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!!!!!!

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!

Horrible name, fun game!

For Christmas, among some really random items (such as Guitar Hero pyjamas, a ninja themed pen, and a manga called "My Girlfriend is a Geek"), my awesome girlfriend got me a copy of a PSP JRPG called Ys SEVEN.

What a stupid name for a game series. How do you pronounce this? Do you pronounce it like "whys"? Do you pronounce it the way the letter y is regularly pronounced? How is it pronounced on its own anyway?

Turns out that it seems to be pronounced "ees". Which is weird. Very weird.

Call it what you want, I found it to be quite an entertaining game. Much of the plot is standard JRPG fare - Adol the main character is a generic warrior type with a thirst for adventure. He enters the country of Altago with his friend Dogi. They get imprisoned quite quickly, then released and told to go check out the nearby shrine. They do so, and are promptly rewarded by having to fight a gigantic creature, hearing the voice of a dragon in their heads, and given some strange power. He then needs to visit other shrines so that he can acquire the powers of all 5 dragons...

Stop me if you've heard this before. To be fair though, it throws a couple of curveballs late in the game.

Generic-y plot aside, it gets fun the moment you're finally allowed out of the city and begin messing with combat.
This is an action rpg, so you need to run out and start hacking yourself, unlike most other JRPGs I've played, where you simply give orders to your party members and watch as they slash things apart for your enjoyment. It plays very much like a hack n slash action game, albeit with restricted combos, and the RPG tropes of experience points, levels etc.

Differing characters have differing weapon types. Adol begins with a slash type weapon, while Adol a smash type (he punches things until they die). Later on, characters with piercing types appear. Different types of enemies react to different types of weapons. For anything with a hard shell, you'll need Dogi to punch them. Hard.

If you've played Final Fantasy X, you'd recognise the idea, since you needed Auron (or the utterly useless Kimahri) to deal with heavily armed creatures more often than not, while Wakka would do well against flying creatures. This works off the same principle - including the part where later on other characters can get the same bonus ability types (by the end, Adol can have weapons that do each type of damage, and his ultimate covers all at once).

Half of the fun really is the combat. It does get a touch repetitive, however being a PSP game, its very easy to break it up between other games. The length also reflects this, being able to be finished in around 30 hours (rather than the standard 50 hours for a jrpg). The good thing about this is that it didn't feel like they were artificially adding to the length.

Well, it didn't feel like that until you had to run around every dungeon you've already completed AGAIN, with a second dungeon inside the first dungeon that you originally couldn't access. I would call bullshit on this, as it seems like an excuse to make you run through the same content, but more often than not you get to the second dungeon quite quickly, with a minimal of running through the first one again. It seems more like setting the game in a single country didn't leave the enough room for all the dungeons they wanted to do, and so needed to place them somewhere, deciding upon hiding them in dungeons you've already been to!

Half the fun of the game is in defeating the titanos - huge monsters that serve as the majority of the game's bosses. There are 3 optional ones to deal with as well, that are kind of in the way on random wilderness areas - but if you try to fight them the first time you find them, it is absolutely certain that you will find yourself on the Game Over screen in short order. You need to run for dear life at first, returning when you're much more powerful to deal with them.

On that note, the soundtrack is quite good. Particularly the early-game boss theme. Quite a rousing tune - perfect for annihilating titanos!

All in all, I enjoyed it. Might look into some of the other eeeeeses :P