The Anti-Smash Bros.
Dissidia Final Fantasy was actually the first game I ever pre-ordered. Why? I don't know, man. Why does a nine year old do anything? All I do remember is that I played the ever-living fuck out of it. And I will admit, going back into it now...I was actually kind of excited. Certainly nostalgia would blind me somewhat, but the game is pretty fondly remembered overall. But damn was I in for a surprise.
Disclaimer: I'm not your average fighting game player. I've played most fighting games, and I generally understand how they work, but I'm nowhere near an expert on the topic. I'm the kind of guy who enjoys going a few rounds...until I start getting my shit kicked in by random people online. I don't really care to learn tier-lists, memorize frame-data, or to spend hours labbing in training mode. I'm just there for a bit of fun.
So here I was thinking Dissidia would fill that niche like Smash Bros can. Sure, Smash might not be oriented around the usual competitive fighting game tenets, but it prioritizes streamlined fun and is usually a crowd pleaser. Unfortunately, I forgot this game also carried a SQUARE ENIX logo on the box.
Role Playing Fighting Game: A Match Made in Hell
So I'll begin where most people would: Dissidia's story mode. The formatting and presentation is as over-designed as anything else SE puts out--featuring needless 'level' design, optional fights, special treasures (that require replays to obtain) and long-winded Kingdom Hearts-style cutscenes every forty-five seconds.
But the real sin about story mode isn't the presentation, it's the real content of it. The character customization is one of the worst ideas I've seen in a fighting game, period. Requiring players to pick and choose only a handful of attacks is an awful idea. Imaging if you were playing Street Fighter and had to pick between a low kick or an anti-air--it's awful. Moreover, the decision to gate even basic abilities behind levels and character restraints is somehow an even worse idea. Would you rather be able to use a projectile or fucking block? Pick your poison.
As a consequence, characters feel incredibly limited and one-note. They essentially have 2 attacks and maybe the ability to dodge if you're lucky. It doesn't empower player decisions, but instead requires them to boil down each fight into a spam-fest of their hyper-limited moveset. This comes off as one of the laziest design choices I've ever seen. The game might have been on the PSP, but even goddamn Tekken 6 got a release on the console--they weren't held back by the hardware here.
Limited moveset aside, the RPG system also allows the developers to lazily design the story mode as well. Enemies don't have to be particularly smart--they never are. Instead, enemies just need to be higher level than you. They can have the same level 1 AI, but now it takes 100 hits for you to kill them...and 3 hits for them to kill you. It's comedically unfair and boils away what little goodwill I had for the game's story mode. It's anti-fun and spits in the face of both competitive and party fighting games.
Beyond that, Dissidia has all the other bloat that an RPG has--with none of the benefits. Now you need to equip your fighter with weapons, armor, accessories, summons, etc. You've got a store that you need to buy and sell stuff from. You have trading mechanics so you can trade X for Y so you can get +1 STR on your character's stats. In a game that's ultimately supposed to be about fighting people for fun, Dissidia misses the forest for the trees by shoving in all of its needless RPG bullshit that offers little in the way of reward.
What's in a match?
At their rawest level, all fighting games boil down to rock-paper-scissors. Knowing when to commit to a hit, low-block, parry, anti-air, etc. can make all the difference in the match. This isn't a bad thing though: all genres can be boiled down to essential 'games' that we play. However, a good fighting game will dress up this raw gameplay with loads of interesting mechanics, stylish visuals, and satisfying animations. Dissidia not only fails to capture any of this, but it somehow embarrasses itself by presenting this raw gameplay as a genuine mechanic.
The launch mechanic transforms Dissidia into literal rock-paper-scissors, requiring players to 'guess' either X or Y to dodge the next attack. If you launch someone and they guess correctly, then they're now able to put you in the hot seat instead. This is, perhaps, the worst fighting game mechanic I have ever seen. There's no reason to ever make use of it--since it puts you at a 50% chance risk of getting blown up without having any way to stop it. It completely ruins several characters as viable fighters and turns much of the game into just pressing X or Y while slow animations play out.
