The battle of good against evil continues in Dissidia Final Fantasy thanks to an impeccable port for PlayStation 4 of the Japanese recreational.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, Analysis
It seems to be a lie but this 2018 will be ten years ago that Dissidia Final Fantasy , a videogame of struggle between the protagonists and antagonists of the Final Fantasy franchise, was launched on the market for the Sony PlayStation Portable portable game console. A notorious video game that reinvented the fight genre by adding rolero components and a story that explained why Squall, Terra, Kefka or Bartz were in an unknown dimension with the sole objective of fighting each other.
Shortly after the success of the first installment, Square Enix dared to release a sequel that vastly improved the possibilities seen in the original. More scenarios, more fighters, more game modes. A more and better in every rule that today is still remembered as one of the best titles for PSP. Being the first UMD a videogame tribute to the 20th anniversary of the franchise , there were certain fears that the formula did not fit too much with the target audience and that it was successful enough to revive the brand, this time in the arcades and already in 2015.
From the recreational home
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is neither more nor less than an almost perfect port of the original recreational launched three years ago in Japan that now comes to PlayStation 4 consoles from half the world. It is important to emphasize the text quoted in bold at the beginning of the paragraph because it affects and a lot at the time of deciding to get us with it . Dissidia Final Fantasyis a Nippon cabin that uses the battle system of the original deliveries but with combats 3 vs. 3 and completely eliminating the team personalization of the fighters. It is focused on the online aspect and all this set of features is what you get your version for PS4. That is why we have analyzed the title according to what Square Enix promised that would come to us and not as a new iteration of the path that started the saga on PSP. We highlight the text because not a few players are already those who have sharpened their axes on the internet, game in hand, complaining that the title is not a Dissidia to use but an adaptation of the PS4 recreational badge. Forgive us the insistence.
What does this mean? In addition to what we have already commented, the usual rolero point in Dissidia Final Fantasy does not appear in this new installment . It has been completely eliminated as well as basic aspects such as customization and weapons equipment to make way for battles three against three instead of the usual 1 vs. 1. To satisfy the console users have added different single player facets that expand the hours of play and keep us from fighting against players from all over the world. Whether or not they are to your liking is something that you yourselves must value but it is true that the options are scarce if we are solitary players.
Agile combat, slow strategy
The most notorious change with respect to the PSP games is basically focused on the increase of fighters on the battlefield, now six in total - three per team - and getting the fights are now much more tactical than before. It's no use pounding buttons to see how our counter hits up like foam; first because our characters lack combos and second because there is no such meter. So all that remains is to refine our style of combat, always changing, learn to make the most of the unique skills of each fighter and understand correctly how the combat system of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT works. This is something that in a certain way they teach us in the extensive tutorial attached but that unfortunately is left in the inkwell very important actions that are necessary to us in the middle of a fight and that we have to learn by ourselves.
Part of such complexity lies in the template of 28 fighters from the fifteen Final Fantasy numerical plus spin-off Type-0 and Tactics . With few exceptions, protagonist and antagonist of each fable appear in Dissidia Final Fantasy NTas combatants and classified among the categories Vanguard, Harasser, Conjurer and Specialist, each focused on a different style of play. The former are powerful but not very agile while the latter are the opposite. Conjurer is anyone who uses magic as a remote attack power and Specialist is the most balanced class of the game. However, this only affects the way to fight because at a playable level everything is very balanced and it is possible to dominate the ring with any fighter on the team.
There are no comparable objects as weapons but EX unlockable skills every time we level up as well as attacks of vitality. They vary a lot with each other and make the same character totally different with another combination of attacks. Shantotto, for example, can remotely cast his staff to finish off the enemy by default but also launch a powerful magic that affects not only his objective opponent but those who are in the area. With the EX skills the same thing happens, you can focus your strategy on helping the group equipping you with Revitalia and healing the comrades or torpedoing the enemy with Tiniebla, Bio or stealing Brave points.
