(Note: I wrote this entire review before reading Jim Sterling's review of the same game. For the record, I strongly disagree with his review and think he bypassed most of the positives of the game. Not to mention reading that review was like watching a person go to McDonald's and get angry because he couldn't get a pizza, complaining that the game wasn't something that it never intended to be. My only rebuttal is that it seemed like Jim played the game for maybe an hour or two and simply put it down and made a brash review).

Die hard fans of the Final Fantasy franchise have no doubt been anticipating the PSP fighter Dissidia. Now while a certain pointy-eared vigilante named Batman might have overshadowed the release of this mash-up I’ve made an attempt to keep Dissidia in the forefront as much as I can. Since the full game has been on western shores for a bit I can safely tell you that my efforts were not in vein, because honestly if you completely hate Dissidia then I seriously question whether or not you like things that are good.

For those of you who are still unaware of what exactly Dissidia is then allow me to give you a summary. Two gods known as Cosmos and Chaos have been waging an eternal war of light and darkness, a war that has remained balanced through the ages. Both sides gather their chosen warriors from various realms, the heroes and villains from the first ten proper Final Fantasy titles, and a good old-fashioned battle of good versus evil takes place with the fate of the world in the balance.

Oddly enough Dissidia doesn’t start up with the role-call and gathering of the various warriors, accumulating with the huge confrontation. Rather, Dissidia opens up with the huge brawl of good versus evil (all shown to you in a very glorious full motion video) and quickly explains that Chaos’s forces have disrupted the war’s balance in their favor. In short the game opens with the good guys barely surviving and bad guys winning, an odd decision in my opinion but one that ultimately works out in the end.

Sandwiched between the, admittedly, lengthy introduction are two tutorial missions to help get you accustomed to the mechanics of Dissidia. Upon starting a new game you’re thrown into an easy battle as the Warrior of Light in order to get a feel for the controls, a handy nice touch that prevents you from jumping headstrong into the game and getting overwhelmed. Another tutorial accompanies the opening to the Destiny Odyssey story mode, again putting you in the shoes of Warrior of Light and giving you a feel for the story modes combat/chess piece system. The tutorials may seem a tad tedious to some, however when compared to the total amount of storyline content found in Dissidia these tutorials are nothing but short, necessary, distractions.



Dissidia packs two different storyline modes into the game; Destiny Odyssey and Shade Impulse, the later of which is unlocked upon completion of a Destiny Odyssey storyline. There are ten different chapters to Destiny Odyssey, each one focusing around the storyline of each Final Fantasy protagonist and his quest to retrieve one of ten crystals as instructed by Cosmos (confused? Don’t worry that big intro I mentioned explains it).

Each character’s Destiny Odyssey storyline functions pretty much like you’d expect. The characters go through their quests, go through gripes and pains similar to what they experienced in their stand-alone Final Fantasy games, and cumulate with your character confronting his or her nemesis. While I will admit that I have not championed all then of the Destiny Odyssey story lines myself yet, the ones I have played through were pleasing experiences and each storyline felt like a fitting extension to the characters original game. None of the characters do anything drastically uncharacteristic and each hero/villain confrontation seems to be very authentic to source material (for example, Dissidia does a truly great job of recapturing how Sephiroth is such an integral force in Cloud’s life). In summary, if you have a favorite Final Fantasy game then you will probably feel joy while playing through its respective Destiny Odyssey storyline.

The Shade Impulse storyline is a second story that you unlock upon completion of any Destiny Odyssey and functions as Dissidia’s second half of the story. Instead of having different storylines per character, however, Shade Impulse features all of the heroes in one overarching story that cumulates with the final battle. This allows you to see the end of the game and do it as the character of your choice, with only minor alterations as each character has another run-in with their respective enemy. It is to be noted though that you should not enter this mode with a low level character, it is a noticeably more difficult mode even compared to the hardest Destiny Odyssey quests.



