Dissidia: Final Fantasy First Look

Dissidia isn't Square-Enix's first attempt at a fighting game, with Bushido Blade, Ehrgeiz, and probably a few others coming prior. Dissidia isn't the first time Final Fantasy characters have appeared in a fighting game, either, with the majority of the main cast from Final Fantasy VII popping up in the aforementioned Ehrgeiz. This, however, is the first time that a Final Fantasy game has been specifically designed as a one-on-one fighting game.

The inspiration for it comes from the Kingdom Hearts games, funnily enough. Dissidia producer Yoshinori Kitase and director and designer Takeshi Arakawa - both veterans of the long-standing series - told me that Square-Enix wanted to make a commemorative game for Final Fantasy's 20th anniversary, while at the same time the Kingdom Hearts 2 team wanted to take the Kingdom Hearts battles and create a fighting game out of them. The two ideas came together naturally, and the result is Dissidia, a fighting game that pulls characters from almost every main-series Final Fantasy, from I through to XII.

So, yes, the game plays out a bit like Kingdom Hearts in that it takes place in a full third-person arena with free-roaming (aerial combat is not only possible but emphasised; most characters look able to fly, or float, or jump in mid-air) and plenty of ridiculous moves. Each character has bars for Brave Points (BP) and Hit Points (HP): removing all of your opponent's HP wins you the match, but the more BP you have, the more damage you do, so there's a balancing act in order – particularly as some of your attacks do no damage but steal BP from your opponent instead. Each character also has an EX Bar, which, when filled by picking up certain items from around the stages, allows the character to enter a transformed state. Cloud, for instance, equips the Ultima Weapon, while Terra shifts into her Esper state.

Some will be disappointed in the character choices, naturally. While 22 is a lot of characters for a fighting game to have in its first iteration, when you consider the amount of Final Fantasy games there are and the amount of characters in each, it suddenly doesn't seem so big. The team, we were told, argued over it a lot. Everyone had a particular favourite that they wanted in and characters went back and forth between inclusion and removal, but eventually the number got whittled down to the present 22.

The character design wasn't easy, either, Arakawa and Kitase were keen to stress. Before VII, the characters were small sprites without the wide, sweeping battle animations we're used to now. There were even a fair few characters that didn't have particularly iconic appearances or movesets. For this, apparently, the team went back to the source – the concept designs and the scripts. The idea was to make a game that the fans would appreciate, so it was desperately important to get this right, and the reaction from the Japanese fans has, we're told, been overwhelmingly positive.

Because the main thrust of the game was the RPG-like main quest mode, and this isn't something common in most Western fighting games, a more immediate instant-action Arcade mode has been added for the Western releases. We can also expect new events, new abilities, and a Moogle, although neither Arakawa nor Kisase would comment further on the Moogle's place in the game.

Dissidia is looking good. The Japanese release late last year was extremely well-received, and the English release looks like it's going to be much the same, but expanded. The game is being designed both for fans of Final Fantasy and those who've never touched the games; the game has a stand-alone plot of its own, and the team hope that the characters may just encourage newbies to the franchise to try out the main series. Dissidia looks to be a solid, original fighting game, with a wide range of fan-favourite characters, an extensive quest mode, and plenty of jump-right-in accessibility.