And how are the fights in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT? In combat each fighter has two bars, Vitality and Bravura. The first tells us the life that each one has while the second is the power of attack. Striking with Brave attacks we obtain the opponent's attack power to finally use a vitality attack that reduces the lives of our enemies . If our Bravura bar has an attack power superior to the remaining life of the adversary we will win, otherwise, we will only lose part of its vitality so it will touch again to fill our attack power.
With the increase of fighters on stage, two buttons have been enabled to change targets . This achieves that according to our needs we go to support a partner that is suffering harassment on the part of the rivals, focus our attacks on the most novice enemy of the game or go in group to the strongest. But beware! All this can also turn against you and for this we need a solid team that knows how to dominate both the game and the character.
Seven mythical invocations offer us their help in full contest . To do this you must destroy an invocation crystal that appears randomly on screen, invoke the previously selected esper and check after a majestic introduction scene how it deploys its power to the enemies while offering juicy advantages to the allies. It is remarkable - especially in online matches - the fact that the action stops for a few seconds each time one of these beings is invoked, because the pause gives a small relief needed to rethink our style of fighting and think of new tactics . On the contrary that happened in the titles of PlayStation Portable, here the eidolón is one more of the group, appears on the screen and helps in the battle by deploying its power of attack among the rivals. A necessary addition that can change the course of the dispute if we know how to use it.
The premise of what is narrated is easy, the complicated thing is to master it. It is a title that requires many hours at the controls to get to dominate the battlefield, perhaps too many, and this is a fairly important aspect in a video game that moves away from conventional struggles inherited from proposals such as Street Fighter or the new Dragon Ball FighterZ . It is not easy to catch a player with a fight as chaotic and as different in presence as the ones mentioned. It is fast but at the same time slow, it is chaotic but deliciously tactical and simple in mechanics but complicated in practice.
There will be few who watching fighters such as Cloud, Lightning, Squall, Terra, Kefka or Prince Noctis gathered in a combat title will be attracted to Dissidia Final Fantasy NT but, when they see that the fights are happening at dizzying speed, different way than usual and with an audiovisual show worthy of a Tomorrowland festival, decide to leave it aside after a few hours of play. MeriCossejo : insist and devote a few hours, your perception of the game will improve a lot.
Game modes
Now that you know how to play it is necessary to talk about how we will do it. Dissidia Final Fantasy Arcade is a game centered mostly in its online side where the games of three against three are those that are imposed. Here his NT version picks up the witness but forgetting the battles of the gods , a way in which the players choose a faction, fight for it and award points according to our actions. We do not know what decision has taken Square Enix not to include it in the domestic version so we hope that thanks to the content updates we will some day.
As we said, the most important game mode is Online Battle , which, once displayed its menu, offers three different types of skirmishes. The first is Qualification in Solitaire where the game brings together two teams -blue and red- of three people to fight each other in a 3 vs. 3. The second is Classification in Groupwhich is basically the same but with a group formed by our friends or previous invitation to the same through the PS4 system fighting against others connected to the game. The last one is a customized battle where we can create a room, modify criteria such as the maximum number of players, the region where they play, the maximum level of the player's class, the number of rounds or assign a password to the room among several other options. Of course, it is also possible to find a room that meets our tastes. Later we will talk about the online section in depth.
The content for a player is summarized in two clearly differentiated modes . Local Battle allows the player to face the CPU in fully configurable Free Battles, in a Battle for the Core where the team that previously breaks the power crystal and fight in Challenges wins , a sort of Arcade mode with successive encounters where to earn money and experience both for the player and for the fighters. As we advance in the main plot, we will add History Challenges that emulate battles that happened in it with some conditioning and surprises. Both modes have the option of making the fights more difficult so it will take you a while to complete all your proposals.
