I tend to spend most of my time playing video games with new ones. Yes, I love going back to the classics, but they’re really just diversions from whatever my latest purchase is. That said, when it comes to my PSP, I have two phases: Dissidia: Final Fantasy and Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite. Over the last month or so I’ve been in the Dissidia phase.
When the game first came out, I thought it was completely retarded. I initially wouldn’t have touched the thing if you’d paid me to play it. I was also at a point in my life where I mostly looked down upon the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole. That really didn’t help Dissidia’s case. But time went on, and I found myself staring at the game’s case, looking at the characters portrayed on it, and wondering. Then, years later, I read this and immediately ran out to the Best Buy to pick up a copy of Dissidia (which was at the $20 point by then). Not that that series of articles references Dissidia very much, but it surely re-ignited my interest in Final Fantasy. It also got me started on Final Fantasy XIII, but that’s another story entirely.
So, Dissidia, if you haven’t read last summer’s posts about it, is a fighting game that incorporates a wealth of assests from the Final Fantasy franchise. I guess I never really explained the concept when I was posting about it before, so I might as well do it now. You know how the Super Smash Bros series takes characters and stages and music and everything else from the entirety of Nintendo’s back catalogue? Just imagine that, but only with FF stuff and with 3D movement.
The whole reason I was posting about Dissidia in the first place is that I’m playing the villains right now (the game’s character roster is one hero and one villain from each of the first ten Final Fantasy games) to earn the Chaos Reports (bits of backstory), and I wanted to vent about the “alternate costumes” that can be unlocked for each character. Whoo single-sentence paragraph.
There are three different kinds of alternate costumes in Dissidia, actual alternate costumes, palette swaps, and somethign in between. A couple heroes get completely different costumes (Squall and Cloud), some get palette swaps with minor changes (Firion and Onion Knight) and some just get recoloured (the rest). The palette swaps are a little disappointing, but at least there are a few actual alternate costumes. The villains, on the other hand, are all just pallette swaps, and none particularly good. Ooh, Garland’s cape is red instead of blue. Oh, I suppose Sephiroth technically gets a costume change, but I wonder if taking off your shirt really counts?
The bright spot in this colour-flipping madness is known as EX Mode. Each character has the ability to enter a super-powered state (think Limit Break) based on their abilities in whichever game they’re from. EX Mode makes the character a little stronger, but the real point of it is that it allows them to use their EX Burst, which is a big, flashy supermove (think Final Smash, but with more quick-time events).
Since the EX Modes are based on each character’s actual abilities in their game, each one is affected differently. Cloud, Squall and Tidus, for example, don’t get a costume change, but rather their weapons are upgraded. Terra transforms into her esper form, and Onion Knight changes into either a ninja or sage. Most of the other guys have cool alternate forms too, and it’s here that the villains really get to shine.
A handful of them still just get lousy palette swaps (Garland, Cloud of Darkness), but the bad guys generally get the best EX Mode transformations. Kefka turns into his God of Magic form, and Sephiroth grows that cool black wing. Golbez and Ultimecia are joined by their Shadow Dragon and Griever summons, respectively. I don’t know what the hell Jecht turns into because I never played Final Fantasy X, but it’s pretty cool.
And that’s about what I wanted to say today. I’ve heard rumours that there are more, better alternate costumes in the sequel, but it’ll be a long time before I’m done with the first Dissidia. There’s just so much game in there!