On top of that, the game's two different attack types (the aforementioned X and Y) are a terrible and poorly implemented idea. Making 50% of your attack options do effectively 0 damage (since bravery can easily be lost) is just another way Dissidia sucks away the fun from fighting games. Moreover, the stark variation of attack styles (ranging on a spectrum from slow and hard magic to quick melee combat) means that the game would never have a chance to be even remotely balanced.
And don't get me wrong--I don't mind it if a fighting game isn't perfectly balanced. Hell, look at Third Strike. That game is as fun as hell and half of the roster is total trash. What matters though, is that there are several interesting and satisfying options to please a wide variety of players. In Dissidia, we're instead left with numerous playstyles that are essentially non-viable.
The game's animations are so slow and sluggish that the ability to genuinely combo is rare--and therefore prized. Any character that can actually land a bravery attack and follow through with an HP hit is immediately the best character in the game--because so many others can't. Why would I play as Terra when all she does is spam projectiles that are easily dodged? Why would I play as Tidus when his combat mainly focuses on launching people and playing rock-paper-sicssors? You can see where the logic's going here.
To make matters worse, the lack of clear combat design means that fighting is very difficult because there's zero consistency. You're never quite sure how far Terra's projectiles fly compared to Onion Knight. You're not sure what kind of projectile it is either: straight? homing? delayed? teleportation based? The same applies to regular attacks. Are they aerial or ground based? How high/far to they go? How many strikes does it have? Does it have armor or will attacks cancel the animation? The constant guessing game leads to a slew of missed attacks, surprise hits, and general confusion in what should be a easy to pick-up-and-play experience.
Ultimately, Dissidia matches boil down to spamming aerial dodges and waiting for EX power-ups until you can land one EX hit on your opponent to finish the match. If you get lucky you might be able to abuse the godawful AI and terrible stage design to land an extra hit or two, but it might not matter if they're 10 levels above you anyways. It's slow, it's tedious, it's unfair, and most importantly it's fucking lame. And if there's one thing a fighting game should never be, it's lame.
Dissidia: RE:coded
And I didn't even mention the godawful story this thing has. Of course, the idea of a Final Fantasy fighting game with a story was always going to be dumb. These games have nothing in common and it was always going to be weird to have Tidus standing next to the non-character Warrior of Light from the original Final Fantasy. At best, it just needed to not be Kingdom Hearts...unfortunately that was asking too much.
Obviously I'm not looking for high-art here, it's a fighting game story. I'm just looking to be entertained and see some cool shit. But let's be honest: this is post-Nomura takeover of Final Fantasy, it was never going to be cool. Instead, we're left with characters awkwardly standing around and slowing expositing about the three things that all Kingdom Hearts characters talk about: friendship, dreams, and hearts.
It might sound like I'm taking the piss here, but it's hyper-surreal to see characters that I've known from other games be so radically re-written here to fit the generic Kingdom Hearts mold that many now associate with them. Some I'm used to (Cloud), while others were frankly offensive. Terra's transformation in particular is fucking awful. From one of the leading voices in Final Fantasy VI to a helpless girl that relies on a literal child to protect her (keep in mind she's older than most of the other fighters on the cast) is nothing short of absurd. It certainly doesn't help that she's the only female protagonist here either.
Much like the gameplay of Dissidia, every character gets boiled down into their worst possible form in order to facilitate this bore of a narrative aimed at five-year-olds. Like I said before, fighting games don't need to be high-concept, they just need to be sick-as-shit, and sick-as-shit this narrative ain't.
Super Smash this shit out of my fucking face
In Smash Bros. we have a fighting game that managed to defy all regular conventions and find a new captive audience. It's fast, graceful, intuitive, and deceptively simple. In Dissidia we have a fighting game that also managed to defy all regular conventions, but it only found an audience of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts die-hards that would swallow a Tidus-themed cyanide pill. It's incredibly slow, clunky, bloated, and shockingly shallow despite it all.
It's lame, it's a mess, and most importantly: it's anti-fun. My only solace is that I don't have to worry about this genre of game ever taking off like Smash Bros. did. These types of godawful uninspired arena fighting games can be and only will be made based on Anime franchises. Franchises who's fans are so obsessed that they'd buy anything--including these disasters.