Beyond the storyline modes Dissidia has to offer, there are a variety of more traditional fighter modes to keep playing. First up is Arcade Mode, which is everything you would expect from a typical fighter. You’re put up against a series of random foes with the difficulty progressively rising on you as you near the end, and completion is rewarded with a large sum of money that you can use to unlock more things. Arcade Mode provides a fitting diversion from the storyline of the game, and lets you just beat up on a few helpless foes.

Quick Battle mode is your standard versus mode. Here you can set up a match and customize a series of features before battle; who you fight, where you fight, and what level your foe is. You can even, to an extent, customize how the AI fights with the character. For me personally, Quick Battle became a good way to test out a few battle tactics and figure out ways to beat foes that were troubling me in Story Mode.

Dissidia also features a two-player mode, referred to as Communications Mode, that allows you to send one of your customized fighters into battle against a friend’s fighter. Sadly this mode can only be done via Ad-Hoc due to a lack of a true-online mode and since I am the only resident PSP owner who owns Dissidia I was not able to review this portion of the game. I will hopefully provide a follow-up article to this review at a later date that details the functionality of this mode.



The final game play mode tha Dissidia features is the Duel Colosseum, which is essentially a survival mode or an endless version of Arcade Mode. You pick whom you want to fight as and from there three ‘cards’ are drawn for you, from there you can pick one of the three cards and determine what happens next. The three cards vary between opponents, treasure chests, and job cards. Opponents explain themselves; you fight another Dissidia character with the chance to win money from them. Treasures require you to spend said earned cash to receive an item, ranging from anything to a basic crafting item to a rare stone needed to receive a powerful weapon. Job cards alter what cards are drawn, how many are drawn, and other scenarios such as healing you after a fight. If you’re one of those people who just absolutely has to get everything in the game and get every character up to level 100 then this is definitely the mode for you, and this mode has been my main area of focus since I got the game. It is important to mention however that the Duel Colosseum isn’t available at the start of the game and is unlocked once you complete the Shade Impulse storyline once.

There are a ton of items to unlock through Dissidia’s various game play modes as well. All of the money you earn through fights, both gil and PP currencies, can be used to purchase new weapons to improve your characters statistics as well as provide secondary abilities. Other things can be unlocked as well including the ability to play as the villains in the various game modes, story mode being the exception, as well as alternate costumes for every character in the game. Other nice items you can discover are two secret characters in the game, more background music, and various voice over works for each character in the game.



The actual fighting mechanics of Dissidia are one of the main things that deserve praise. Each character has two different kinds of attacks in the game; HP attacks and Bravery attacks. The names of these attacks are rather self-explanatory; HP attacks take away an opponent’s health, Bravery attacks reduce an opponent’s bravery and builds up yours. The trick with Dissidia is to keep a good balance of HP and Bravery attacks in play, as both are of equal importance to achieve victory. Hit Points are your health, the most basic stat in the game, and when this reaches zero the fight is over. Bravery Points are the interesting variable that can change the momentum of a fight very quickly. The damage an HP attack deals is directly determined by how many Bravery Points a fighter has. For example; if Sephiroth has 975 BP and then connects with his Octaslash HP attack, the Octaslash does 975 HP damage. While they do no HP damage on their own, landing Bravery attacks are just as important as HP attacks not only because they raise your BP but they also reduce the BP of your opponent. So while you wont be doing any health damage to your opponent, you’re preventing him from landing an attack that could be fatal. This gives Dissidia an extra level of depth to its game play, as you need to keep your variables under control.

Graphically, Dissidia is one of the more impressive PSP titles to come along for a while. While the character models themselves are of absolutely no concern, the arenas themselves are a slight hodgepodge of good and “meh”. Certain arenas such as the ones from FF7 and FFX are exceptionally gorgeous looking arenas full of motion and color, while others like the FF2 and FF6 arenas are rather bland use the same texture on every wall. Thankfully there’s noticeably more ‘good’ graphic wise then there is ‘bad’, however it’s those few areas of the game that make you wonder how much effort was put into them.

