Review: Dissidia 012 [duodecim]
Drawing upon their rich history, Square Enix’s Dissidia 012 [duodecim] places a “Who’s Who” list of well loved characters from their “[[[Final Fantasy]]]” games into a novel setting – a combination of a role-playing game and a fighting game. Any “Final Fantasy” veteran may think about who would win in a fight between Lightning and Sephiroth, and now you can find out.
This may seem like an uneasy marriage, but it works. If you’re used to traditional fighting games like “[[[Street Fighter]]]” or “[[[Tekken]]],” this is very different. First off, combat is in three dimensions with aerial attacks as well as ground-based. Direction is automatically locked on to your opponent or power-ups. The RPG side of this pits characters in the middle of an eternal battle between Cosmos and Chaos. The focus is on combat, and you’ll have to go through different offensive & defensive techniques, as well as evasion. While the fighting engine is simple in principle, because of the high number of variables, execution can be tough. Along the way, you’ll be able to upgrade your weapons, armor, as well as swap out different attack techniques.
There’s also a “fighting only” option, but if you’re looking at this in the same frame of mind as a traditional fighting game, you’ll be slightly disappointed. You choose which character you want and match by match (no “best out of three” stuff here), you select your opponent. The opponent’s skill level is evenly matched to yours, and while this is fair, fighting games are usually not fair. There’s also no sub-boss or boss opponents, but any shortcomings Dissidia 012 [duodecim] may have as a fighting game are made up by the fact that any experience you rack up in the fighting area carries over in the RPG.
Square Enix graciously provided a free copy of this game for review. Thanks, guys.
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(DS, PS3, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii)
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