Failing Miserably at Dissidia: Final Fantasy

September 10th, 2009

I’m pretty late to the Dissidia party. I’m not even used to holding a PSP properly without cramping, I’ve only played the demo, and I’m failing miserably at it. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still very likely to buy this lovely piece of fan-service.

Ooooooh....

Aaaaah..... Guess who my favorite character is. Just guess. It's Cecil. No, really.

If there was ever a game I wished to be good at, it would have to be a Final Fantasy fighter — something the nerd in me has dreamed of (literally happily fallen asleep to the thought of it) since the early 90’s, because it would have clearly been the most awesome thing EVER. The official Dissidia site is pretty frakkin amazing to say the least, especially considering it is being met with almost 2 decades of, dare I say, fantasizing.

So about this demo. Either I will eternally suck at dealing with the game mechanics, or with enough stubborn practice I’ll eventually get the hang of it. Or *fingers crossed* it’s just a demo so maybe it doesn’t play exactly like the full game and I don’t have to go die in a fire.

I’m sure that the first thing anyone will notice is how gorgeous the game looks. All the swanky new character art, the backgrounds are actually pretty cool, and the in-game flow is surprisingly fast and smooth. But almost immediately, the camera movement and general holy-crap-3D-ness gave me the disheartening-sinking-lost feeling that I associate with the awkward flight missions of Drakengard and Drakengard 2.

This is my biggest problem, and it’s probably just because I’m doing it wrong. The other is that I’m also totally pampered by the simplicity of 2D fighters, where you can not only easily keep track of your opponent but also mash buttons at a more natural and frantic pace (ie. when you want to punch, hit the punch button).

Dissidia is structured so differently from what I automatically associate with a fighter; it has such similar-but-different button commands that I am at this point still confused, like if I move the analog to the left while holding R+O, it does something entirely different instead of just doing the same thing, but to the left. But to evade and actually move to the left, hold R+X and blah blah blah….this is going to take me some time to get used to, also for just doing it wrong. I think when I was envisioning an FF fighting game so many years ago, it was back when everything was more like this:

This I can handle.

Of course, while I may still play River City Ransom (which can be surprisingly fun when you treat it as a 2D fighter), I have a feeling that just wouldn’t do for 2009. For now, I can only hope that I haven’t gotten too old to play my personal ultimate fantasy game now that it’s finally here! (Ignore the horrible puns in that last sentence…they weren’t even intentional…I’d better get some sleep.)

Entry Filed under: Video Games