Fans, myself included, raised an eyebrow when we were told that Dissidia’s battles would be reminiscent of Advent Children. I’m thankful to say that Dissidia actually accomplishes this. As each characters moves combine with the destructible environments found in each level, it’s very easy to create an Advent Children or dare I even say Dragon Ball Z level battle that makes you really feel as if you’re laying waste to your opponent as you send Tidus flying through a small mountain.



Music has seemingly never been a downside of the Final Fantasy franchise, so it would be hard to assume that Dissidia doesn’t continue the trend of good soundtracks. Even with this in the back of my mind, the soundtrack for this game can only be described as really damn good. Dissidia features recreations of tracks from all across the proper Final Fantasy titles as well as original pieces exclusively for the game. These pieces are used in all sorts of facets in the game as well as traditional themes will play as background music for each Destiny Odyssey storyline. Other various themes are used for battle music and menu themes, including a nice remixed Chocobo theme for the game’s Data Install feature. Dissidia simply has no bad music in it at all from start to finish. As a special note of interest, the ending credits theme for Dissidia is quite possibly the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard in a game and is a true example of the contributions Nobuo Uematsu made to the franchise over the years.

Dissidia is not without faults though, like any other game. A minor thing that can occasionally agitate is that if an enemy starts an HP attack that’s a combo attack, even if you get hit by the very last hit in that chain you take full damage as if you were caught by the full combo. This can be annoying from time to time if you’re fighting a combo-heavy opponent, the only silver lining to this is that you don’t lost as much bravery by only getting caught in part of a combo.

Choas, Dissidia’s final boss, is one of those bosses who carefully tiptoes the line between hard and cheap. His native arena is small and yet his character has many long-range attacks or sweeping moves that damage anything in a certain radius, some of these attacks are unblock-able even and can only be disrupted by specific attacks. While he is certainly a beatable foe, which I might add is quite satisfying, he can certainly be viewed as an annoyance to some but a challenge to others.

The one true flaw I feel exists in Dissidia is the lack of a story mode for the villains. This one is a head scratcher for me considering the whole marketing ploy of the game revolved around “What will you fight for?”, implying you can be good or evil, yet you can only fight as the good guys (something we’ve done already through the proper Final Fantasy titles). The villains definitely get a high amount of face time through the current story, however it would have been nice to fight things out from their point of view and maybe live out a few “What if?” scenarios. Perhaps this is something that can be addressed should a Dissidia sequel come around.



Dissidia: Final Fantasy is definitely a game that drips with fan service for die-hard fans of the franchise. There is clearly a tremendous amount of polish put into making each character feel as authentic to their original universe; stemming from things such as Cecil’s Dark Knight and Paladin modes, Terra’s Atma-Weapon like sword, dialogue boxes kept in the same color and style as each character’s game, and even certain limit break procedures are kept the same. While Dissidia is meant for long-time fans it is also a pretty accessible fighter to those who aren’t as rooted in the franchise as others as it offers a fun yet surprisingly deep fighting experience. It’s hard to argue against Dissidia: Final Fantasy not being one of the top ten, perhaps even top five, PSP games of all time.

(Now, I'll admit that I originally wrote this piece for a different gaming site as an optional secondary review of the game. Thus I submitted my own scores of the game, as seen below. Normally I would omit these from my blog, however considering the length and detail I tried to give with this review I'm going to submit my base scores anyway for reader benefit).

Presentation : 8.5
The cut scenes and overall style of the game are very well done.

Gameplay : 8.5
Not a traditional fighter per say, but offers a modified Kingdom Hearts style with surprising depth.

Sound : 10
Gorgeous recreations of classic Final Fantasy themes, and an overall amazing soundtrack.

Longevity : 9.0
With the various gameplay modes, unlockable items, and different storylines you can easily put 40+ hours into this game.

Overall : 9.0
A very worthy addition to any PSP library, and a reason for die-hard Final Fantasy fans to finally buy themselves a PSP if they already don’t have one.

My Recommendation: Buy It!