Dissidia is a unique spin on the Final Fantasy franchise, but don't come looking for a compelling story.
Dissidia is a unique spin on fighting games using the Final Fantasy series as a baseline. The game has a simple system. Each character has bravery attacks and HP attacks. Every one starts with a base bravery. Bravery determines how hard you'll hit with an HP attack. Doing more bravery attacks will reduce your opponents bravery while increasing yours. It will also sometimes activiate special effects like summonstones or accessories which can greatly turn the tide of the battle.
This simple system lends itself to the limited control scheme for the PSP (or Vita in my case). Every battle you win not only gets you experience to level up, but also items, gil, and power points that are used to purchase unlockables. Navigating to these battles takes place on a grid map with destiny points. You can move as far as you can go, but it will take a destiny point to do so. The destiny points really only factor into the end of each stage and the power points you can receive so they're not really important.
In addition to all of that, you can equip your character with various weapons, accessories, and summonstones. The summons in this game don't fight for you, but rather activate after certain conditions are met and affect bravery. Sound complicated? It's not really. There is a bit of a learning curve, but the game comes with a tutorial to help you along as well as battle tips you unlock over time.
There are several modes, but most notably the Story mode and Arcade mode. Story mode can only be played with the heroes that come from Final Fantasy 1 through 10. This is where you'll get most of your equipment and leveling done. Arcade allows you to play as the villains and a couple of other characters though the villains must be unlocked first with power points. Arcade is straightforward like any fighting game would be where Story mode tells the "story" of Dissidia.
Sadly, the story mode is mostly nonsensical, making nearly no sense at all. It's like they took all of the character flaws of the heroes along with bad cliches and shoved them altogether. You only need to play through a couple of story modes before being given the true final chapter, but playing through the other modes does give you a much more complete, if still silly, story.
The visuals are to be praised though. They are top notch for a PSP game. Much of the level design, character appearance, and colors remind me of Kingdom Hearts. Many of the characters, especially those from Final Fantasy 1-6 have never been seen in 3D before. This is one of the biggest draws to me. Spells and EX Mode attacks look astonishing. This game is definitely pushing what the PSP was capable of.
Sound design is actually excellent. The dialog is atrocious, but many familiar voice actors are here such as those that lend their voice to Cloud and Sephiroth also did Advent Children. The music encompasses all of the fight music from all of the games which is a real treat to hear.
There's actually a lot of value here. It's going to take probably a good 15-20 hours just to make one run through of all the story chapters. You'll likely go through them again as well since some items can only be obtained on a second run. There are also a lot of unlockable items such as extra costumes, modes, and cheats.
It's sad that the designers didn't include a better story because this really hurts the game. Final Fantasy is known for it's multi-layered story telling with diverse characters and the people here seem more like cliches than the characters we have come to love. Still, there is a lot to do here and it's well worth the $20 entry whether on PSP or the Vita.
The Good: Excellent graphics and sound design, fighting system is simple, lots of customization, each character's fighting style is unique, lots of value and content.
The Bad: Story is ridiculous, dialog is horrible, a bit of a learning curve.