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FFVII Rebirth – late impressions

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They didn’t need to do this. I said this at the start of my FFVII Remake late impressions, but the sentiment is true here also. Picking up directly where that game concluded, FFVII Rebirth is a another chunk of reimagined adventures with Cloud Strife and friends, and the second part of a planned trilogy of games based on the 1997 classic. Following the escape from Midgar and Destiny’s Crossroads, the game covers most of the rest of the first disc of the original game – from the flashback at Kalm to the Forgotten Capital. It’s kind of refreshing to see such an honest continuation that picks up almost exactly where you would expect and feels like a genuine extension of Remake’s adventure (the 2020 game came in at around 37 hours for me (plus around 5 hours for Intermission if you beeline the main story); my FFVII Rebirth save at the final boss was about 49 hours.) However – just like Remake, this is a game that fleshes out many of those story beats and battle encounters to something much more involved. Again: they didn’t need to commit to such elaborate new sequences, but it does turn this into a genuinely new adventure.

FFVII Rebirth – event square

FFVII Rebirth

Since I had already played the original game a bit, I had a vague memory about the general locations and events that a player goes through between Kalm and the capital, and so I could feel myself making a mental checklist of story beats and encounters that I wanted to see. And generally, I think that FFVII Rebirth manages to cover most of the memorable sequences. You still take part in the Junon parade, you still find time for fun at the Gold Saucer, you still go through some pivotal sequences at the Temple of the Ancients. The events won’t play out exactly like they did in the PS1 game, but most of the time the interpretations in Rebirth remain enjoyable. And even outside of the events, it’s hard not to appreciate the feeling of walking through what used to be a couple of screens of pre-rendered backdrops, or a handful of NPCs – the bustle and chatter that goes on as you move from one waypoint to the next adds a lot to locations such as Costa Del Sol. Some of those NPCs might have quests for you to pick up, but it’s more likely that they will be keen to play you in a game of Queen’s Blood. A new minigame added to FFVII Rebirth, this duel of card decks has a deceptively simple score-based goal but enough depth behind it to make each play satisfying, and is definitely worth getting to grips with (not that the story lets you ignore the minigame for long…)

2024’s new balance update

Rebirth does feel a lot more challenging than the 2020 game, but I don’t know if that’s because I’m more familiar with Remake’s battles. When you were taking Cloud on a journey to escape from Midgar, I felt like there were only a small handful of compulsory battles that really stretched your abilities and demanded that you make the most of the systems on offer. In FFVII Rebirth, it seems like every other forced miniboss encounter is doing that. I ended a lot of battles with my whole party in the red and near-death, and I’ve been playing both this and Remake on Normal difficulty with active battles. (I did try one or two battles on different difficulties, but generally I liked to reload and retry encounters on Normal difficulty.) The game regularly puts me in situations where I feel like I have eight things to “fix” on the party and only one or two ATB stocks that are ready. I admit that a lot of this may be due to my own knowledge and experience of the battles (I’m already planning to go back to older saves and take a second look at some of the late-game encounters), but the learning curve still felt gentler in the previous game. That being said, I loved taking the time to break down a battle encounter and determine exactly what I need to be looking out for in each of the enemy’s phases. Also, your own offense is supported by a new system of skill unlocks, comparable to a licence board in FFXII, or perhaps the weapon upgrade screen in Remake. Each party member can unlock anything from HP boosts and increased attack stats, to new unique elemental attacks that don’t cost MP – which are especially welcome after Remake had you entering boss battles with the wrong elements equipped.

FFVII Rebirth – environmental awareness

FFVII Rebirth

Whilst I can appreciate an increase in challenge with most of the encounters, I was more disappointed with the environments of the late game – and this stems from something that many Final Fantasy games suffer. When stakes are raised, environments shift from relatable towns and factories and beaches to epic fractured apocalypse backdrops, and even though there’s still another game planned for this trilogy, I already feel like I’m kind of done with it as a late-game staple. Some games have successfully delivered these kind of environments with less bombast – a purely narrative sequence in the Streets of Madness chapter of Final Fantasy XVI was particularly memorable – but I am concerned about what the third game will do to “one-up” the late-game of Remake and Rebirth.

Outside of pure environmental design, the engine sometimes struggles in places. With the previous game, the graphics had difficulty rendering detail in time, leading to memes such as That One Door. Here, the lighting is the most curious aspect of Rebirth. The party can sometimes walk forward into total darkness before the lighting “wakes up” a few seconds later, and some slight camera movements in the wrong place seem to turn the lighting on and off like a lightswitch. It’s never frequent enough to ruin the experience, but it still seems a bit silly whenever it happens.

