - including levelling up, equipping abilities, weapons, armour, accessories and summons... and there are many hidden treasures to find and unlock. This game will take hours upon hours to complete, let alone master!

The game was seemingly designed to allow for the kind of combat you see in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. In this, it is quite successful, I have saved many a gameplay replay to watch later - even if it was a lost battle (which I find people are less inclined to save due to the bitterness of defeat), simply because the battle was so fun to enjoy! I had a particularly satisfying battle where I fought as Squall, against a carbon copy of my build of Squall - level, abilities, equipment and all. It was a battle for the ages, and at some stage, I will throw it onto YouTube because I think others may enjoy it.

All in all, Dissidia Duodecim is a fun game, although worth slightly less for people who completed the first title, since you will need to complete the same storyline again (and if you've finished that story, you know how long that will take - not to mention the fact that you need to play through as Zidane again... stupid monkey). Nonetheless, buy it if you have a PSP.

And if you don't have a PSP, then buy one, and Dissidia Duodecim. PSP prices dropped recently so there's no excuse.

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The gaming backlog has been moved to its own separate page, because it makes more sense there. The link on the sidebar will take you there - it has been updated again since I finally finished playing Tales of Symphonia with Sarah over the weekend :P We started playing the sequel to this game, and all I have to say at the moment is YUKIMURA!!!!!!

Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy

As I mentioned previously, on Saturday Sarah and I headed to the city for multiple events. one would be the Japanese Foundation's small expo called "Kingdom of Characters", which had information about characters that Japan had created, along with historical context (a lot of them were done in reaction to events occurring at the time). More on that another time, perhaps.

 It is an Opera House. In Sydney. I am taller than it

Later that evening, we headed to the Sydney Opera House for the main event - Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy. This is a show where a bunch of songs from various Final Fantasy games is played by a symphony orchestra.

The orchestra was conducted by Arnie Roth, who was in Sydney a few years ago for Play: A Videogame Symphony, which I also attended, so I knew that this show was going to be well done. Play was insanely awesome (though a little jarring when it began with the original Super Mario theme, which I'm used to hearing in chiptune form).

Distant Worlds followed form, and was, as far as I'm concerned, better than Play was. Admittedly, a large part of this can be attributed to the music itself, as well as the role that the Final Fantasy games have played in my existence. Final Fantasy VII was the very first RPG that I ever finished (I had played copious amounts of Baldur's Gate before this, but never finished it, and hadn't understood anything about it at that point). Final Fantasy VIII remains my favourite Final Fantasy title to date, and one of my favourite games overall still. I am currently playing through Dissidia Duodecim, Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy XIII, having recently completed I, II and Tactics. Beginning to get the idea here?

Nobuo Uematsu - the composer behind the vast majority of the Final Fantasy music was in attendance at the show. Naturally, I assumed this meant he was going to be there, and possibly doing a signing event afterwards (which was correct), but would be in his own private box for the show itself.

I have never been more wrong in my life. I have also never been so happy that I have been wrong.

After the first song (Prelude, which appears in almost all of the FF series), Nobuo was introduced. He took a bow, accepted the applause, and then sat down. In the crowd. About 8 rows behind me. The people he sat next to were just fans, who had paid to come to the show like everyone else. He just had a regular seat like everyone else!
Naturally, the people who he sat near freaked out. Hell, I would have freaked out too!

The show continued brilliantly - they played all their Final Fantasy VIII songs quite early on though, and later on, it got a little weaker near the end though, by playing songs from Final Fantasy XIV Online (which I don't think many people would have recognised - I played the beta of said game, and didn't purchase it afterwards because I didn't enjoy it), and then the 15 minute opera scene from Final Fantasy VI. While it was performed well, I didn't know the scene, having not played through much of FFVI, and as such it made it difficult. This was remedied with the encore though, being a song everyone knew. This particular encore surprised noone. It was still brilliant though.

