Working as Intended

As a fair warning, there may or may not be vague spoilers for 012's storyline within, if you care for that sort of thing.

I may as well start off this set of ramblings I'm going to call a review just for the sheer sake of it with two somewhat controversial opinions. Firstly, I'm not the largest fan of the pre-PSX Final Fantasy titles. V was pretty rockin' and VI is an all-time great, but IV and downwards are completely unremarkable to me. I appreciate what they did for the series, especially IV, but I can't get through them without copious amounts of patience and drinking.

Secondly, I vastly prefer the secondary characters in the series to the main protagonists. For all of Squall's time traveling and angst adventures, it was the silly and surprisingly interesting antics of Laguna and friends that kept me interested. If VII had been all about Cid 'Sit Down and Drink Your Goddamn TEA' Highwind as he traveled to the store for cigarettes, which somehow turned into a 40+ hour journey to save the world, I would probably still be playing it. And if I had my way, Sazh and Fang would be the ones kicking asses and striking poses in Dissidia 012, instead of Lightning. Alas, you just can't have everything.

All that being said, Dissidia 012 [duodecim]: Final Fantasy immediately gets on my good side (and certainly not because of the frickin' title) for having 70% of it's new cast inclusions be sidekicks from the various later Final Fantasy titles. Hooray! For those curious, the newcomers are Lightning, Kain, Laguna, Tifa, Yuna, Vaan, Prishe and Gilgamesh. Vaan is practically a side-kick to his own game anyway, so we'll let him slide. Still want my goddamn Fang and Sazh though, guys!

No, seriously. What's the deal?

If for some reason you're somehow reading this textual vomit and don't know what Dissidia is, here's the haps, yo. It's a video game series on the PSP which has Final Fantasy characters come together under some pretty dubious terms just so they can wallop the ever-loving shit out of each other, while what the game laughingly calls a plot happens in the background to the excitement of absolutely nobody.

I.. really didn't care for the first game. The battle system itself was good fun, but I honestly got so bored of the  story mode that I never finished it proper, just downloaded a 100% save file and spent my days in Free Battle and watching the cutscenes in Theatre Mode. I spent a lot of time in Free Battle, but that's not the point here. I just couldn't find myself caring for the plot or the characters in the slightest. Even watching the cutscenes without the boggish checkerboard-based gameplay didn't help my enthusiasm.

So how does Dissidia 012 [duodecim Donkey Kong Country]: Final Fantasy fare?




If absolutely nothing else can be said for the game's story mode after that little rant above, let it be this; Not only did I finish 012's story, it actually intrigued me enough about the concepts behind the game to tackle the somewhat reworked version of the original's story, included as a bonus. In honesty it has the same problems the first game's did, what with the way too much melodrama and constantly keeping the actually interesting concepts vague as all hell. Unlike the first, however, 012 focuses a lot on how the characters react to the events around them, rather than just constant exposition and melodrama mayhem that the first was notorious for delving into every four nanoseconds.

It also helps that Laguna is there, since he can't keep a serious scene going for very long, the lovable clumsy doofus.

The story, despite how downright weird and non eventful it can be at times, has this perplexing charm to it. You start to care for the characters as you go along, and I don't want to spoil anything else, so let's just drop the story chatter, shall we? Gameplay-wise, 012's story mode is absolutely leagues ahead of the original. Two of the biggest changes being the inclusion of an explorable World Map, where you can hunt for shinies or chat was party members to learn a bit more about 'em, and the fact that the checkerboard-esque gameplay doesn't suck now. Which is worthy of a goddamn cheer in and of itself.

It's hard to describe the improvements to the board unless you've suffered through the first game's attempt at it. Sadly the game does like to throw you into them a wee bit too much than most would like, but you can mow through them at a much more enjoyable pace now, and the little improvements to it here and there are what make the biggest difference.





Leaving the boring, stodgy malarkey about gameplay and story and blah blah blah behind, I have to say one of my favorite things about Dissidia 012: [duodecimramalamadingdong]: Final Fantasy is just how tounge-in-cheek it can be at times. The series is infamous for taking itself way too seriously at times, especially in recent titles, so it's very refreshing to see the game just become downright silly at times. Like a Moogle sending you a message to not stare at Ultimecia's cleavage. Or seeing Kefka annoy the living hell out of Kuja by referring to his bizarre man-thong. They also enjoy trying to sneak an awful lot of things under the radar, like making the first item you ever receive while playing Tifa's campaign be a Pearl Necklace.

Real subtle there, guys.

You can tell the writers were having a lot more fun with this title, especially in the cutscenes, compared to the first game, where the dialogue was very generic and stilted. There's still shades of that here and there, but for the most part what isn't legitimately interesting is often just plain funny. It won't win any awards, but it doesn't have to. It's just good ol' goofball humour.

Before moving onto the part where I rant uncontrollably about a certain aspect of the game, as is obligatory in these exceedingly long diatribes, there's just one more thing I have to gush about. Square-Enix deserves quite a bit of kudos for the sheer amount of content they've managed to slam into one little UMD. There's three 12+ hour long story modes to complete (including a reworked version of the original game's), quite a few extra modes you can do whenever you want to, several truck-loads full of unlockable items and shinies, a tool where you can create your own quests and share them with friends, and a fully functional and pretty damn advanced theatre/editing tool for your replays.