Despite those observations, this is a great extension and expansion of what FFVII Remake originally set up, and I’m excited by the idea of a conclusion that could expand the hour count of the “trilogy” into triple-digits. If you didn’t like FFVII Remake then there probably isn’t much for you here – if you did, you probably already made up your mind about picking this up. They didn’t need to do this, but I still appreciate the ambition.

FFVII Rebirth is available now for PS5. You can find out more about the game here.

Opinion: Hire the experts

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Note: this article may loosely describe certain combat abilities unlocked in Final Fantasy XVI after a period of playing. If you have not played the game yet, please keep this in mind.

Prelude

Hire the experts - img 01

On June 3rd 2022, the X (formerly Twitter) account @finalfantasyxvi published a list of notable development staff who were working on Final Fantasy XVI. Much of it was as you would expect – Naoki Yoshida (FFXIV) was producing the game, Masayoshi Soken (FFXIV) was providing the soundtrack, and the full list included various other directors who’d previously had experience with the mainline RPG series in one way or another. However, there was one individual in the list who did not have Final Fantasy games credited to them. His entry on the tweeted list read:

Combat Director: Ryota Suzuki
Devil May Cry 5
Dragon’s Dogma
Marvel vs. Capcom 2

In any other series, this might have been a cause for concern – but after hearing other people talk about Final Fantasy XVI – and the trajectory of the mainline Final Fantasy series in general, many considered it a cause for celebration. More than a year later, having now completed the game myself, I have to commend the decision to bring Suzuki on board. Not for the first time, we find that when you hire the experts you can get fun action gameplay out of your RPG franchise.

Hire the experts – and make FFXVI a joy to play

Final Fantasy XVI has layers of RPG staples throughout – the experience points and levels, the unlockable skills, a lot of gear customisation, a job system (of sorts), chatty NPCs, vendors and a central hub, plenty of sidequests and areas to loot, and a story that takes place across an expansive world map with diverse regions to explore. Take away the combat and how it plays out, and what you’re left with is recognisable as a modern RPG template – and so I don’t think it’s strayed too far from its genre roots. Instead, the biggest change is felt when Clive swings his weapon. As we’ve seen modern Final Fantasy games lean towards action-oriented gameplay in Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy VII Remake, we’ve come to accept that traditional RPG combat is at risk of being left behind in this series. So when Final Fantasy XVI has action game talent informing its combat, we get to see this transformation in a form that immediately feels polished and satisfying.

Hire the experts - img 02

On the surface, nothing seems that extraordinary – there is a melee attack, a button to shoot projectiles (these have an elemental property based on the Eikon – this game’s equivalent of Espers or Summons – that is equipped), a lock-on, a jump. However, as Clive proceeds through the game he obtains more Eikons to “equip” – each of these Eikons has a unique action that can be performed at any time, a skill tree where more abilities can be unlocked, and two “slots” where those abilities can be bound to controller shortcuts. What makes this special is that a lot of the abilities don’t feel like the kind of commands you would select in a battle menu during a traditional RPG – instead, it feels more like the Eikons are fighting game characters and you’re unlocking special moves to bind to your shortcuts. Even as I played through the game, I found myself mentally referring to particular abilities as “the uppercut move” or “the gamma wave” – a special move from Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Just like special moves in 2D fighting games have applications for certain circumstances, there are a lot of combat abilities in Final Fantasy XVI that allow you to dictate the way these battles in 3D space are played out.

Hire the experts – but be sensible

RPGs have always enjoyed making the player feel powerful in new ways – every time you recruit a new party member in a modern Persona game, one of the first things you’re keen to know is what their persona’s full skill list looks like. In Final Fantasy XVI, it feels like each of the obtainable Eikons are as much of a party member as Jill, Torgal, or anyone else who might join Clive on his journey, and they definitely elicit the feeling of wonder as you’re keen to unlock each ability and work it into your combos somehow. When you hire the experts you can end up with memorable action experiences, but the gameplay structure is still sensible enough to stagger each Eikon acquisition so that you’re not overwhelmed with options. By the end of the game, you will have come up with some favourite abilities anyway (abilities can be upgraded for more potency, and even bound to ability slots of other Eikons) – consequently, you’ll already have decided what options are right for you.