The encore, in action

After the show, we linked up with a couple of friends who were up from Melbourne for the show, and lined up for the post-show signing event. There were only 100 tickets sold for this (apparently), and we were lucky enough to get some. We even managed to get fairly close to the front of the line, only waiting about 15 minutes or so to meet Nobuo, Arnie and Kanon (Kanon being a performer they brought in from Japan to sing two of the songs - Suteki da Ne and Memora de la Stono ~ Distant Worlds).
Nobuo had a good laugh at the item I brought for him to sign - a cartridge of the original Final Fantasy game for NES. Or Famicom, since it was actually an original Japanese edition.

Front: Arnie Roth, Nobuo Uematsu

Back: Me, Spritza

So, I met Nobuo, he's awesome. Arnie is also really nice. Unfortunately, I had to move on so others in the line could get their time, so I only got to say thanks to Kanon as she handed me a poster with the trio or autographs on it - although I'm sure she's really cool too. In fact, I plan on buying her new CD when it gets released. Admittedly, a big part of the reason for that is that she has sung 4 Final Fantasy songs on it :P

Best Thing Ever

There's not much to say today. Kind of in a slump of things that have happened.
However, this weekend will change that.

Tonight and tomorrow the Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy concerts are on (Sarah and I are attending tomorrow night's show - as well as attending the meet and greet afterwards where we will meet Nobuo Uematsu, a fact which both excites me and intimidates me a little).

Sunday, we're going to do some archery. Fun times ahead.

From now, I am aiming to keep to an update schedule of Monday/Wednesday/Friday - hopefully giving me time to think of things to talk about, or at least some random things to ramble about like yesterday.

But for today, simply enjoy this photo of the early birthday present Mark bought for me. This is quite possibly the best thing ever - and useful too!

Yes, it "says" things to you in zombie when you press the button

Video Game Music

I have a long history of listening to video game music. Probably because I have a long history of playing video games - and listening to its music simply goes along with it. Sure, you could mute it and play something else (or not), but what's the point of that? It seems detrimental to the experience.

On occasion I'll play a game without sound or music, but this is usually in a situation where the game I am playing is one I can safely play without sound (either its some kind of puzzle game, or an RPG where the soundscape hasn't really grabbed me, or a game with no music at all - although a game without music is a sad thing indeed), but more often than not, I need my game musics.

What pops into your head the moment you hear this? Yes, the guy in that video is playing TWO guitars, but that's not the point. The point is, the game is instantly recognisable from the song. Well, to people from the generation who would have played the older games anyway (do the new ones even have that song? It would hurt my soul if they didn't!)

Of course, there are lesser known song and game combinations that are just as awesome, for other reasons. One of the boss battle themes in Ys 7 sticks in my head every time I hear it. It just fits the tone of the game so perfectly that it just works. I can't really explain it any better than that.

I went to see a show a few years ago, in the Sydney Opera House, titled "Play: A Videogame Symphony". It's pretty much exactly as it sounds like - the orchestra played a bunch of videogame songs, spanning multiple generations. They opened with Mario, played through a variety of songs from games including Halo, Silent Hill (they had Akira Yamaoka there to play the guitar section of the Silent Hill 2 Theme!), Blue Dragon (which convinced me to buy the game, although that turned out to be a horrible purchase), and, of course, Final Fantasy.

This man is better at making music than you ever will be at anything

Nobuo Uematsu (for those who don't know, the composer of almost all the music, for almost the entire Final Fantasy series) is a god among videogame music composers. Hell, simply put, his music makes me happy. Very, very happy. Lately, his tunes have been sticking in my head more so than usual, likely due to a whole bunch of them being remixed and put into Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy - a mashup game where many of the heroes and villains of the Final Fantasy series come together to bash each other. Kind of like Smash Bros, except with an overblown plot, and a more... well... "proper" fighting engine is the best way I can think to put it.

Face it, Smash Bros isn't a real fighting game. Its a game where you kick each other off cliffs. Possibly while shouting "This is SPARTA!"