Dissidia Final Fantasy was actually the first game I ever pre-ordered. Why? I don't know, man. Why does a nine year old do anything? All I do remember is that I played the ever-living fuck out of it. And I will admit, going back into it now...I was actually kind of excited. Certainly nostalgia would blind me somewhat, but the game is pretty fondly remembered overall. But damn was I in for a surprise.
Disclaimer: I'm not your average fighting game player. I've played most fighting games, and I generally understand how they work, but I'm nowhere near an expert on the topic. I'm the kind of guy who enjoys going a few rounds...until I start getting my shit kicked in by random people online. I don't really care to learn tier-lists, memorize frame-data, or to spend hours labbing in training mode. I'm just there for a bit of fun.
So here I was thinking Dissidia would fill that niche like Smash Bros can. Sure, Smash might not be oriented around the usual competitive fighting game tenets, but it prioritizes streamlined fun and is usually a crowd pleaser. Unfortunately, I forgot this game also carried a SQUARE ENIX logo on the box.
Role Playing Fighting Game: A Match Made in Hell
So I'll begin where most people would: Dissidia's story mode. The formatting and presentation is as over-designed as anything else SE puts out--featuring needless 'level' design, optional fights, special treasures (that require replays to obtain) and long-winded Kingdom Hearts-style cutscenes every forty-five seconds.
But the real sin about story mode isn't the presentation, it's the real content of it. The character customization is one of the worst ideas I've seen in a fighting game, period. Requiring players to pick and choose only a handful of attacks is an awful idea. Imaging if you were playing Street Fighter and had to pick between a low kick or an anti-air--it's awful. Moreover, the decision to gate even basic abilities behind levels and character restraints is somehow an even worse idea. Would you rather be able to use a projectile or fucking block? Pick your poison.
As a consequence, characters feel incredibly limited and one-note. They essentially have 2 attacks and maybe the ability to dodge if you're lucky. It doesn't empower player decisions, but instead requires them to boil down each fight into a spam-fest of their hyper-limited moveset. This comes off as one of the laziest design choices I've ever seen. The game might have been on the PSP, but even goddamn Tekken 6 got a release on the console--they weren't held back by the hardware here.
Limited moveset aside, the RPG system also allows the developers to lazily design the story mode as well. Enemies don't have to be particularly smart--they never are. Instead, enemies just need to be higher level than you. They can have the same level 1 AI, but now it takes 100 hits for you to kill them...and 3 hits for them to kill you. It's comedically unfair and boils away what little goodwill I had for the game's story mode. It's anti-fun and spits in the face of both competitive and party fighting games.
Beyond that, Dissidia has all the other bloat that an RPG has--with none of the benefits. Now you need to equip your fighter with weapons, armor, accessories, summons, etc. You've got a store that you need to buy and sell stuff from. You have trading mechanics so you can trade X for Y so you can get +1 STR on your character's stats. In a game that's ultimately supposed to be about fighting people for fun, Dissidia misses the forest for the trees by shoving in all of its needless RPG bullshit that offers little in the way of reward.
What's in a match?
At their rawest level, all fighting games boil down to rock-paper-scissors. Knowing when to commit to a hit, low-block, parry, anti-air, etc. can make all the difference in the match. This isn't a bad thing though: all genres can be boiled down to essential 'games' that we play. However, a good fighting game will dress up this raw gameplay with loads of interesting mechanics, stylish visuals, and satisfying animations. Dissidia not only fails to capture any of this, but it somehow embarrasses itself by presenting this raw gameplay as a genuine mechanic.
The launch mechanic transforms Dissidia into literal rock-paper-scissors, requiring players to 'guess' either X or Y to dodge the next attack. If you launch someone and they guess correctly, then they're now able to put you in the hot seat instead. This is, perhaps, the worst fighting game mechanic I have ever seen. There's no reason to ever make use of it--since it puts you at a 50% chance risk of getting blown up without having any way to stop it. It completely ruins several characters as viable fighters and turns much of the game into just pressing X or Y while slow animations play out.