So it’s taken this long for Square Enix to modernise the combat in one of its beloved RPGs? Not quite – because I feel like we have been here before. Just like Capcom talent revitalised combat in a new Final Fantasy, a lot of my time spent with Clive and co. led to me thinking about how Nier reinvented itself. The 2010 game had serviceable combat tied to some awkward pacing and dull sequences – several years later, another decision was made to seek action specialists (this time PlatinumGames) for Nier Automata, and it resulted in a spectacular 3D action vessel that still respected the roots of the original. And whilst it may simply be because Final Fantasy XVI is fresher in my mind, I daresay that it is even more accomplished than Automata was. Obviously we don’t need every 3D RPG to follow this evolution (Atlus is doing just fine with conventional turn-based combat, and even Yakuza managed to make it work for their own re-invention.) However, if real-time combat is a focus for an RPG developer, it helps to hire the experts.

Hire the experts - img 03

Final Fantasy XVI is available now for Xbox Series, PlayStation 5 and PC. Nier Automata is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch

FFV late impressions: the job centre

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The further back we go, the less I know. I was one of those casual types who barely knew what Final Fantasy was before VII, and ever since then I’ve jumped around the series to see if there was anything else that I missed when I was interested in other games. At least when I think of publishing FFV late impressions, I realise that I kind of had an excuse at the time. It was first released on the SNES (sorry, Super Famicom) in 1992 in Japan, and Europe didn’t get to see it until the 00s and (in the case of PSN and mobile) the 10s. I got around to playing the Game Boy Advance release earlier this year – honestly, it’s not a game that I knew a lot about and so it’s not like I was choosing to play it based on its reputation (unlike my FFVI and Chrono Trigger playthroughs), but I had heard a few good things about it. The game centres around our heroes vowing to restore order after the villain Exdeath shatters the elemental crystals in a bid for power. It’s your typical JRPG format of going from new town to new dungeon, obtaining more abilities and encountering new opponents, culminating in a showdown with the antagonist. Dungeons have some light puzzling and locked-door scenarios, as well as hidden routes to rare treasures – generally, it’s a comfortable RPG template that you can quickly enjoy without being bombarded with too many strange gameplay systems.

FFV late impressions – jobs and abilities

That said, one thing I took away in my FFV late impressions was that the implementation of the job system was more flexible than I expected. I don’t always like job systems in RPGs, because they put a lot of pressure on me to create a sensible range of skills and abilities across my party. I’m not that guy who sets up a team of four white mages, admittedly, but I do feel a certain amount of artificial pressure to “get things right” and not screw myself over in the late game. With FFV’s job system, each job allows a party member to equip certain gear and use special abilities in the battle menu – a thief can steal items from enemies, black and white mages use spells that cause elemental damage or support the party, and so on. However, each party member has a “job” slot and an “ability” slot; after using a job for long enough, the skills associated with that job are unlocked as abilities. This means that you can assign a skill as an ability and then start learning something else in the job slot – creating a summoner who has the thief’s stealing command, or a monk with magic capabilities.

It may seem like a small thing, but it blows open your tactical options – your four party members have their two slots to play with, and at the end of my playthrough I had 21 jobs available as well as the Freelancer (who has two “ability” slots and can wield any gear.) It’s a very different vibe from FFVI (where nearly every character had one “job” throughout the game) and FFVII (where “jobs” are essentially materia and anything goes), but FFV’s own freedoms and restrictions make it satisfying to try different combinations of skills to see what works. By the end of the game (for those curious about the commitment: 38hrs on the clock, with all party members around Lv50), my party was using four different types of magic (blue, black, white, time), controlling enemies (beastmaster), defending against attacks (knight), using summons (summoner) and dealing huge physical damage (with the monk’s “barehanded” ability.) It’s like working with eight party members, but it adds a tactical edge because you still only have four “actions” in your turn.

The grind

The jobs don’t save the game from the usual RPG hurdles, however. I can’t summarise my FFV late impressions without saying that there is still grinding, there are still plenty of random battles, and there are some miserable encounters if you’re not suitably prepared. Towards the end of the game I was being battered by more status ailments than I could deal with in my turns, and so I had to train up someone with time magic to help myself. Also, the random battles can be a nuisance when you’re also finding your way around a dungeon (although gear such as the Chicken Knife – which makes the party auto-flee an encounter and will discharge powerful attacks after fleeing enough battles – make navigation a bit smoother.) As much as I like this game’s jobs and abilities, the later games excel in the moment-to-moment business of dungeon exploration.