Your average Super Smash Bros. player

Fortunately for geeks like me, who recognise the true awesomeness of Nobuo's efforts, there is a worldwide touring show, titled "Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy", which features a symphony orchestra playing a selection of Final Fantasy music for the enjoyment of all. Well, the enjoyment of all who turn up to the event, having purchased tickets anyway. Of course I'll be there, are you insane?

And even better, Nobuo is in attendance, and holding a "Meet n Greet" event afterwards. To which I have purchased tickets for.

I will be meeting Nobuo-sama.

So, so happy :)

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game I have a love-hate relationship with. It's also a game that's been bugging me for YEARS. That's right, years.

Yes, the game that has been haunting me for years is a box of tic-tacs

My first encounter with Final Fantasy Tactics was years ago in a gaming magazine (in the days before I had reliable Internet access), in a small article which lamented the fact that there was a new Final Fantasy title (this was after the wild success that was Final Fantasy VII) that wasn't going to make it to Australia. Of course, importing at the time was all but out of my reach due to being young, not having knowledge of how or where to import games from (again, lack of Internet would have me rely on a physical shop that was willing to import a niche title), and not having knowledge on how I would make the damn game work once I had it (because region locking sucks giant donkey balls, and is completely unnecessary).

Cue someone at school handing me a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics on a disc a few years later, after I had offhandedly mentioned that I wanted to play it. This person had a chipped PS1, and a burned copy of the game. I borrowed it, acquired a PS1 emulator for my computer (by then I had amazing dial-up interwebs), and played. 10 minutes later, after the game playing really really slowly (due to the computer being unable to handle the pressures of emulating the Playstation), and a fairly boring (for me at the time) combat system. I returned the disc, and let it go.

Come 20xx, when Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is released for the PSP. A re-release with new cutscenes, a few extra quests, and an extra new cameo character is released. At the time, I have other PSP games to play, and I had remembered how bored I was by the combat when I was younger (and less patient), and so avoided it.

2011, I caved in and ordered the game off PlayAsia. I played it, frustrated the hell out of myself repeatedly, and then eventually finished the game last Friday evening.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a tactical RPG. This makes combat much slower than one is used to from playing other Final Fantasy titles, or (more recently for me) the Tales series. Instead of simply getting control of a character, and telling them to make the magics, or hit the dude with the sword like the other Final Fantasy games, you control a larger party, tell them where to move, if in range you can attack or use magic, etc. Much slower paced, but also much more... well... tactical. Hence the tactics title, I suppose.

This also leaves things more open to confusion early on. The first few battles are ones where you are only able to control your own character - the others are guest characters. This means you spend the majority of the first few battles watching sprites run around and kill each other - while you get to maybe move a few squares here and there. Not much of the battle system is explained to you in-game unless you watch the tutorials separately (which is boring, but it definitely helps).

Eventually when you learn how to play, and get a bit into it, its quite fun. You can switch jobs at will, and every time a character makes a successful action, they earn experience for themselves, and job points for their current job. Experience is a general thing for the character overall - higher level means higher stats to do better at the killing and surviving and the healing things. Very standard.

Job points are used to learn abilities for the current job. For example, 200 job points as a Black Mage can teach you Fira (the level 2 fire spell). Or you can learn Fire, Blizzard and Thunder for a total of 150 (they're 50 each). You also can learn equip abilities, move abilities and reaction abilities for a variety of abilities. Once you learn an ability, you can use it in any job, although there are some requirements (for example, equip the Black Magic skill to be able to use your Black Mage spells in any job other than Black Mage), and certain jobs are better suited to some abilities than others. You'll find that a Knight will tend to do little damage with Black Magic, for example, while a White Mage will likely have a better time using Black Magic as a secondary skill, since their job uses the arcane arts already anyway!

There are quite a lot of jobs in the game, some are specific to certain characters, and a lot of them need to be unlocked by reaching certain job levels in other jobs. For example, the Arithmetician job requires levels in Black Mage, White Mage, Oracle and Mystic to unlock.