On top of that, the game's two different attack types (the aforementioned X and Y) are a terrible and poorly implemented idea. Making 50% of your attack options do effectively 0 damage (since bravery can easily be lost) is just another way Dissidia sucks away the fun from fighting games. Moreover, the stark variation of attack styles (ranging on a spectrum from slow and hard magic to quick melee combat) means that the game would never have a chance to be even remotely balanced.
And don't get me wrong--I don't mind it if a fighting game isn't perfectly balanced. Hell, look at Third Strike. That game is as fun as hell and half of the roster is total trash. What matters though, is that there are several interesting and satisfying options to please a wide variety of players. In Dissidia, we're instead left with numerous playstyles that are essentially non-viable.
The game's animations are so slow and sluggish that the ability to genuinely combo is rare--and therefore prized. Any character that can actually land a bravery attack and follow through with an HP hit is immediately the best character in the game--because so many others can't. Why would I play as Terra when all she does is spam projectiles that are easily dodged? Why would I play as Tidus when his combat mainly focuses on launching people and playing rock-paper-sicssors? You can see where the logic's going here.
To make matters worse, the lack of clear combat design means that fighting is very difficult because there's zero consistency. You're never quite sure how far Terra's projectiles fly compared to Onion Knight. You're not sure what kind of projectile it is either: straight? homing? delayed? teleportation based? The same applies to regular attacks. Are they aerial or ground based? How high/far to they go? How many strikes does it have? Does it have armor or will attacks cancel the animation? The constant guessing game leads to a slew of missed attacks, surprise hits, and general confusion in what should be a easy to pick-up-and-play experience.
Ultimately, Dissidia matches boil down to spamming aerial dodges and waiting for EX power-ups until you can land one EX hit on your opponent to finish the match. If you get lucky you might be able to abuse the godawful AI and terrible stage design to land an extra hit or two, but it might not matter if they're 10 levels above you anyways. It's slow, it's tedious, it's unfair, and most importantly it's fucking lame. And if there's one thing a fighting game should never be, it's lame.
Dissidia: RE:coded
And I didn't even mention the godawful story this thing has. Of course, the idea of a Final Fantasy fighting game with a story was always going to be dumb. These games have nothing in common and it was always going to be weird to have Tidus standing next to the non-character Warrior of Light from the original Final Fantasy. At best, it just needed to not be Kingdom Hearts...unfortunately that was asking too much.
Obviously I'm not looking for high-art here, it's a fighting game story. I'm just looking to be entertained and see some cool shit. But let's be honest: this is post-Nomura takeover of Final Fantasy, it was never going to be cool. Instead, we're left with characters awkwardly standing around and slowing expositing about the three things that all Kingdom Hearts characters talk about: friendship, dreams, and hearts.
It might sound like I'm taking the piss here, but it's hyper-surreal to see characters that I've known from other games be so radically re-written here to fit the generic Kingdom Hearts mold that many now associate with them. Some I'm used to (Cloud), while others were frankly offensive. Terra's transformation in particular is fucking awful. From one of the leading voices in Final Fantasy VI to a helpless girl that relies on a literal child to protect her (keep in mind she's older than most of the other fighters on the cast) is nothing short of absurd. It certainly doesn't help that she's the only female protagonist here either.
Much like the gameplay of Dissidia, every character gets boiled down into their worst possible form in order to facilitate this bore of a narrative aimed at five-year-olds. Like I said before, fighting games don't need to be high-concept, they just need to be sick-as-shit, and sick-as-shit this narrative ain't.
Super Smash this shit out of my fucking face
In Smash Bros. we have a fighting game that managed to defy all regular conventions and find a new captive audience. It's fast, graceful, intuitive, and deceptively simple. In Dissidia we have a fighting game that also managed to defy all regular conventions, but it only found an audience of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts die-hards that would swallow a Tidus-themed cyanide pill. It's incredibly slow, clunky, bloated, and shockingly shallow despite it all.
It's lame, it's a mess, and most importantly: it's anti-fun. My only solace is that I don't have to worry about this genre of game ever taking off like Smash Bros. did. These types of godawful uninspired arena fighting games can be and only will be made based on Anime franchises. Franchises who's fans are so obsessed that they'd buy anything--including these disasters.