Dissidia Final Fantasy NT – Review

We enjoyed our initial encounter with Dissidia Final Fantasy NT when it was still in its beta form, and while there wasn’t that many content to plow through, we had the chance to try out fun characters, different fighting styles, the game’s mechanics and enough battles to keep us occupied for several hours. Now the full release has dawned upon us and we’re able to enjoy the full roster of characters, which now include the antagonists from many of the titles, a character from Final Fantasy Tactics and one of the students from Type-0. We were curious to see how the game turned out with a big roster, a fleshed out story mode, goodies to collect and of course online functionalities completely finished.

Story

The story of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is rather simple, as it’s all about a giant fight between good and evil, once again. The key characters from the different Final Fantasy universes are summoned before their respective alignment, good or evil, and have to battle in order to shift the balance. This time however, the warriors that have met in the previous game(s) still know one another, while new characters, such as Noctis, are thrown into a weird frenzy where he’ll have to fight for his life. Overall the plot isn’t truly that thick as most cutscenes are quite short, but as far as fighting games go, the story has a real Final Fantasy vibe to it, and makes you want to continue on. Sadly, the latter isn’t all that easy as progressing the story mode will cost you Memoria, which are memory fragments. These fragments can only be earned by forcing your way through the offline and online modes, in order to get those fragments as rewards. We don’t really understand why this approach was taken, perhaps to fill the online servers, but it reduces the fun for those who are only interested in the lore and story development of this title. Keep in mind, the game’s progress is really slow if you’re only in it for the story.

Graphics

Visually Dissidia Final Fantasy NT isn’t immediately a bombshell when it comes to the game’s environments. While the game has significantly more stages to choose from compared to the beta, you’ll notice one flaw in all of them, namely that they’re all void of any life, making them somewhat dull and bland. Luckily the characters and their attacks tend to steal the show and make up for the overall emptiness and blandness of the arenas you’ll be spending most of your time in. Every character has received a significant update compared to their original counterparts when talking about older Final Fantasy games. Especially those who starred in the top-down 2D RPG games have received great looking 3D rendered alter egos.

Sound

The soundtrack for NT is rather diverse, as it ranges from an epic cinematic soundtrack, to tunes we know from other Final Fantasy titles, to even an upbeat rock repertoire. Overall the soundtrack gets you pumped enough for the constant brawling. Other than that, you’ll be able to choose from English and Japanese voice acting, both done in a superb fashion, while the Japanese voices sound a bit less forced and cheesy than their English counterparts. Nonetheless, the audio department of the game was well taken care of and certainly has the edge over the graphical prowess.

Gameplay

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a 3 vs. 3 brawler, but completely different than Dragon Ball FighterZ which we recently covered. In this game you’ll be moving around in a 3D arena, while only controlling one character of your party of three. The other characters will either be controlled by AI or fellow players online. The goal is to whittle down the enemies’ HP bar by bravery attacks, which make their HP bar flicker. If you want to make said damage permanent, you’ll have to hit them with an HP attack. When you don’t hit an HP attack in time, it’s possible your opponent has already recovered from your bravery attacks by inflicting damage to you or your allies. In the end you’ll have to score three knockouts by depleting an enemy’s HP bar completely to win the match. Of course you can also choose to play the core battles in which you’ll have to destroy the other team’s core, with practically the same core gameplay. Both styles have a summoning mechanic in which you can summon one of the Eidolons/Summons of Final Fantasy, boosting your team, and performing area damage making it harder for your opponents. To do so, you’ll have to destroy the cores that randomly spawn in the arena to fill up your summoning bar.

As mentioned earlier, the story mode is pretty much off-limits until you have some experience under your belt and have unlocked some memory fragments. This means you’ll either opt for offline or online combat, both being pretty much the same. You’ll notice from the beginning that this isn’t your average fighting game, and it’s more tactically inclined, slower and it feels totally different than conventional fighters. You’ll have your character, which you can choose from a cast of over thirty Final Fantasy characters from pretty much all games out there. Each character will start off with their own set of bravery attacks, HP attacks and EX skills. If you play a lot with one, or more, characters, you’ll unlock more and more skills, allowing you to tailor your favorite character to your own playstyle, and also creating a very diverse character cast, as each of the warriors has multiple play styles and options, making the cast even more diverse.

The control scheme is pretty straightforward, but timing is key when playing against opponents that are not as dimwitted as you’d like. You’ll notice that the controls have a lot of nuances you’ll need to master to properly block, dodge, retaliate and so on. Overall the controls work, but compared to many other fighting games they do feel a bit slow, sluggish and somewhat unresponsive at times. Other than that, it’s sometimes hard to see the damage dealt to you, or how good your team is performing. Of course, keeping your head in the fight is one way to try and keep up, but even then the chaos of everything around you will make it hard to focus, even on things right in front of you.

Sadly the game has a few flaws, namely somewhat limited play modes, the fact that you can’t properly dive into the story mode, that progress is made very slowly and that unlocks happen even slower if you’re playing within a limited timeframe. While all these combined will certainly not keep away a true Final Fantasy fan, or fans of the other Dissidia games, they make it somewhat harder for newcomers to properly enjoy this title. Luckily the entire cast is available from the start of the game, making sure you can experiment with a lot of different characters.

Conclusion

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a great game for fans of the series, be it the original Dissidia games, or Final Fantasy as a whole. While the story mode isn’t readily available, fighting enthusiasts will surely unlock it in due time. Even though the game might be slower than most fighting titles, the mechanics make up for a lot, as well as the big and diverse cast, with an even more diverse skill set to choose from per character. The game won’t win any game of the year awards, but it’s certainly a decent fighter.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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