The Arithmetician job is also one of the strangest of the lot - when you are using it you get to keep all the spells you learnt as the four aforementioned jobs. You get an ability called "Arithmeticks", which allows you to cast a spell instantly with no MP cost. The catch is that it will hit everyone on the map that is covered by the algorithm you pick. You need to pick a multiple (3, 4, 5 of prime) and a statistic (level, experience, charge time or height on the map), and everyone who matches the particular multiple in the particular statistic that you pick will be hit by the spell. This makes Arithmeticians especially powerful, since they don't even have to move anywhere near danger, as long as you select the correct algorithm and spell combination, you can annihilate an entire squad if you're lucky (in that enemy stats allow you to hit all of them, and not your own side!).

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions features three cameos from other Final Fantasy games. Two of them were in the initial release of the game, and may look somewhat familiar if you look at the screenshot below.

Aren't you supposed to be dead?

Cloud and Aeris - although Aeris is in the game only briefly, Cloud can join your squad. However, he is beyond useless. He comes with no weapon at all, can only use his special skill (which emulates his limit breaks from FFVII) if you equip a certain hidden sword on him, and starts at level 1. When you recruit him, your group is likely to be at least level 40, making him the most useless character I have seen in an RPG to date.

The other cameo, the one introduced especially for this re-release, is much more useful. In fact, he saved my party on numerous occasions, and has been known to end boss battles in a single turn. I blame this on horrible balancing occasionally, or just the fact that he is too much of a badass for everyone's good. He is able to shoot enemies from quite a hellishly long range, sometimes 4 times per turn. He has quite a decent move range (unless you make him a knight or something, which would be STUPID since his original job is better, and special, and once you max it out then Chemist is great to back his killing power with the ability to heal people - and retain the ability to equip guns), and he steals stuff from people.

Because he's a GODDAMN PIRATE.

Also, for some reason, noone in FFT has a nose

Balthier from Final Fantasy XII makes an appearance. I haven't played much of FFXII, but if he is even half as bad-ass in that as he is here, then he will be my permanent party in FFXII.

The entire party. On his own. Because we don't need anyone else. Well, except maybe his bunny-girl partner. Gotta love fanservice!

Thanks Japan!

Games Games Games

Americans get to play Marvel vs Capcom 3 very soon. Like, midnight tonight in whatever stupid timezone they have. I hate you, America. Give me my game already. Grrrr.
I've already decided two thirds of my annihilation party as well (character usefulness notwithstanding) - Dante and Deadpool. Mainly coz they're awesome. The third could well be Viewtiful Joe, or Zero, creating a team entirely of RED.

A friend gifted me Monday Night Combat on Steam the other day. I haven't played any of it beyond the tutorial - but that part was at least fun. It kind of has a Team Fortress 2 feel to it, but making it third person, and allowing for single player defence of the money ball. Tonight, I'm totally gonna give it a bit more of a play.

I haven't touched WoW in at least two weeks. And somehow, I don't miss it. Until I realise that I still haven't quite hit level 85. I don't know, I want to hit level 85, but there are many other games to be playing at the moment.

I prepaid for Dragon Age 2 on Steam. I still haven't played much of the first one. Well, scratch that, I played it for a fair while, however this consisted of replaying the early stages of the game repeatedly. I believe I have completed the Mage origin story and the Ostagar Castle segment of the game at least 4 times now. I have been besieged with horrific luck with this game - one time losing my save and having to start over. Another time finding a weird glitch where it would always revert my save to be inside Lothering again, then upgrading my PC and losing content due to that. Eventually I'll finish it.

Damn, I want Marvel vs Capcom 3 now. NAO I SAY!

I bought a strange little game on the iPhone on Sunday. It's called Dungeon Raid - and combines a puzzle game with an RPG. This is a combination I thought I would see the last of with Puzzle Quest (and my clone of it in Game Dev Story). I thought wrong. It works quite well, although for some reason I still cannot top the score I got on my first play. There's got to be something wrong with being able to get a good score on your first play - and then being unable to repeat it when you understand how the game works!

