Hi, my name is Doctor Cyborg and I started playing this video game because I have an unhealthy addiction to playing games featuring the Final Fantasy characters. Dissidia Duodecim is a fighting game with RPG elements that I would not play if it weren’t for a prior affinity for the characters in the game. There comes a point in every gamers life that they have to admit that they are only playing a video game because of a gimmick. Thankfully it doesn’t take very much rationalizing to continue playing. And while it does sound like a bad thing, this game sits in the good graces of Super Mario Kart, Super Puzzle Fighter II, Smash Bros. and Final Fantasy Tactics. But also it sits in the graces of, Mario’s Time Machine, Sonic’s Schoolhouse and basically any football game ever made. So we can see that there are two different sides that these games can fall on, either they will be done well, or they are just using familiar characters to get you to buy a product. The point of this review will be to discover where Dissidia Duodecim falls.

Dissidia Duodecim is the prequel to Final Fantasy Dissidia, which came out about two years ago… As far as game play goes they are essentially the same, but Duodecim is like a stellar expansion pack, working out a few of the kinks, adding more characters, and slightly changing the dynamic of story mode.

Although it is a prequel, I don’t think it’s necessary to have played the first one to get into this one. They have an option at the beginning to ease you into the controls if you need, and the story is simple enough that you can’t possibly be confused. What I like about the simple story telling is that you can skip a scene here and there if you want and you aren’t likely to miss anything. I don’t think that the story is really that important anyway, as I don’t think it’s the reason you should be playing this game. Not to say that the story is bad, it’s just all about the gameplay to me. But I will give the story credit for getting some of the characters right… for example, Kain the traitor from Final Fantasy IV also acts as a traitor at the beginning of this game.

If the graphics were any better than from the previous game, I couldn’t tell… which isn’t a bad thing, I think the game looks great, and the battles run swell. I’ve said it before about the PSP, but I’m constantly impressed by what they can pull off on a hand held system, and I think this has about the best graphics that I’ve seen… the one downside is that if the game isn’t installed it takes a long time to load every battle, and if it is installed, than you were installing it for a long time. (I really recommend installing it)

The stuff that they added to the battle system just worked and therefore isn’t worth mentioning. The change that is worth talking about is how the single player mode works… It is basically the same as before, where there is a grid map to navigate your character on, but for Duodecim they’ve made it a lot more dynamic in a few ways. For one, they made it so it didn’t feel so much like a chess board, and for two they added a bunch of abilities so that you can attack enemies in a wider radius, and while it might sound lame, it actually changes the entire strategy, and makes the game less repetitious… Oh, and they also gave the story mode a world map… kind of like the one from Final Fantasy 7, and so you actually traverse a world map to enter different battle arenas. Which is probably my favorite feature that was added, aside from being able to play new characters, which is just a cheap way to appeal to nerds, but it works. The characters added were, Kain, Tifa, Laguna, Yuna, Vaan, and Lightning.

My largest complaint about this game is that it is so easy to turn your brain off while playing that you can waste hours and hours and not realize it… This game has so many items to get, and characters to level up, and stories to play through, and different modes… it’s the type of game that you would want to have around if you were stuck in a hospital bed for a month… Or another way to put it, this video game probably causes Munchhausen syndrome. Which is a great compliment.

As stated towards the beginning, this is like an awesome expansion to the first game, and I liked the first game… So I don’t really know why this post began like an AA meeting. This game clearly falls on the well done side of ensemble gaming. 4 out of 5 magic gaming trophies.
Buy Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy from Amazon!