It's January 22, 2009, Wednesday 23:04

It's been a while. One of the only good games for the PSP came out and that's Final Fantasy: Dissidia or Dissidia: Final Fantasy. Now, I've been waiting for this game for around a year and a half and it's good to say it doesn't dissappoint..... if it wasn't Japanese. I'll once again review this game in the order of game play, graphics, music, and overall presentation. I can't review the story since I can't read Japanese and it doesn't help that the US version will be released 7 months and 14 days after the Jap release. Check IGN.com. And away we go.

First off, game play. Since it's Japanese, it took me a week to figure out what the hell was going on. It was like trying to beat a struggling man in a sack. You know you're hurting him but you're not exactly sure of what you're doing so let me give you a hint. Dissidia's physics don't work or even try to simulate real life since apparently, you have to build brave points to take down some hp. In Dissidia's case brave is like the real world's physical force stored somewhere in your body and hitting a dude all at once with it. You have to slap around your enemy with the circle button to suck your enemy's brave, and use the square button to basically hurt him. Apparently, no matter how hard you cut up a guy with a sharp object in Dissidia you can't give a fly a paper cut if you don't hit the square button. Once your opponents brave points reach negative you "break" them and the bonus brave points will go to you. By the way, your brave points is measured by the big blue glowing number above your hp bar and the brave pool which contains the bonus brave points is in between you and your opponent's hp. once you do successfully hit your opponent with an hp attack (square button), your brave points go down to zero and slowly resets back to it's original stock from the beginning of the game. At this point, you should run like a little prat because it's like raping your opponent in an alley but getting caught by the night watch with your pants down. Oh, and if your in the break state, it's a good idea to hit your opponent with an hp attack to reset your brave faster because while in break state your hp damage is like hitting a hostile Nazi with a cup of instant noodles. It won't do squat and it'll just piss him off since he probably can't use chopsticks. Oh, and i have no idea why the characters generate pixie dust if you hit them and come together to form a bell with wings. Once you fill up your Ex gauge by eating your opponent's pixie dust or "EX cores", you can unleash an "EX Burst" which is basically like a Narutomate Hero ougi with worse choreography and a shroom induced background. Did anyone figure out what EX means? If you want more details about summons and abilities, check a guide.

At first, the battles aren't so exciting but once you get their newer fighting abilities, it'll be like Narutmate Hero mixed with Power Stones. Yeah. Power Stones without the bright colors and random house appliances, traps, and army utilities all over the place. If both sides of the opposition are good enough, it could be a really exciting match but if one or both players suck, it could be a snore fest or a Nazi-noodle experience.

I'm finally past that hurdle. Let's move on to graphics. If you played Kingdom Hearts, it's basically the same quality but with FFVII: Advent Children's style. Or maybe it's closer to FFVII: Crisis Core and Harry Pottter (the book) mashed together. It's over all good. The faces have nice details and the backgrounds are quite beautiful... if you're not claustrophobic. There's a big, invisible dome covering the battle field and it feels kind of limited. The only problem visually is Zidane. He looks like a girl. His victory pose is f***ing girly. Maybe if he tiltedhis head a bit, he'd look less like a cheeerleader and they should make his lips look less 'v' shaped when he smiles 'cuz once again, he looks like a girly man. Oh yeah, Onion knight looks like he's from a boy band and Cecil's paladin mode makes him look like Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson with white hair and the ability to fly. It's like they segregated his testosterone and his latent estrogen (i don't know how to spell that) and distributed it between his dark knight and paladin modes respectively. And since Square-Enix didn't think Butz Krauser was a gay enough name for a character, they gayed up his attire. He even has little cape thing. Reminds me of Peter pan but more revealing and just so you know, his alternate form is faaaaaaaaabulous! Just check it out. There are no words to express this. You can access it by pressing the triangle button during character selection and pressing it again in the character's customization menu. Exdeath also looks like a knight designed by Barbie and friends. He doesn't run because he might break a nail... or a toenail during the life or death match between good and evil. I won't talk about Kudja. If you haven't played FFIX. He's the bad guy wearing a skirt and a G-string with leather. I emphasize on the HE and the GUY. Hehe. I guess Zidane ain't the only one with problems.

Music. Ehhh... not much to say. The music is kinda'.... too similar to each other if you ask me. I dunno' it's like the entire BGM tries to hard to make the game feel more epic. It's like listening to an orchestra that NEVER STOPS PLAYING. And Cloud of Darkness' sounds like an old lady. She's hot but fapping to her is difficult since imagining her voice is like listening to an old English teacher or in this case, Japanese teacher.... and she has yellow, dehydrated penises with eyes and sharp teeth so yeah...

The overall presentation is really good. Character art by Tetsuya Nomura is stunning but i wish they didn't go with Amano's design since it's too fantasy-ish for me. Some of the characters look like they jumped outta' Arabian Nights. The way fights are handled is like FFVII AC so it's awesome and you can run up walls and stuff just like in the movie. If you press the triangle button when the little yellow arrows appear, it means you can interact with the environment which means run up walls, jump from this platform to the one which is 50 meters away and skate on ledges, rail ways or energy ribbons in the air. Yeah, that sounded pretty gay.

Don't get me wrong though. I really like this game. I give it a 9/10. Why is that? Because the universe feels kind of lonely since only 22 people and 2 deities inhabit it and second, there are only 5 vaginas in the entire game namely Tina/Terra, Shantotto, Cosmos, Cloud of Darkness and Ultimacia. Each of them even have their own problems. Tina is a pre-pubescent, Shantotto is a koala thing, Cloud of Darkness has 2 withered penises and sounds like someone's delusional granma' and Ultimacia's hand are connected to her coat and she needs to wash her feet, and clip her nails. I think Cosmos is the only one who's doable but i would still settle for Tina or Ultimacia if i have to compromise.

Overall, it's a pretty good game. It's addicting, the fights always look nice and getting the most out of one character is long LONG venture. If you love Final Fantasy in all it's glory, you should definitely play this game.

That's all i got for now. I'll edit this later once my motivation comes back to me.

Credits: Thanks to my sister who typed around 1/10 of this review in a futile attempt to make me finish faster so she can read manga on my laptop and to IGN and GameFAQS for some of the data. See ya' guys around.

Game Review: Final Fantasy Dissidia [JAP] v.2