And ladies! And ladies who dress like men! The string of Duodecim posts becomes a hat-trick!
I was going to post something sensible and meaningful about completing the main story mode today, but I guess I might have gotten a little side-tracked, a little excitable ...
HERE BE SPOILERS!
Yes. It happened.
His establishing scenes really are wonderful, and all apart from his voice acting I think he is quite brilliant! I wasn't too sure if he was going to be represented as someone all-powerful and fierce or something more ridiculous and lolzy but really, it could have gone either way.
I am mostly surprised by his gameplay to be honest! I was expecting him to be slow, and I mean slow, like Garland or maybe even Exdeath, but he is much speedier than I thought he would be! Similar to Kain his jumps and vertical range are greater than his ground work or horizontal moves, but this can be easily worked with. He has a great move-range - offering up magic just in case you don't want to take the risk with his ridiculous weaponry - and his EX Burst is a lot of fun regardless of the outcome!
And come on, the guy gets ticker tape when he wins. If that doesn't sell him I don't know what will.
I am still faithful to Kain and I am really looking forward to building him up as my main, but it's going to be a competition between he and Gilgamesh now to see who gets the most of my attention. I need to be returning to the Reports first of all though I suppose.
Ah, such is life in the Interdimensional Rift!
- Break
So we've had a weekend to settle to Duodecim, to learn new ropes, get to grips with new characters, find out what has been tweaked and what has remained untouched. What are we all thinking?
So far, I am loving it.
Gameplay
Compared to the original Dissidia, Duodecim is much faster. As a fan of fast and furious battles, this completely appeals. Not only are actions faster, but the characters themselves have gained some extra speed too, and I say this at a level before having gained many speed boosts. This is good news.
Possible the biggest new addition to the gameplay is the Assist system, which allows the player to call in another AI character to attack and/or distract the enemy for a (very) limited amount of time. This was probably the feature I was most dubious about, but I completely take that back now. Assists, when well-timed, can be used very strategically to alter the flow of a whole battle, and changing up Assist pairings can make for some very interesting and unique combinations. Somehow the Assist system, Summons and EX Force manage to not get confused, and all together they remain very intuitive!
And of course, speaking of EX Force, the EX Cancel has been, well, cancelled! In its place now, if a player triggers their EX Mode during an enemy attack, rather than immediately going into an EX Burst the arena will turn black and white and time will slow for several seconds, giving the EX character a chance to retaliate or back away. This new system corrects a massive loopwhole from the former game, and as much as I was one of those awful EX Cancelling players I don't feel that anything has been unfairly taken away from us.
Story Mode
Without any of my normal Dissidia-playing warriors on hand this weekend I have been diligently working away at the new Story Mode, and although I am only 7 chapters in, the difference is remarkable. Reception of the body of the story itself will be totally subjective* of course, but the most significant difference is that particular chapters are - so far - devoted to particular characters. Before the game's release I had planned out whose story to play through first, but instead there appears to be one story that dictates who you play as and when. This might not sound fun, but it is actually a great way to make sure you're trying your hand with different characters and getting some level experience across the board.
As you play through the Story Mode you also unlock various Reports. Not only can you read these but they also contain extra videos and playable scenarios that flesh out the story from other characters' perspectives.
(*for the record I'm loving the story so far, so much more than in the first game!)
New Characters
I haven't yet unlocked the last three of the new characters, but through Story Mode I've tried my hand at the others, and have definitely been gathering opinions.
I'm struggling with Tifa, I really am. I lean towards a mid- close-range vicious fighting style and I also favour faster characters, so really Tifa should encompass everything I love, but I can't get to grips with how weak she is. She ironically enough just doesn't pack any punch, which is quite a disappointment.
As for Yuna, I never expected to like her in the first place. I do not like to use magic-users, I dislike slow characters, and I hate moves that fill the screen so much. In sharp contrast to Tifa, Yuna represents a tonne of things I hate about a character. And I really hope I don't have to play as her again. It doesn't help that I really liked her in FFX!
Vaan and Lightning I'm rather unsure about. I've been pretty successful with both characters, but I don't feel that any particular level of skill has been involved in these successes, just luck. And luck simply isn't going to cut it! I'm particularly fond of Lightning's Paradigm shifts, as these make for some pretty fast-paced and interesting fights.
(notice how the two characters I'm unsure of are the leads in two Final Fantasy's I've never completed!)
And here is the comedy. Kain and Laguna, the two characters I've been most excited about from the start, are currently my two best. What is unusual is that while - as stated above - my normal behaviour is vicious, both of these characters currently stand as tacticians! Also, neither of these characters are particularly fast.
Kain is quite similar to Dissidia Cloud, in that he is not especially fast but packs one hell of a punch when he hits. He also shares some similarity with Jecht with his fantastic and customisable combos. Kain is a character who makes it easy to switch between vicious and tactician, and the only downfall is that - as I was informed by my warrior-in-arms - he sounds distressingly like Master Miller in the Metal Gear series. Don't get me wrong, I am a Complete Girl for Master Miller ... but if they couldn't put Solid Snake in Duodecim I don't see how they should get the Master in instead!
As for Laguna, his character is absolutely perfect when compared to his original role in FFVIII (right down to the leg cramp!). He is a delight to watch in Story Mode and also very interesting to play as, especially when one customs him eough to hold his own in close combat too. So far, neither of my characters have let me down!
I'm only half-way through Story Mode, and I haven't explored the game much outside of that, but so far I am very very pleased indeed with the transformation between Dissidia and Duodecim! Expect to hear more in the none-too-distant!
Since October 2009 I've been playing Dissidia Final Fantasy, a game which - for those of you who don't know - plucks some of the main characters from previous Final Fantasy games and pits them together in a universal war of good and evil, of Cosmos and Chaos. Other friends have since joined and so most of our 2010 became riddled with "Dissidia meets". I couldn't even tell you how many hours we've spent in various cafés (or one particular 24-hour diner *cough*) playing through story-modes, training new characters, usurping one-another's freshly-trained warriors of light and dark. Or just warriors of light if you are me, as I came to realise that I just couldn't play as any of the Chaos warriors!
My final unlikely team of SSS Rank warriors:
But finally the day is upon us now that we must cast aside all that we know and step into the Void (see what I did there?), as today is the release of Dissidia Duodecim 012! My party will already be shaken as Cloud will no longer be Cosmos組, meaning that I will have to find myself a new signature character to play as. However with new additions such as Laguna, Lightning and especially Kain, I'm sure I will have plenty of choice!
That's not to mention one particular character who, despite being Chaos組, has this particular blogger very excited indeed ...
But enough expository banter! For this blogger, it is morphing time!
- Break
