Final Fantasy as a series is very well renowned for being one of the best JRPG series of games that have come out. With a lot of fantastic installments comes a follow up to the strange all-star fighting game featuring Final Fantasy characters. Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a fighting game with elements of action roleplaying that’s been developed by Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and published by Square Enix. This game is actually a console port of the Arcade game, Dissidia Final Fantasy and is exclusive to the PlayStation 4.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a battle royal fighter where a team of 3 characters face off against a team of 3 enemies. While it is mainly an arena brawler, it also has a tactical element to it. The game features characters from a variety of Final Fantasy games including Cloud and Sepheroth. These fan favourite characters rendered on PlayStation 4 graphics along with familiar stages will make any Final Fantasy fan happy. The hallmark cutscenes of Final Fantasy make a return, however, the story of the game is quite weak but gives a decent enough excuse for all the characters to face off against each other. The musical arrangement is fantastic with the ability to unlock themes from the other Final Fantasy games which is a really neat addition.
While the character roster does have some good characters from a good spread of games, the actual roster is quite small with only 13 characters to choose from. Fan favouritres like Tifa, Barrett, Sabin and Edgar are missing. Each member of this thin roster has a class- Assassin, Vanguard or Marksman which have a Rock-Paper-Scissor dynamic to them due to which you have to choose a balanced team to have good teamwork and coordination. The game however is not easy to pickup and play due to super cluttered HUD and the actual combat system. There’s two ways to attack, one which does not do actual physical damage but steals Bravery Points from your enemies.
There are six Bravery attacks to choose from wih no real complex combo system. These Bravery Points can then be used to do an HP attack. The more your Bravery Points, the more damage your HP Attack does. But landing the HP attack is not easy task and can leave you vulnerable to a counter attack should you miss, besides the fact that you lose your Bravery Points. This leads to a lot of high risk and high reward situations with the player having to choose between one high output attack at the risk of missing and losing it all or many small attacks to chip away at their HP. This is a very interesting system when compared to other fighting games and works very well with the strategic element of fighting games being added with a lot of mind games.
The story mode does not feature a lot in it and is quite barebones, similar to Street Fighter V on launch. Progressing in the story mode is also done in a weird way where you need to unlock the next sequence by using “Memoria” which are tokens that you get by playing modes other than the Story Mode, so you might have to grind a bit by playing online or against bots just to get to the end of the story.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT can be summed up as the jack of all trade but master of none. It is a unique game with it’s arena brawler fighter element being mixed with a rock-paper-scissor dynamic along with characters and set pieces from the Final Fantasy universe to deliver an all-star fighter that often falls short on what it is trying to do, but when it doesn’t, it is quite the spectacle to experience. If Final Fantasy is a series that you’re a fan of and if this unique mish-mash of genres intrigues you then I recommend you to try out this game, especially if it is on sale.