Finally we come to the Story mode, perhaps the most problematic part of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT . Square Enix made it clear from the beginning that we were not going to find anything similar to the originals and that NT's story was made to please the desktop users. We understand that it is an adaptation of the version for recreational salons but we have not understood what the hell they wanted to do with this mode . The game shows us a small board full of alternative routes -where we must complete all by noses-, with different paths taken by the protagonists and that are only unlocked using medals obtained in the online modes or in Local Battle. That is, if we want to see the story of Dissidia Final Fantasy NTYou have to spend many hours obligatorily for the other game modes and obtain medals with each level rise. The experience that you accumulate with each battle is laughable -as well as the money that is obtained from it- and it is very difficult to obtain medals to verify that what happens next in the narrative is a cluster of nefarious decisions in the script projected in multiple scenes of video and few matches.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a continuation of the first two original PSP installments. Here Cosmos and Chaos do not star in the game but a new gods called Materia and SpiritusThey dominate an empty world that needs the energy extracted from the fighting to stay on its feet. As if they were some fellows, these two deities have just left the school of gods and little or nothing understand what happens in their world. In fact, the protagonists know more about the situation than those who have invoked them to fight. Nobody knows Materia and Spiritus but in the next scene they eat soups with them or decide to help them in their task without even knowing what is happening in their lands. Incoherent is also the fact that to be segmented history, live a scene where something has theoretically happened in another not yet unlocked and do not follow the thread of the plot or that an enemy is supposedly, zurrándose in another passage but suddenly appears in which we are living.A cluster of nonsense that greatly affect the final result of this Story Mode. Only some surprises in the form of combat are released from the bonfire, which, yes, we have loved but we let you discover them.
While the general tone of the game is the battles between six at the same time, it is worth mentioning that both in some of the Challenges proposed in the single player mode and throughout history, there are battles with fewer fighters in the fight and of different configurations but this happens only in both modes. Do not expect to find it in the online section because it is not possible.
There is one last thing to tell about the content offered by Dissidia Final Fantasy NT and they are the number of unlockable extras that the videogame contains. We have not counted all the available ones but we are sure that it is close to a thousand of them. Phrases for the chat, aspects for each fighter, weapons skins, melodies of all the deliveries that appear in the game both original and remixed, avatars for our player card or titles will delight the completists. Of course, it requires a huge amount of hours to play the unlockable and this is due to the little money received after each fight and the high price that each of them hasin the game store. And do not fear, you will only use giles to buy them, the currency of all Final Fantasy.
Battles Online: Needs Improvement
Before we told you that we were going to tell you about our sensations with what is supposed to be the main dish of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT , its online skirmishes, and so we do it next. Generally the battles tend to occur naturally, without interruptions of any kind and without appreciable lag but we have found - and too often - server disconnections - which also penalize us as a lost game -, image freeze for several seconds or slowdowns. All these problems, during fights. As if that were not enough, the average time of waiting for the title to find a game rises to the minute of duration or more. Apparently the developer is aware of these inconveniences and are working on a solution in this regard so we just have to wait for improvements to arrive.
On the other hand, we did not like the matchmaking system either. Every fight in the game counts for our combat history and that increases our rank, player level and character. For the former, labels are used from less to greater degree and, in theory, the game chooses the opponents through this scale. It also counts the last two aspects, or at least it should be. The reality however is very different when we realize that our teammates are, for example, level 5-10 and rivals 30-40 -even level 74- we have come to see-. The same happens with the level of the character, individual for each fighter, where the average in these moments is usually quite low due to the close release of the title but sometimes the machine gets a rival with the maximum level and all their skills unlocked.
The disadvantage is quite clear especially when leveling up requires a lot of effort and dedication so the games are not completely matched and very frustrating to participate in them . The buttons of Guard and Dodge will be our allies when this type of situations occur, although to get to dominate them is an arduous task because they do not run instantaneously like in other fighting games.
