#dissidia nt

Dissidia Final Fantasy New Tale is the arcade reboot of Dissidia Final Fantasy: The franchise’s fighting game series and default crossover brand. The big theme of the game is teamwork, as the game is centered around 3v3 battles. While this has been something of a sticking point (and, well, we’ll get to my thoughts soon), this was more or less an inevitability; As Tetsuya Nomura (who was heavily involved with the first two Dissidia games) felt that the initial formula had been taken as far as it could go and that a new entry would need to go in a new direction. The new directors had a vision of including an aspect of Final fantasy that the previous Dissidia games couldn’t really do with their prior setup: Parties of characters duking it out. While 012 had included several party-based elements (Party-battles, assists, etc), New Trial would be going all-in on the concept.

The arcade Dissidia game would later receive a home port for the PS4, known as “Dissidia Final Fantasy NT”, with a PC port coming much later. To fans who were expecting an HD expansion of the original games, they were greatly mistaken: The game was simplified and stripped down, and what replaced a lot of the deeper elements was not necessarily better. While fans continue to hope for the day that SE decides to remaster Duodecim, the 3v3 aspects of New Tournament continue to permeate through the series between the long-running Opera Omnia and recently revealed Duellum.

Needless to say, those fans aren't big fans of this direction.

Gameplay

Dissidia’s core gameplay loop is about the same in New Take: Each character has two sets of attacks: Brave Attacks (BRV) and HP attacks. Brave Attacks generate Bravery for the attacker and drains it for the victim. Bravery equates to a number which is turned into damage when a character lands an HP attack. Characters who get hit for more Bravery than they have or at 0 Bravery are ‘broken’: They can’t generate Bravery until their Brave gauge regenerates and attacks on them become critical hits. In essence: Players try to maintain a balance between racking up Bravery and cashing it out to defeat their opponent, dodging or blocking their opponents’ attacks.

One of the biggest sticking points regarding New Tricks is its simplification. In the original games, Characters can level up as in a standard RPG by landing attacks on their opponents, which lead to unlocking new skills to equip. The PSP games gave you frankly absurd amounts of freedom in tweaking a character to be how you want them to be. This can range from enabling or disabling movement options, to determining your moveset (up to and including which buttons and mapped to which commands). And that’s without getting into the equipment or summons that can wildly change how the game plays, changing your stats and playing around with the Break Gauge respectively. The game itself knew how variable its options were, as the story mode would pit you against foes that had certain equipment/summon combos to utilize unorthodox strategies (such as enemies that only had one HP, but a set up that set their Bravery to 9999, more or less guaranteeing a OHKO).

New Title is a very streamlined version of the overall gameplay. All of the RPG elements are axed and character movesets are far more static - BRV attacks are now fixed and while multiple HP attacks still exist, characters can only take one at a time. This means that if a character doesn’t play how you want them to play, there is very little you can do about it. Characters still level up, but the only meaningful things you get out of it are new HP attacks – otherwise, it’s just titles and new voice lines.

EX abilities are a whole can of worms. In the first two games, each character had an EX Mode: For the heroes, they usually referenced some transformation or powerful abilities/Jobs they had – for the villains, they usually had transformations based on their boss forms, albeit with some exceptions (Garland’s seems to be based on his having been a paragon of Cornelia, Golbez lacked a transformation in FF4, and so merges with his Shadow Dragon, etc). In these modes, the characters would get some form of buff or extra ability, and landing an HP attack allowed the player to trigger a cinematic attack, the outcome of which depended on a minigame.

In Dissidia No Time, these are replaced with EX Skills. These skills come in two types: Two skills that the player can choose from a modest selection (usually buffs or debuffs – tying back into the ‘party’ theme) and a permanent skill unique to the character, sometimes being a buff and other times being something more elabaorate. In some cases, such as Terra, Zidane and Onion Knight’s transformations, they more or less act as EX Modes did previously.

3 V 3

The biggest change with Dissidia New Teams is in the shift from a 1v1 game to a 3v3. You choose a character, you choose your teammates (or rather, they choose theirs in non-single player modes) and you fight similarly laid out teams. With this system comes a few changes.

The first is in how matches are won. Unlike traditional fighting games, Dissidia’s characters are all on the stage at once. Due to the snowball effect this would undoubtably cause if players were permanently out on K.O., the game uses a “3 strike” system: When either team has a member KO’d 3 times, no matter who it was – the game ends. This can be a double-edged sword: On one hand, it means you’ll rarely be without a full team for too long, as characters respawn after 10 or less seconds. On the other, it means that if there is a weak link – a teammate who keeps getting bullied by the other team or is prone to getting knocked out easily, it can drag the entire team down.