FFV late impressions – where to go

FFV late impressions

In late 2021 Square Enix released the “Pixel Remaster” of Final Fantasy V – I don’t know if it’s a particularly good remaster, but there should at least be options if you’re keen to play this but only have modern hardware. I played the GBA game and it was generally fine, but I have no knowledge of the other versions to compare it against. I don’t know if I’ll look even further back through the series history another time, but I’ve enjoyed this entry. If you have any fond memories of Final Fantasy V, don’t forget to leave a comment below.

FFVI late impressions: notes from a newbie

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This article has been some time in the making. In the 16-bit era, I grew up with the Sega Mega Drive and missed out on a lot of SNES classics. Of course, that didn’t stop me from trying to emulate Final Fantasy VI and attempt to play it on PC, but a busy gaming schedule and a short attention span meant that I never gave it the time it deserved. I did “buy the game” years later via the SNES Classic Mini, but even after making a spirited effort to play it on that machine, I only ended up saving myself into a corner – stranded on the floating continent with an underlevelled party who wouldn’t be able to make it back to the world map. (In hindsight, I may have had a Warp command or item available and didn’t realise, but I’d have to check the save…) Honestly, I didn’t intend to write an FFVI late impressions article in early October because I didn’t know I’d be playing the game; however, I’ve had a pretty quiet gaming schedule and so it’s been a fun way to pass the time.

FFVI late impressions – the old

FFVI late impressions

Final Fantasy VI has some novel and inventive moments, but its foundations are quite old-fashioned. You travel the overworld between towns and dungeons engaging in random battles until you’ve levelled up enough to take out the next thing that’s in your path. Random battles are frequent, and blasting through so much fodder might seem chorelike if I wasn’t already familiar with old-fashioned RPGs. To its credit, the character variety allows battles to remain interesting – each new party member that joins the cause has a unique skill that opens up more tactical options when they’re battling with your party. Early on in the game you might find that a few allies are struggling, but you’ll press on because you’re confident in nailing Sabin’s Blitz techniques, and so he can do a lot of the heavy lifting. Later on you’ll see Setzer’s slot-machine ability (which Cait Sith would later pinch in FFVII) and train yourself in reading the reels and making the most of their benefits. Elsewhere, Cyan has multiple special attacks available if you’re willing to wait before taking action – it’s not the most exciting tactic… but since enemies are still active as you wait, there’s an element of risk. However, not all of the techniques are that amazing – I got a few abilities for Gau on the Veldt but the ones I obtained stopped feeling useful in the later areas. Meanwhile, I think I got all of Mog’s “Dance” techniques, but he was in my tertiary party at the end and so he never got a look in – apologies to Mog fans reading this.

Setbacks

FFVI late impressions

The battles themselves aren’t too bad, but the setbacks can be offputting. After revisiting content that I knew from earlier playthrough attempts, I was playing pretty blind – and so I wasn’t always sure when I’d be underlevelled or overlevelled. I actually ended up using the three available save slots so that I wouldn’t have to go back too far if I was underlevelled. (Although once again, I could have used things like the Warp technique – or the equivalent item – a little more during my playthrough; it essentially whisks the party out of a dungeon safely, and I only really started using it in the final tower area.) One element of modern RPGs that I did miss was the concept of “passive” levelling; where the characters who aren’t in your active party still gain a fair amount of experience. I’ve heard that certain events allow party levels to become “averaged” so that nobody falls behind too much, but I still ended up with a few alarmingly under-levelled characters late in the game, and this became a bit of a problem during certain sequences in the final dungeon that involve your entire party. That said, this is still something that I’m guilty of in modern RPGs – many playthroughs of Persona 4 leave the likes of Kanji and Yosuke laughably underpowered. So whilst I enjoy passive levelling, I’m willing to accept that I could have made better decisions.

FFVI late impressions – perks

FFVI late impressions

Outside of the unique skills, some other fun events can come together that make things more manageable. One particular game changer in this playthrough came from the Economizer relic – I found this as a rare drop from a battle in a north-eastern region of the world map (I think online resources give it the nickname “Dinosaur Forest” or “Dinosaur Island”), and it reduced magic cost to 1MP for one ally. No big deal in the early game… but when used in conjunction with more expensive skills such as Ultima, it made certain encounters a pushover. (Another relic, the Gem Box, allows an ally to perform their action twice during the turn, so they’d spend 2MP and unload Ultima twice. As you can imagine, it got kind of silly.) When modern games are so determined to gate so much of the fun behind busywork and marketplaces, it’s refreshing to find overpowered nonsense that’s fun to use in a game such as this. And of course, this wouldn’t be a series of FFVI late impressions if I didn’t mention the Espers – powerhouses that can be summoned to provide invaluable abilities that help your party in battle… if you’re willing to spend the MP. To be honest, I spent a lot of the endgame using character-specific special techniques and basic magic attacks because Esper abilities always seemed pretty expensive, but I still took the time to unlock skills for the ones I had (The discovery of Ragnarok led to my cheap Ultima double-casting – I also found a shield that granted the same skill to another ally, but it seemed a waste when the Economizer, Gem Box and Ragnarok were so much more efficient) Again, that unlocking could sometimes lead to a bit of a grind, but at least there were world map areas that would make progress a little quicker.

