I picked this up on launch day and have a blast with it. Dissidia is a sort of 3rd person fighting game with rpg elements in it. You can level up and gain access to new attacks and abilities.

You have two types of attacks, the first is HP attacks which will obviously hurt the other characters HP. The amount of damage you do greatly depends on how high your bravery is. The second type of attack you can do gains you bravery while taking the other characters bravery down. Each set of attacks are different for every character (and there’s 21 of them) and every character has a few different attacks he/she can use. These attacks can also be swapped out as well as other skills like increased jumping or taking less critical damage.

Most of the time when you make an attack of any time the other character will shoot out a bit of ex “dust”. Once your purple bar on the left is filled and turns a yellowish orange you can then use your ex mode. In ex mode you will regen hp and once you land a hp attack on the other character you can do a “limit break” on them. The limit breaks are different for each character and require you to do different inputs, some are easier while others can be a tad annoying.

There’s a story in single player mode which makes a lot more sense than the usual square FF storyline (FFX I’m looking at you). It’s basically the good guys work for order while the bad guys work for chaos with elements of the good guys own FF storylines mixed in.

I think this game is probably only interest you if you are a fan of the FF games. I’ve played three of them and that was enough to get me into Dissidia. Though I can see non-ff fans enjoying this game as its fairly balanced fast paced and has a long life to it.

The only thing I don’t really like about the game is that it’s hard to work out how to get new/better items for your character etc. I’ve purchased a guide for the game because if I didn’t have that I’d be randomly grinding until the end of time hoping to get some components that might help me make a end game weapon.

I’m Giving Dissidia: Final Fantasy: 8.0/10 
for being fast, fun and pretty awesome for the PSP

I’ve been a huge tactics fan since I first got Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis back in 2002. Since then tactical RPG’s have become my favorite style of game. So far I’ve played Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance and now Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance 2.

For those of you who don’t know tactical rpgs are played out on a isometric field. Movement order is based on a characters speed. You build up a team of several characters and jobs/classes more than you can put into play at any time. In A2 you can use up to 6 units/characters at a time but you can have many more than that in your clan/team.

The full name of the game is Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift but for the purpose of this review I’m just going to refer to it as A2. There were a few things I really didn’t like about the first FFTA game, one of them being the judges/laws system.

Any time you had a battle a judge would be present and there would be a random law such as “No Ranged Weapons” or “No Multiple Targeting”. You could use law cards to bypass these laws if you had the right one in your limited inventory. But if one of your units broke a law he/she would get a yellow card and if he/she broke the law again he/she would be sent to jail.

Thankfuly the Judge/Laws system in A2 is a lot more forgiving. At the start of battle you can choose a privillage such as Power up to increase attack power slightly, you gain better privillages via clan trail quests. There are no law card to bypass the laws anymore, but the punishment for breaking the laws isn’t as bad. Now when you break a law you loose out on bonus rewards at the end of the quest, you can’t resurrect KO’ed units and you loose your privillage buff (it’s still better than loosing units forever though).

I quiet like the job system in A2. You have to learn a certain number of skills in a job to be able to use a more advance job. Instead of learning skills via jp points you earn in battle you now learn skills from your armour and weapons. Once you master a skill (completely learn it) you can use it regards of what armour or weapon you have.

The bazzar system is also very cool. In every quest you get random unusable items from monsters and also as your reward for finishing a quest. You use these items to unlock weapons at the shop, so intead of getting better weapons from new shops as you quest, you can get them at every shop once you unlock them on the bazzar. Some weapons need to be unlocked every time you buy one from the shop however.

I’m horrible addicted to this game as I’ve been playing it for about 15 hours in game. I pick it up and a few hours go past and I haven’t even noticed. I hope square keeps making more tactics games as they seem to keep improving the forumla. I’m going to try to have an army of ninja’s in A2 like I had in tactics ogre.

I’m giving Final Fantasy Tactics A2: 9/10 
It would of got 10/10  but the judge system is still a tad annoying sometimes