Another is in targeting. Dissidia is a 3D fighting game and manuvering around can be tricky. The PSP games got around it more or less by keeping the camera focused on the direction of your opponent. Nice Teamwork allows the player to use the trigger buttons to target opponents. The game provides a visual short-hand for when an enemy is locked on to you via a line above your character in the direction of the character targeting you.

Third is the EX Skills, as explained earlier. These usually take on the form of AoE abilities, so using them usually requires getting somewhat close to your enemies/allies: the more grouped up, the better.

Lastly, there is an entirely new mode known as “Core Battle”, that can be described as a tower defense mode or a really stripped down MOBA: In it, each team has a Crystal Core that they have to protect while destroying the opponents’ core. I can’t speak for the mode with human players, but it’s… alright. It’s not a particularly deep mode, and the game length tends to vary, but it’s something.

Stages

This is one of the changes I don’t see people mention much despite it being a very significant change. In the original duology, stages varied from very flat to very narrow. You have some more horizontal stages (relatively speaking) such as Dream’s End or standard World of Darkness or Orphan’s Cradle as well as more vertically inclined stages such as Planet’s Core, Ultimecia’s Castle, etc. Stages also varied in their openness, with stages like Palamecia and Kefka’s Tower being very cramped (ideal for their trap and projectile-based respective owners) and others like the Lunar Subterrane or the Interdimensional Rift being more open. 012 in particular had some good stage variety with Crystal Tower, Sky Fortress Bahamut and even some more cramped stages such as the SS Prima Vista or the Phantom Train. The latter two types of stage were appreciated given that a large amount of time would otherwise be spent inevitably DBZ flying through the air.

But in Noteworthy Terrain, to facilitate the team battles, the stages were overhauled. All of the stages are flat and largely open, which makes for some comparatively unimpressive stages. The Chaos Shrine in the original Dissidia had both the inner shrine and the roof, which revealed it to be in some sort of void or pocket dimension. In No Tower you get… the field outside of Cornelia, You Know The One. Most of the stages tend to be some flavor of “circle”.

Wall-running still remains, but it’s been simplified to just be running up. The primary use for it is to run up ledges, although more closed off arenas will let you run up their borders, allowing you to gain some high verticality. But dashing now has a stamina bar, so you can’t stay up there forever.

Additionally, Omega stages were axed. Omega stages had additional gimmicks to spice up the gameplay, such as WoD sending you to small cramped rooms or Sky Fortress Bahamut having intense wind with the edge of the arena being an Out of Bounds zone, Pandemonium having traps, etc. Next Turf, naturally, lacks these types of gimmick-based stages. It tries to make up for this with spectacle, by changing the aesthetics of the stage when during the last stretch of the match - The roof of Pandemonium vanishes, leaving it to resemble the top floor. The snow of the Narshe mines is melted as Kefka’s Light of Judgement shines upon the world. Alexander appears in Alexandria. Usually the changes are references to major events in the source material, such as Meteor approaching Midgar. But the changes are purely cosmetic and can be hard to appreciate when you’re too busy duking it out with each other.

Summons

The original Dissidia, summons played a not-so-seen yet important role. Summons were passives that would have an effect on either you or your opponent, usually manipulating your Bravery in some way.

In Nice Thighs, Summons play a much grander role this time around. In addition to bestowing a passive upon you, crystals occasionally spawn throughout the match. Fighters can break these crystals to get power and, when the teams’ respective gauges are full they can summon their patron to raise hell on the battlefield. And after they’re done, their passive is buffed to an improved form.

Sounds cool? So what’s the problem?

Well, the summons are also a pace-breaker. They are afflicted with the “cinematic finishers” issue that most modern fighting games have: While their intros are flashy and attention-grabbing, they also take a while. I don’t know if there’s some loading going on, but the interruption can wreck the flow of a battle. These cutscenes are also unskippable and while they’re likely more tolerable in an arcade setting, where you’ll only see 1-3 at a time unless you marathon the game, a match that goes on for a standard length of time is usually long enough for at least one team to get their summon off. And, as a reminder, Trial Mode has usually 5-6 battles.

Summons are also gained either randomly or through player level, meaning you’ll have to wait to see a particular summon – a long time, if you’re unlucky.

But Summons in Night Terror aren’t just glorified weapons. Exclusive to the console port are Summons as bosses: They first appear in Story Mode and can be encountered in the Story Trials as bonus battles.

The boss fights change some things. Unlike Chaos in the previous games – who acted as a traditional opponent – Summons play by different rules. Summons must be staggered before they will take HP damage – one of few placed where character class has a gameplay purpose as different roles require different numbers of strikes (with vanguards being the lowest). Summons also have additional gimmicks that come into play once they reach half-health, such as Shiva splitting into two or Ramuh generating crystals to increase the lightning strikes around the field. They cannot be knocked beyond that point without enraging first.

