So after Anime Boston I was struck with the Final Fantasy Flu.  No, it’s not some sort of con-plague, but rather after having Nobuo Uematsu, composer of Final Fantasies I-X and head music supervisor of the series, as a guest at Anime Boston, as well as him conducting the Video Game Orchestra, I couldn’t help but start playing some of the most recent games in the series and write a little something on each of them.

Upon getting my tax returns I finally got to get my PSP fixed and then get to play my Christmas gift from last year, Dissidia: Final Fantasy. Needless to say, being a huge Final Fantasy fanatic played into my decision to get a PSP, just for this game alone. The story is quite classic and cliche. Forces of good and evil fight. Evil wants to destroy the world and good wants to save it. The twist here involves the heroes and the crystals. (A Final Fantasy game with crystals? How original!) Cosmos, the god of all that is good, is constantly at war with Chaos (who’s name obviously means he’s bad.) Cosmos is losing because Chaos somehow managed to get the big baddies of Final Fantasies I-X to fight for him, and now Cosmos is playing catchup with her motley crew made up of the heroes of those games.

Individually, each character’s stories are quite compelling and all interlink. It’s almost as if someone’s fanfiction or cosplay chess idea evolved into a decent fighting game plot. Usually, with games like Tekken, Soul Calibur and Street Fighter the plots are quite vague, but this one is fleshed out. You fight through generic enemies on each map, unlocking items, summons and other things along the way. Each character has 5 levels to go through and in the last level they fight their respective end boss from their game.

So now you get the gist of it, let’s get down to the review. The visuals are breathtaking. The graphics on this PSP game rival that of the PS2. Both cutscene and in-game graphics are top notch, very Squaresoft. The music will make any Final Fantasy fan orgasm instantly. Each character’s story mode levels feature new arrangements of the map themes from their game, and each character has two different battle themes, a normal one and one from their final boss battle. The voice overs are actually not cringe-inducing. Although a few of the characters sound virtually alike (Cloud, Squall, I’m looking at you two,) the rest of the cast is masterfully acted and extremely enjoyable. I suggest you unlock Kefka, the villain from Final Fantasy VI, right away and play around a bit as him. He’s hilarious.

Graphics 9 / Audio 10

Gameplay wise, the game also controls very tight. Like Square’s earlier entry in the fighting game genre, the Dream Factory developed Ehrgeiz, this game is a 3D fighter. Unlike Ehrgeiz, which played heavily on the Tekken formula, Dissidia gives you a large open 3D arena with boundaries you can smack your opponent into for extra damage, and destroyable environments. The game does not rely on combos in a traditional sense. Attacks are divided into physical and magical components. Every time you make a physical attack and it’s successful you have to recharge that attack. When you attack with magic, you steal bravery (attack strength) from your opponent. Personally, I felt that this was refreshing, as it allows newcomers to jump into th game with no prior experience needed. Because it’s heavily influenced by RPG’s though there is a level up and equipment system (fortunately early on and in story mode you really won’t need to pay too much attention to it.)

Gameplay: 9 / 10

In conclusion, I feel that this game is solid. There are many features I could continue to explain, but I’ll leave that up to gamefaqs.com. The gameplay is nice and easy, although repeat playthroughs will require more strategy than the casual player is used to, especially in a fighting game. The visuals and music are beautiful, and typical of the Final Fantasy series and certainly does it justice.

Overall score: 9.5 / 10

Dissidia: Final Fantasy was developed & published by Square Enix for the PSP. It was released August 25, 2009 and is rated T by the ESRB.

So after Anime Boston I was struck with the Final Fantasy Flu.  No, it’s not some sort of con-plague, but rather after having Nobuo Uematsu, composer of Final Fantasies I-X and head music supervisor of the series, as a guest at Anime Boston, as well as him conducting the Video Game Orchestra, I couldn’t help but start playing some of the most recent games in the series and write a little something on each of them.