Fanboyism at its greatest

Greetings everyone! I come to you fresh from an insomniaic night to bring you my thoughts on the game that kept me me up. its time to hit up some Final Fantasy Dissidia.

now before i say anything else, yes it IS in japanese. and believe me theres a lot of it. my eyes hurt from all the unreadable material. but dedicated as i am to the appraisal of any game that pits you against another to fight it out, i trucked on through.
Ill start with the visuals first since you dont have to be chuck norris to figure out if they are good or not. for a psp game, this game delivers some really solid graphics. in-fight visuals are very fluid and pretty. the effects from the charactes attacks are reminiscent of the efffects used in Kingdom Hearts. cinematics are beautiful, boasting the same visual greatness that can be seen in advent children.

the fighting is unique.the goal is to eliminate your opponent by bringing his hp down to 0.(PLEASE FORGIVE ME, THIS MAY GET A BIT CONFUSING) you have two types of attacks: hp and brave each targeting your opponents hp and bp respectively. bp determines how much damage your hp attacks do and can be stolen from the opponent using your brave attacks(loss of bp does not mean loss of hp). you get to assign three different kinds of attacks and i am still unsure wether or not they can link or combo togehter(sorry i cant read japanese). when your bp is brought down to zero by an opponents attack you enter break state. a pool of brave points that sits between the life gauges gets awarded to the breaker giving him high hp damage potential, while the broken is left with a small amount of slowly increasing bp. the broken is unable to steal bp in this state but can still gain some by attacking the opponent.
there is a “guard” button but it acts as more of a parry deflecting oncoming attacks (assuming they dont have guard break capabilities). if you cant guard an attack you have the option of preforming a dodge instead (complete with some invicibility frames).

strewn about the almost vast stages are interactable surfaces and “railings” by pressing the triangle button where applicable, you have the ability to run on walls, jet across to a distant platform, or grind quickly across the “railings” (each with their own unique look. the lifestream stage has railings that look like small lifestream trails, stuff like that). as you can imagine this greatly helps to keep long range zoning to a minimum, or at least it limits it to those who are good at it(its not as big a problem as you might think, dealing with zoners that is)

next to your life gauge is an ex meter (of which filling it i still havent a clue on how to do). the only thing i can tell you about ex meter is that when it is full you can activate your characters ex mode. each character has different traits so nobody’s ex mode is the same. while in ex mode you regenerate hp at a slow steady rate and your critical attack rate becomes higher (if not guarenteed. crits only apply to brave attacks). upon successful connection of an hp attack while in ex mode, a prompt will appear that will activate your characters overdrive (or at least thats what i like to call it). each characters inputs for a perfect overdrive are different, but each overdrive has inputs that you must quickly and accurately put in to raise the damage output of the overdrive. on the other end of the spectrum, if you are on the recieving end of an overdrive, you can mash a button to raise your defense to it.

without getting too in-depth, thats pretty much FF-Dissida for ya. as for my opinion on it….
~Ahem~
First thing is first. Be aware that this game is not the deepest or most innovative game. It is what it is and it is your job to accept it and have fun, or fly off to play your horribly made and incomplete FPS game that is undoubtedly resint inside your system now as you read this(shame on you!). I, for one, choose to accept that this game can be slightly repetitive and fanservicey while still being entertaining and refreshing. its interesting how they interpreted each charactres fighting style and boy is it good to see no ATB gauge. For dedicated fans (coughcoughfanboys/girls) the music is probably one of the biggest selling points (i know im lovin the music selection) as they straight rip a few classics as well as remix or redo others. the game is nice on the eyes, its not frustrating once you get used to the system, and im sre itll be fun to pit yourself against another friend ( i have been dying to do so for days). also the fact that you can use up to 24 different characters means your destined to find the charactert hat fits your style of play (no poty exploits thank you very much).
Overall id say this gets about an 8 outta 10 on my scale. not really much id like to complain about.
(ps. im not sure the thumbnail is working…sorry guys)