Consequence and character

During my first draft of this article I didn’t really think about mentioning the story or characters too much because it’s all so well-known, but I was impressed by how compelling it all remained. Yes, some of the character traits can feel slightly one-dimensional, and since the post-FFVII explosion of games and spin-offs it’s easy to think that the story might just feel like another Final Fantasy story, but I can appreciate how interesting it would have been at the time. Themes of darkness and chaos exist, but there are still moments of levity and humour that don’t feel too jarring – small-scale silliness such as the recurring encounters with Ultros, and more infamous moments such as the Opera House scene, which manages to be charming, engrossing and funny without feeling like a mess. Also, despite the attention placed on Terra, it doesn’t feel like it’s forcing any one character to be the hero in the way that FFVII pushes Cloud. There’s always the possibility that people will have their favourite party members as the game goes on – whether for story or gameplay reasons – but most of the allies recruited to the cause are likeable enough.

FFVI late impressions – high scores

So where did my party end up during the finale? Most of the characters had levels in the low to mid-50s, with two in the high 50s, two in the 60s and one level 82 character (the Ultima double-caster who was involved in most of the damage-dealing late in the game.) My last save before finishing the game showed a playtime of 42 hours and 49 minutes, which apparently isn’t too bad: the time for “All Styles” on the website HowLongToBeat suggests that a typical playthrough is around 41.5 hours long. (As an aside, I also tweeted my progress when I reached the World of Ruin – back then, most of my party was level 29 or 30, and I had 20.5 hours on the clock… so the two worlds split the game length fairly equally.) I did find the final stretch a bit of a drag even without the perils of under-levelled allies – there’s a lot to do for what often feels like the smallest amount of progress, and whilst random battles quickly become a formality, the party management and navigation of the environment (coupled with occasional long stretches between save points, or long treks back and forth when I wanted to warp to the world map) slowed things down for a while.

Despite all of this, I’ve enjoyed my time with the game, and wouldn’t be averse to revisiting it in the future. If the unique abilities and techniques were all equally interesting, and there was a generous form of “passive” levelling (in addition to the averaging) for other characters, I’d have no trouble recommending it, but even with the caveats it’s not too bad. Outside of my general gameplay impressions, I think that the main characters are all likeable… and there are some fantastic pieces of music throughout the game, from the epic “Decisive Battle” tune that plays during boss encounters, to the moody “Awakening” theme that offers a slower and more intimate variation of the world map music. Since I personally have more history with FFVII, the adventures of Cloud and co. may still mean more to me, but I can definitely see why this is held in such high regard.

Final Fantasy VI was originally released for the Super Nintendo in 1994 – however, ports exist on PS1, GBA, Steam and mobile. You can also find the game on the SNES Classic Mini.

FFVII Remake – late impressions

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They didn’t need to do this. It’s not a criticism of the product, but even after the credits rolled I couldn’t help thinking that this was above and beyond what certain Final Fantasy VII fans may have wanted from a “remake”. I would have settled for a few more polygons on the character models, a better display resolution and less of the soundtrack’s MIDI screeching… however, FFVII Remake represents an impressive amount of work, with full environments explored in third-person, numerous sidequests, expanded content, an entirely new battle system and more besides. It’s a surreal feeling when a game is tapping into your nostalgic memories from decades ago and – at the same time – playing in a way that can’t be compared to the older game. Structurally, the game isn’t too dissimilar; the world may be big but you’re still going to specific locations in a specific order (as indicated here with some helpful waypoints)… however, the original was every bit as linear. I played the 1997 game again in late February and there really weren’t many opportunities to deviate from the defined path, so this isn’t a bad thing. Besides, it’s a path worth taking – the environments look excellent, and when you combine that with some great character models it pushes all of the right nostalgia buttons. However, it’s the overhauled gameplay that may prove to be more divisive.