In addition to the standard summons, there is one boss who is not a summon: Shinryu. That’s about the most I got for him, in the first phase, he’s a standard boss and in the second, he’s more akin to Alexander (in that he’s big and doesn’t move).

Modes

And here, we have the other infamous aspect of Narrow Thinking.

The PSP Dissidia games were quite meaty for their size. In addition to the main story mode – which had tons of voiced cutscenes, as well as two (three in Duodecim, one of which being a revamped version of the original) scenarios – there were a few other diversions as well. The first game had Dual Colosseum, which the second game expanded upon into the labyrinth: a mode where, in order to progress deeper into the massive map that is the labyrinth, you need to clear a selection of stages under specific conditions. The games also had vs modes with Duodecim having an option for team battles as well as a no-frills arcade mode. And there was the PP catalog, where you could use the points racked up during battles to buy various things, such as music, costumes, icons and much more.

By contrast, Dissidia No Three (remake)… is a relatively straightforward fighting game port. For solo offerings, the game’s main attraction (and only attraction in the free edition) is the Trials mode, which acts akin to an arcade ladder – you make a team and go through 6 battles, with options to choose you opponents and difficulty. In addition to the Basic Trial, there are also Story Trials which lock you into parties based on the groups from Story Mode and the Summon Trial, which is a boss rush (neither of the latter two are in the Free Edition). The Basic Trial also supports Core Battles. The game also has online, although I am unsure of what, if any, unique modes exist there.

The other modes don’t favor much better. Story Mode gives the player set parties for a handful of battles, with most of the focus going to the cutscenes and Summon Battles – none of the standard battles have unique gimmicks. In order to progress, players need to gain player levels (usually by playing Trials – and maybe online?) to grind Memoria. Memoria is spent to unlock panel groups in Story Mode, with the final boss panel requiring three. After the story is done, the summons can be rematched along with hard mode versions, which nerf your party members’ Bravey gain and causes the boss to prioritize you. Story Mode also has boosts that you can unlock by grinding your player level, which generally make the summon fights more bearable.

Outside of Story Mode, there is a training mode with some tutorials on how to play the game. The shop returns, with two options: Shopping and Treasures, the latter being lootboxes (let’s be honest) that you gain as you gain player levels. Both give the same thing: music tracks and player icons. Character outfits are unlocked by default, with each character having a single alt, both outfits having three colors. Other outfits are only available as DLC: Dissidia NT predated the modern fighting game ‘generosity’ of allowing players to unlock DLC content for free, usually via heavy grinding.

It is worth noting that New Target actually removes a mode from the arcade game: Battle of the Gods. This was a factional battle mode held monthly or bi-monthly. In it, players would choose to fight for Materia and Spiritus and then compete to rack up points not just for their chosen god, but a personal score total as well. These sort of factional battle modes are rare in home fighting games and it isn’t too surprising that Night Time dropped this (Soul Caliber II had a similar mode in Conquest Mode, which became the basis for the home version’s Weapons Master mode). There is supposedly data for it in the game, however, complete with the localized title of “Valiant Strike” – It’s unclear if these are leftovers from the arcade version or signs that the mode would have made it to consoles eventually, but even if that was the plan, the low player counts/sales probably made it a lost cause though the UI taking place in Materia and Spiritus’ towers was cool and it is a pity that New Team’s ui couldn’t incorporate that.

Story

When Dissidia Arcade was first released, it did not have a story mode. It would only be through later updates that the game was revealed to be a soft reboot: The world seen in the prior games was now under the watchful eyes of two new gods: Materia – the Goddess of Matter – and Spiritus – the God of Magic. The two gods would wage war on each other, as their predecessors did, with a selection of champions.

Dissidia New Titans would incorporate a formal storyline, going into further detail. Despite what was said at the end of the previous game, World B refused to collapse entirely and moreso ‘rebooted’. The heroes are summoned by Materia to fight on her behalf as the world is falling apart and she suspects her rival, Spiritus, to be behind it. The heroes are suspicious of Materia, who seems to be less all mighty than she tries to come off as, while the villains go around doing villain stuff. As the gang explores and fights, golden wyrms show up and begin causing the realm to collapse. Thanks to Shantotto, Garland and Noctis (who suggested, after Garland vouched for Spiritus, that they use the dark god’s set up to video call Materia), the gods finally talk and learn that neither are responsible for the world’s situation: It is in fact that wacky Shinryu, up to his zany schemes again.

Shinryu was a pivotal character in the previous games. To make a long story short, Shinryu entered a pact with Chaos and Cosmos to facilitate the cycles of battle, so that Chaos would grow strong enough to bring himself, Cosmos, Cid and Garland back to their world. However, Shinryu did not actually care for their plight - 012 reveals that Shinryu had a side hustle, absorbing the memories of the fallen warriors was he resurrected them at the end of each cycle and making himself stronger. When Cosmos and Cid derailed the plan, Shinryu convinced Chaos to stick Cid in a nightmare dimension before absorbing the last of Chaos’ energy and hitting the bricks, getting no comeuppance for his role in everything. This time, Shinryu has a much simpler plan – allow its larvae, Planesgougers, to more or less eat the energy that the warriors generate with their battles that sustains the world.