Audiovisual power
Spectacular. It is the word that would best define anyone who sees a Dissidia Final Fantasy NT combat . Spectacular in the sense that we are talking about a game where fluency reigns at any time of the contest despite moving the console a huge stage, six players on screen, infinite effects caused by the fight, deformation of the landscape, dynamic changes of the same or an invocation displaying its power and flooding the television with lights and spectacular abilities. Team Ninja , the developer in charge of the videogame, has done a great job in adapting the game to desktop consolesendowing the video game with a Full HD resolution at a stable 60 images per second that very rarely has its speed reduced. And when it does, we'll just notice it.
The characters are full of details and their modeling, far from appearing a realism that they have never had, are exquisitely made. As an example we have a Cloud that is displayed on the screen in a very similar way to what it currently looks like in Final Fantasy VII Remake or Noctis, which seems directly extracted from Final Fantasy XV . A great work in this aspect to which is added the fact of having detailed scenarios - up to a total of fourteen - such as Alexandria of FF IX, Midgar of FF VII, Besaid Island of FF X or the most important room of the Delfkutt Tower of Final Fantasy XI , Stellar Fulcrum. All these arenas undergo transformations during the battle - some very important - that do not affect the playable performance at all.
Another point to keep in mind is the soundtrack that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT carries . Some of the most important themes of all the chapters that appear in the title are in the video game, both in its original version and remixed. While nostalgia can play against us, the truth is that the melodies that best feel the battles are those composed specifically for the occasion because they are more rocky than those designed for traditional RPG games, except those chosen from Final Fantasy XIV that are more related to what happens on the screen.
Perhaps the only thing that despite having put some emphasis in the face of launching consoles has failed a bit is the game interface. It is possible to select the one that comes with the arcade edition or the console interface as standard. Both are practically identical except that the latter leaves more free space for vision. Choose the one that we choose is that it confuses the player and the icons that appear with the altered states are not detailed or explain what affects the player (in fact or in the tutorials it is explained that they have).
conclusion
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a video game that is worthwhile if we are regulars of online games and we are also passionate about the franchise that bears this fight title. Of course, it also tells us that the fighting game genre is to our liking, however much its mechanics are completely different from the traditional one. Square Enix has fulfilled what it promised, bring the arcade plate to PlayStation 4 consoles maintaining what has made it popular to recreational in Japanese salons. Yes it is true that other promises such as having a staff of 50 characters has not been met, or that the Battle of Gods mode is not present in the adaptation to consoles but the game is well worth, at least, consider your purchase.
The bluray offers tens of hours of content thanks to the multitude of unlockables and its online mode. In addition, his style of play forces the player to take things easy, learn to manage his team of 28 wrestlers and create the perfect set of skills and attacks. It is not a title for all audiences and needs dedication to be able to fall in love and that may be a serious problem for the less determined public.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT has improved with respect to its arcade version in terms of single player modes but is far from what many users expected. Tournaments, possibility of online game with friends in simple pachangas or some extra way to entertain the player would not have been more. On the other hand, the Story mode is awful, with a narrative full of inconsistencies and forcing the player to spend hours and hours in other playable modes to see only an animated scene of about a minute and just a couple of battles.
Technically it is very good, of that there is no doubt, but it has serious problems with the matchmaking and the net code that should be fixed as soon as possible. There is nothing worse than putting yourself at the controls of a combat game so tactical and difficult to master so that a bad online management plays a trick on you. Besides that the Story Mode is perhaps the worst of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, we have on the other hand the decision to add a season pass for € 30 that adds only six characters -which would make a total of 34 fighters to the template- when Square Enix announced that the base would have 50.
The best
Texts translated into Spanish and dubbed in English or Japanese.
Technically very good.
The combat system confuses at first, then falls in love.
Worst
Missing content both online and offline.
The themes of old FF do not fit in with so much action on the screen.
The story mode is very improvable
Template maybe something scarce and expandable through future DLC.
Long waiting times to find game.
It fulfills the expectations of what a good game is, it has quality and it does not present serious faults, although it lacks elements that could have taken it to higher heights.
1-6 IMAGECREDIT
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