FFVII Remake – throwing down

FFVII Remake

Aside from your minigames, fetch quests and light puzzling, you’ll be spending a lot of time fighting. Characters in your party have default attacks that can be mashed out for easy combos but they can build up ATB to use other skills and spells. A stagger gauge builds with prolonged attacks on a single enemy, and when it’s full the party can inflict bonus damage for a limited amount of time. Meanwhile, status ailments return, and elemental weaknesses play a big part in defeating certain enemies. The “divisive” bit comes from the feeling that elemental weaknesses feel more important here… and in a game where all of your special abilities are governed by how many materia orbs you can slot in your gear, it’s easy to run into a battle with the wrong elements. In practice, it’s not too bad – one orb ability lets you “Assess” an enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, and once you’ve done this you can go in with the correct elements. I do have some other minor gripes about the combat – some arenas feel too small and fiddly, and the realtime moments can make it hard to keep an eye on what everyone is doing, but most sticking points were overcome after only a few attempts. On a more positive note, the stagger gauge is a great addition, and it’s fun to devise optimal combinations of moves between characters in order to quickly stagger the more problematic enemies.

Tonal expectations

I won’t speak about the story too much, but I will talk about the tone. After various spin-offs and associated media, it was easy to think that people would lose sight of FFVII’s beautifully jumbled mood, but there is so much that FFVII Remake gets right with regard to its tone. Take the Turks; they’re slick, cool and professional, but their presence also comes with an air of absurdity and comedic relief in certain scenes, and you know that they’ve nailed the Turks in this game as soon as you see Rude get his shades cracked by an attack, before throwing them away and pulling out an identical pair from his pocket. The zenith of the game’s tonal victories is seen in the Honey Bee Inn, where instead of watering down the notion of cross-dressing humour in today’s climate, they fully embrace Cloud’s transformation in a positive way that genuinely made me smile – and will probably end up being one of my standout gaming highlights of 2020. Everyone from the main party members to various side-characters behaves almost exactly how you want them to in this game, and even random bros such as Johnny end up becoming likeable in their own silly way.

FFVII Remake – a promising entry

FFVII Remake

Most importantly, this was a gameworld I honestly enjoyed coming back to, because I appreciated the characters, locations and the tone so much. I’ll admit that some of the sidequests were kind of forgettable, and the infamous Mysterious/Enigmatic Spectres feel like the dullest Arbiters of Fate around… but the combat and the events did enough to keep me coming back. I will challenge the notion that the remake needed to move away from the old combat style (Persona proves that classic turn-based combat is still relevant), but I’m open to new gameplay styles and appreciate what they went for here. (As a disclaimer, I played this on the Normal Difficulty – there is a “Classic” difficulty where you only need to choose ATB actions, but sometimes this feels too much like you’re letting the game play itself.) So that’s FFVII Remake – my own final play time was just under 37 hours so there’s plenty of RPG for your money, and I’m keen to see what the future of FFVII holds. Even if the rest of the story is never recreated, I feel like FFVII Remake has covered enough notable events to be a truly engaging experience in itself. They didn’t need to do this, but I welcome it all the same.

FFVII Remake is available now for PS4. You can find out more about the game here.

Preview: Dissidia NT beta

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The Dissidia NT beta is a cruel reminder that I stopped playing the original PSP game a long time ago. You might remember Disposable Media covering the game’s announcement back in June, and at the time the details of the Dissidia NT beta hadn’t been revealed. However, colleagues in online communities helpfully shared links when beta sign-ups became available. I’m not someone who signs up to every beta going, but as a fan of the first PSP game I liked the idea of getting an early look at this new entry in the Dissidia series. Luckily, at around 11am this morning I received a confirmation email and download link for the Dissidia NT beta, so what follows are some initial impressions of the game.

The Dissidia NT beta lets you view a tutorial, practice against AI or jump straight into matchmaking. Since it had been a while since I last played the game, I looked at the tutorial first – it opens by fading in the controller layout (annoyingly, it automatically fades out so you’d better burn that controller image into your mind when you can) and then proceeds to show numerous captioned videos that explain the various techniques. Triggers target foes, bumpers guard and dash, circle jumps, square and cross handle bravery and HP attacks respectively and triangle (when pressed with an analogue stick direction) performs special EX skills that are governed by cooldown gauges and selected when picking your character. You can also vote on a summon for your team – each one comes with passive perks (whilst unsummoned) and active perks (whilst summoned) and there are seven to choose from. Think of it like the grooves in Capcom vs SNK or the Infinity Stones in MvC Infinite, but for the whole team.