I also found Devil May Cry on the iPhone. This makes me happy, except for the part where it didn't work - it froze. I then read reports that it worked if you turned WiFi off and were patient with the seemingly frozen load screen. I tested that this morning - lo and behold! The game works! Due to being at work, I didn't actually play the game, but that's likely what my trip home will involve. Or maybe just more Dungeon Raid. Or Final Fantasy Tactics...

I seem to be reaching the late sections of Final Fantasy II. Again, playing this on the iPhone. It was much cheaper to spend $5 or so on the iPhone for it, than to track down and spend $50 on the PSP version. Totally worth it - and the game works just as well. I think its actually identical to the PSP version, so go for it, if you get the chance!

I want to play some Final Fantasy XIII, but my girlfriend just bought a PS3, and wants to play it together. So I'm waiting for her to catch up before I play again. Couple this with staying at her place for the next week and a half starting on Thursday, and I won't be touching the game again for a while. I'll probably forget how the battle system works (again) by the time I get back into it :P

Where's my copy of Marvel vs Capcom 3? :(

Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes is fun. Don't expect a sophisticated game though - it is literally the Dynasty Warrior / Samurai Warriors engine with some tweaks, and shiny graphics, and superpowered samurai. Its still good fun to play as Date Masamune, slashing people up with six swords (all at once, held between his fingers. Yes, he fights as if he's Wolverine, but with swords instead of mere claws).

Ooh, Bulletstorm and Deus Ex: Human Revolution appear soonish! I played Duty Calls, the Call of Duty parody that was an ad for Bulletstorm. Quite a funny game, if you can't afford the 700 MB or so download, then watch the video playthrough at the very least.

I just lost The Game.

Quite sad news that Guitar Hero has officially been killed by Activision. Though interesting that Harmonix plan on pressing ahead with Rock Band. Maybe that means we'll see some of the pro instruments in Australia?
Yeah, as if. That would imply that American game companies saw us as an actual market, rather than a strange sized dump on the southern end of the planet.
I wonder what'll happen to DJ Hero...

I want Marvel vs Capcom 3 gah it hurts just sell me the game already!

PC resurgence?

I noticed something odd about this year.

Most of the games that I know about and really want to buy this year, are games that I want for the PC, and would never consider going for on a console.

This is quite strange - the last time I had many a PC game to look forward too is beyond my memory. Most likely it was in the dark ages before I had a console that still had games being developed for it!

Let's start with the most obvious one - Diablo 3 comes out this year. While there have been rumours of a console release (I cannot recall off the top of my head if they were confirmed or not), I was horrified. Diablo was released on console once. I played it for about 10 minutes, and trying to control it was like stabbing myself in the brain with a wiimote. Even though the closest thing to a wiimote in video game usage at the time was the Power Glove.
Even if the game is released on console, I'll be taking it on the PC thanks - a mouse just works so much better for this kind of game.

On a similar level as far as control scheme goes is Dragon Age 2. The first one had console releases, which I refused to even look at. It'd be like trying to play Baldur's Gate on a console (and I mean the original, top down RPGs, as opposed to the hack n slash fests that were the Dark Alliance games). Try to control, in a tactical manner, 4 characters in real time. It's not happening with that dual-shock, thats for sure!

And then there are the shooters. Some people find using a console much easier for shooting games. Left stick moves, right stick aims, trigger shoots. I think these people are insane - using WASD and mouse just feels more intuitive for an aiming mechanism (that is, until someone hands me a kinect and an FPS that works with it).

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Duke Nukem Forever (assuming that Gearbox aren't rickrolling us by giving us a release date for DNF) and Bulletstorm are all games that fall into this category. AKA shooters that I am buying this year. For the PC.

In fact, the only game that I can think of right this moment that I would be buying for a console is Marvel vs Capcom 3. This would be a direct result of fighting games being utterly horrible on the PC, as well as controller and arcade sticks just working better for that style of game.

All of a sudden I'm glad I upgraded my PC...

PS: Just remembered another console game - Final Fantasy XIII-2. It had to be mentioned, because I needs MOAR FINAL FANTASY!