Dissidia: Final Fantasy: Hands-on impressions

Battle one-on-one with all of your favorite Final Fantasy heroes and villains.

Among the playable games offered at the Square Enix "DKS3713" event in Tokyo over the weekend was Dissidia: Final Fantasy, a PlayStation Portable title that brings together characters from previous Final Fantasy games to represent the side of Cosmos in a series of one-on-one battles against the bad-guys of the Chaos side. The game is due out in Japan in December and we got a chance to try it out.

For any fan of the Final Fantasy series, the idea of having a selection of your favorite characters come together in a single game is an intriguing idea. In making Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Square Enix didn't just throw the characters into a new game, but brought with them some of the elements of the games they originally inhabited.

Our first fight featured Tidus from Final Fantasy X. Each side begins with a set number of hit points, and as you battle, the winning side begins accumulating points from the losing side by landing successive attacks initiated by pressing the circle button. When one character gets down to zero the winner ends up with not just all of the losing characters points, but also bonus points that help build strength for future battles.

The battles are fast-paced and you end up running back and forth as you attack and take-cover. When you get near walls or columns quick-time prompts appear on screen and that's a signal to hit the face keys so you can run up the walls.

A little spice is added with an EX gauge that builds up during the action. As this reaches its maximum you can invoke EX Mode. This steps the battle up one notch and if you manage to get the button timing correct when a special symbol comes on screen you enter EX Burst mode that helps make light work of ridding the field of enemies. Each EX burst includes a small challenge that you need to get correct to make use of the special features. With Tidus it's a dot moving right and left across the screen that you need to stop in a central zone.

Each challenge brings a flavor of the Final Fantasy game in which they first appeared, so it's a nice addition for experienced gamers. For example, Warrior of Light from Final Fantasy I gets an attack boost if you follow a series of left, right, up and down button pushes while Onion Knight from Final Fantasy III gets to EX Burst through a command window that brings up various magic spells.

Characters we saw during the demo included Tidus, Warrior of Light, Squall, Onion Knight and Garland but you know there will be more when the game final releases!

Check out Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, also revealed at Square Enix's "DKS3713" event

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pspdevil24

wow! as a psp owner this looks like the 1 game im going to be excited about this year ( or 2009) besides resistance retribution and super stardust portable!

Earthshaker86

I've been waiting for them to do this for a long time, a good final fantasy cross over. It's about time!

joshatomic1

Final Fantasy Street Fighter...This is going to be awesome. Kick ass with some of your favorites.

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