Lobbying and battling in the Dissidia NT beta

Dissidia NT beta

The lobby system feels a bit rough, but that’s to be expected in a beta – there’s lots of waiting for a match to initiate, sometimes I wasn’t sure if the lobby had broken or not, and attempting to back out could sometimes result in the game failing to respond to your button presses. On a more positive note, the presentation of the lobby is tidy – it shows both teams, the characters the loadouts, the summons and the battle location. You can also chat to others by selecting preset messages, which is a thoughtful inclusion.

When you’re finally in a match the battles are fast and flashy, and it’s a harsh learning curve at first. The Dissidia NT beta showcases traditional Dissidia gameplay; that is, using bravery moves to boost your attack power, and then cashing it out for big damage. (A nice touch is being able to see how much damage you’ll do at your current bravery level, indicated by glowing highlights on enemy health bars.) However, until you learn to use dashes effectively and jump cancel out of animations, you’ll be cornered and pounded by attacks in moments. Movement plays a big part in the Dissidia NT beta, as you want to get out when you’re on the ropes, but a stamina bar prevents continued dashes. Even when you’re on the offensive, some attacks can take a while to come out and so if you try and go in on someone without checking your surroundings, their allies can sweep in and stop what you’re about to do. The most bizarre elements of the initial learning curve come from the strangely sluggish startup of certain attacks and the equally slow recovery after each knockdown, although you quickly learn to jump cancel… and often with the PSP game there would be a trade-off between speed and damage, so it’s probably worth experimenting with the roster. Besides, the strongest attacks are never free – you have to work to get the opportunity for the big damage, and if you’re the one on the receiving end of that big damage then you deserve what’s coming to you.

Picking and choosing in the Dissidia NT beta

Where general fighting game box ticking in concerned, the roster in the Dissidia NT beta features 14 characters – each from the first 14 Final Fantasy games – and whilst playing online I didn’t really see any single character dominating. How much of that is due to players experimenting with the cast of characters, or the game being genuinely balanced, remains to be seen. With this game being released after Final Fantasy XV, I have to wonder if the developer will look into DLC in the future.

Dissidia was a hard game to get into back then, and going back to it now hasn’t been easy. Players have to get out of the fighting game mindset of wearing down an opponent’s health bar with a series of blows, and instead pay attention to bravery values and work towards doing significant damage – or preferably taking someone out – in one strike. There’s a lot of visual information to help you figure out when this is possible, so the game does a lot to inform players, but you still have to adjust to that ruleset. Even so, there’s still nothing else out there quite like it, and it just makes determining the next big thing in fighting games even trickier – this, Marvel, the new Arika game and DBZ all look excellent. As always, if you’ve tried the Dissidia NT beta and would like to share your thoughts, leave a comment below.

Dissidia NT is coming to PlayStation 4 in 2018

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming in 2018

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Here at Disposable Media we all like to point and laugh at Final Fantasy for having one of the most inappropriate names for a videogame series, but amongst the mainline RPGs there are also a lot of interesting spin-offs that can appeal to fans of all kinds of genres. Admittedly there are more than a few bad cash-ins and missteps (Final Fantasy: All The Bravest, anyone?) but sometimes we end up with gems such as the Dissidia Final Fantasy series. The original Dissidia was a 1v1 fighting game where players would either use HP attacks to drain the health of the opponent, or use “Bravery Attacks” to drain an opponent’s defensive and offensive power (and increase their own attack/defence.) To keep things balanced, each HP attack would reduce the attacker’s “bravery”, ensuring that the attacker would have to build it back up with additional bravery attacks before striking again. Aside from the obvious draw of being to bat Cloud about for a bit, it made for an engaging and tactical vs. game where one powered-up attack could swing the battle in your favour. Dissidia later received a sequel and there was even an arcade game revealed in 2015, but there haven’t been many new Dissidia games on the horizon for home console gamers. That is, until we recently learned that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming…

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming – and it looks great

Earlier this week an announcement trailer was revealed for a new game in the Dissidia Final Fantasy series. Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming to home consoles sometime next year, and it appears to be based on the arcade game that most people imagined would remain in Japan forever. Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming to PS4 and is reported to feature online multiplayer as well as the same 3v3 battle format that was featured in the arcade game. It’s being developed by Team Ninja and will feature a new story mode written by Nojima, but the combat and gameplay should be enough of a draw for most fans. The arcade game has always looked slick, fast-paced and a lot of fun – the PSP game had a lot of replay value but the hardware always made the arena battles feel a little bit unremarkable, so the big-screen treatment should work well here. Besides, in an age of gaming where everyone’s looking for conventional 1v1 fighters that can be resurrected – see Street Figher V, Tekken 7, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite – it’s refreshing to see this odd tactical fighter enjoy another home console release.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming – get to know the earlier games