Most $120AU HD-Console games don't come with most of that these days, let alone on a little ol' PSP.

I can't personally speak much about the Quest Creator, since I haven't really delved into making one yet, but from what I did see, it's pretty simplistic, but still has a lot of flexibility. You can write your own dialogue for cutscenes (which are just backgrounds, but if you expecting to animate your own fight scenes and stuff you may be asking for a little too much, there, buddy) and I did download some that people have made, and... well, they're mostly what you'd expect.

Most of them are just avenues for fanfiction (which isn't bad thing, mind), but there were a few gems. Like a quest someone made that involved Gilgamesh traveling the multi-verse and then falling in love with Kuja, with the expect hi-larious results. Or the obligatory 8-Bit Theatre remake, using Warrior of Light's new FF1 Fighter skin for the sword swinging mayhem. No sword-chucks though, sadly, yo.

As for theatre mode... it honestly surprises me that more people, or at least reviews, aren't discussing it. While it was in the first game too, the fact that you can not only record your fight scenes, but actually edit them while still in the game and make a single, multi-angled video in a couple of dozen minutes is pretty damn amazing. Even Halo, what's considered the flagship for non-PC gameplay recording, doesn't allow to pause your recording clip so you can change camera angles in the one video. Usually you'd have to render several smaller clips, then jump on the PC and use a program to smoosh them together again.

Here's an example I cooked up in about 20 minutes, after reading the in-game tutorial and experimenting for a little bit~




Now, I'm not about to win any Machinima awards for captivating camera display there, but the sheer fact that I could do something like that with just a little bit of creativity and fidgeting the in-game camera about on a PSP, of all things, is pretty damn commendable.

Or you could do something shiny like the video below, if you have infinitely more patience and awesome than I have. Which isn't hard, granted, but it's still a great testament to how flexible the theatre mode in the Dissidia series can be, if you put the effort into learning it~




Okay, so I think Dissidia 012's a good, solid game. We all got that down?

Good.

Because now I'm going to rant uncontrollably about it, because's it's GODDAMN STUPID.

If you've played the game and experienced this battle before, feel free to just close the browser after I mention the enemy, because you'll completely understand what I mean, so there's no reason for you to continue. I'll abbreviate the name to avoid total spoilers for all none of you who give a shit. Okay? Okay. Here goes...

So, F.C, right?

Annnnd there goes the closing of browsers. The system works. Anyway, so about that fight. Okay, in the first Dissidia the maximum HP a character or boss could was generally 9,999. Some went over that, but it wasn't a big deal. F.C as 125,000+ HP. So, yeah, I hope you like the idea of fighting the equivalent of a battalion of enemies in one go, because you're just going to have to suck it up if you want to complete the technically optional content. But HP isn't the big issue, oh no...

You see, F.C can occasionally just up and decide that, you know what, he doesn't want to take any damage today. Or do anything except give you hugs of the giant hideously sharp claws to the torso variety. If he feels like it, which is 99.9999% of the time, he'll just up and break the rules of the game. He shattered the HP rule, so why not go for broke? Oh, and he has variables that multiply his accessories 90 times. So, if he were wearing even a 3% Damage increase accessory (one of the weakest available), you can see what sort of shit would go down.

As of right now, there's only 2-3 viable ways of killing him.

1) Be the world's best player/borderline psychotic.
2) Spend hours grinding for an Iai Strike set-up for Yuna and spam Megaflare like the dickens.
3) Grab a Lvl.99 Kuja and spam Ultima for, say.... half an hour?

And when I say spam, I mean spam. As in if you're pressing the square button at all times, you're dead. F.C has this wonderful habit of blocking any damage you may do, being invincible to anything else, and just waltzing over and insta-killing you. While you thankfully get 5 people to use during the fight, if you lose one of your mains, you may as well just quit.

Preferably via the medium of hurling the PSP at a brick wall.

Or he might just essentially teleport behind you and kill you. That's cool too, right?

I think when designing this boss, SquareEnix must have signed up with an agreement to the Fighting Game Guild, that requires at least one boss per game be designed specifically for the purpose of driving 99% of players to the point one can only describe as Super Homicidal. F.C is legitimate SNK-boss difficult, he's that much of a bitch to fight. Hell, I bet most SNK bosses would look at the guy once and just start contemplating their lot in life, as there's no way they could possibly be as cheap and obnoxious as him. Hail to the king, baby.




So, yeah, anyway..

One certain farkin' boss aside, Dissidia 012 [duodecimiliketoitles]: Final Fantasy is pretty much everything the original game should have been. It's story... isn't exactly awe-inspiring, but it's plenty entertaining, the battle mechanics got little updates that go a long way, and the overall tone of the game is much more light-hearted and welcoming, despite what the Darker and Grittier advertising would have you believe.

The biggest question being left in 012's wake is if there will be another game, and if so, who will it include? I suppose that's the case for most fighting games, but you generally have to wade through several forum pages full of whining and bitching to find them. This doesn't seem to be the case with 012, but I'm sure the Internet will unfortunately prove me wrong on this point too.

In any case, game's good, go buy it, F.C can kindly go die in a fucking fire.

And now, the obligatory wacky Laguna screenshot!

He so cray-zee~