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming

Knowing that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is coming to gamers is great news for people who were looking at the arcade release with envy – the PSP original was released sometime in between Disposable Media’s PDF origins and online rebirth, so I don’t think I ever covered it here. With E3 just around the corner, there will hopefully be some more news on the game shortly. And if you’re entirely new to the Dissidia series, there’s no harm in checking out the earlier games – both the original and Duodecim are available from the PlayStation Store and playable on Vita or PSP. Admittedly it may not be easy to find online competition for these games today, but you can at least find out what you’re getting into. (And you’ll probably get more fun out of it than you will trying to play something like Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring.) As always, if you have fond memories of the earlier Dissidia games or wish to share your thoughts on NT, let us know below.

Preview: World of Final Fantasy demo

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World of Final Fantasy certainly seems quite unusual based on what I know about it. If you recall, it’s the “other” Final Fantasy game that was announced alongside the long-anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake, and even though FFVII’s return is exciting news, I was still intrigued by WoFF. Final Fantasy has spun off in so many different directions that you’ll never know when you’ll get a rough gem (FFF: Chocobo Tales), a revered classic (FF Tactics Advance) or something that makes you wonder if there was ever a target audience planned in the first place (FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus.) In some ways, World of Final Fantasy doesn’t really make things that much easier – the World of Final Fantasy demo has a bunch of systems and mechanics and you might need the scope of a full game to fully understand how to get the most out of everything, but what’s been teased is still intriguing.

World of Final Fantasy demo

Nurturing Mirages in the World of Final Fantasy demo

The World of Final Fantasy demo is over within an hour but it shows you enough of everything to give you a general flavour of the game. World of Final Fantasy has a traditional turn-based battle format that’s given extra variety with Mirages and Stacks. Mirages are creatures you can encounter in battle and – if you’re lucky – capture for your own use. Like Pokémon and Persona, they act as summonable creatures with their own abilities; as you progress through battles and earn skill points you can unlock extra abilities on the skill trees for your mirages. For instance, in the World of Final Fantasy demo a Goblin mirage has a basic physical attack, but by spending skill points you can boost his stats or unlock extra moves, making them more effective in battle. You capture mirages by first encountering one in a battle (the game will happily announce the presence of mirages so that you know there’s a chance to capture one) and then fighting and ultimately “imprisming” it – that is, capturing it using the Prisms in your inventory. Once you have caught a number of Mirages, you can look into Stacks.

World of Final Fantasy demo

Building stacks in the World of Final Fantasy demo

Stacks are a feature in the World of Final Fantasy demo that allow you to put your character and its mirages in a stack of three. Each mirage and character has a size of (S)mall, (M)edium and (L)arge and you must stack the character and two mirages in S-M-L order. That said, why would you want to do this in the first place? Well, if you fight as a stack of three, your stack gets one turn, a combined HP/MP, and all the abilities of the mirages in that stack will be available to select from for that one turn. Meanwhile, if you unstack your three mirages, they all get separate turns; however, the individual HP and MP of each mirage is quite low. Essentially, you’re trading safety for turns, so you need to decide which is more beneficial based on the enemies on the field.

Knocking down stacks in the World of Final Fantasy demo

The general party status menu in the World of Final Fantasy demo is interesting in that you see stacks, rather than characters, so if you’re using a stack of three and select a potion from the inventory, the potion will heal the combined HP of the stack. Furthermore, if your stack of mirages is getting battered by attacks, it risks collapsing. At the end of the World of Final Fantasy demo you face off against an enemy stack, and the more you pummel it with attacks the less stable it becomes. Collapse the stack and you can target the individual foes, reducing the threat one enemy at a time.World of Final Fantasy demo

The strategies that could emerge from obtaining more mirages and making different stacks make me think that this could be a really fun game. That said, the recent acquisition of a PSVR headset means that I might not be in a hurry to spend even more money on games just yet…

World of Final Fantasy will be released on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita at the end of October. For more information, visit http://worldoffinalfantasy.square-enix.com/ or why not try the World of Final Fantasy demo on the PlayStation Store today?

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