To flush out the Dargon Lord, Spiritus and Cosmos gather their champions and stage an all-out battle. Both sides ferociously going at each other inevitably summons Shinryu and the gods use their power to attack it, resulting in the champions breaching Shinryu’s celestial shell and giving them a chance to finish it off. In the end, the gang are given crystals, which copy their memories/wills, before they are return home. Materia and Spiritus, as their world thrives on the energies generated by conflict, use the memories to recreate their champions and wage war to restore the world, though they are eager to settle the score someday.

I won’t harp too much on the story as I didn’t really engage with either game’s direct plot – though the PSP games account for this by allowing you to set it to outright autoskip every story cutscene whereas No Takebacks only allows cutscenes to be skipped on a second viewing. Instead, I will simply draw attention to Niche Territory’s plot being relatively straightforward compared to its predecessor. Dissidia and Duodecim’s plots were told in a chaotic order: The original game numbered its chapters based on game order rather than on story order and the reports had bonus scenes (triggered by highlighted words in the text) that adds further scenes on top of those. The reports themselves also shed light on the game’s backstory in ways that the main narrative could not. By contrast, Not Tamed splits its story up into three-four paths, each focusing on a party made up of a particular group of characters and one or two of which are optional. After clearing the game, the player can view a few additional scenes, largely setting up the appearances of the characters that did not appear in the story. Needs Trimming’s story is very much ‘what you see is what you get’.

While it has no bearing on Not Tired itself, I will mention that elements of this game’s storyline were adapted into Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia – the mobile game companion that outlived the arcade game – particularly in the Act 2 storyline. Opera Omnia itself is rather vague on if NT happened or not, though it seems to lean towards “no”.

Conclusion

When I started writing this write up, it was during a time when I hadn’t played much of NT. I had just gotten a computer that could run it, I made some progress in it, and while I knew that there were parts of it that seemed to click with me, even understanding the ways that it is a downgrade, I couldn’t really put it into words.

But I left this write-up unfinished, time passed, and I recently decided to give NT another whirl. I promptly finished the main story, had a crash-out against Leviathan (Hard) and I think I finally have a clearer understanding of my feelings on NT: I think I prefer it.

To be clear, Dissidia Neutral Tennis is an objectively worse value than the PSP games. I fully acknowledge that I am in the minority for preferring it and, origins as an arcade game aside, many of people’s issues with it are valid.

I think a lot of the heavy lifting there is the arcade structure. Due to NT’s progression being relatively simple, there’s less pressure to make progress: I can fail at the basic trial as much as I want and still make some degree of progress whereas losing in the Labyrinth and all the progress that comes with it makes me annoyed. You don’t need to fiddle with your build for ages, which is a double edged sword – it removes a lot of player expression and makes the game much more simple, but it also means you can simply jump in and out whenever you like.

The DLC prices… are wack.

There are fans who desire a remaster of the PSP games – or at least Duodecim – and I am of several minds regarding that. On one hand, they probably could do it: Most of the roster already has HD models via NT, though that still leaves the EX Modes and alternate costumes, which could be tricky (especially for the armored characters who all have unarmored alts), so most of it would be the stages (some of which are already in NT) and general assets (do SE have uncompressed versions of the voice lines? A curious question).

In terms of new content, particularly new characters? Doubt. Square-Enix’s philosophy for the recent Final Fantasy remasters has been to focus on recreating the original experiences (allegedly) and most of the significant differences come down to tweaking gameplay. That is to say, at best there will be changes to accommodate the big boy consoles, but otherwise I highly doubt Clive or Minwu or whoever will be added. Heck, we’d probably be lucky just to get the DLC for 012, if the PRs and Tactics are anything to go by.

An issue that games tend to face is a lack of factoring in context. It can be easy to write off a game for being copy of another one or – in the case of sequels – for not being the same as another game. I think that’s partially what happened with Dissidia NT. From Nomura’s comments, the idea of a third Dissidia that was basically “Dissidia but even more” was never a possibility. Duodecim was one of those games where the developers more or less poured as many ideas that they could feasibly do as possible into it. And then there’s the arcade format – while having RPG elements in an arcade fighting game is not impossible, it is unusual, especially without a home version for the player to move their character between. So even if NT did have a customization akin to handheld games, it would inevitably need to be simplified for a number of reasons (I don’t think destructible environments exist in the way they do in the handheld games, so there goes Battlegen, for example).

And I think it’s lack of considerations like that why NT has such an abhorrent reputation. NT’s original form was the arcade game, but the west never got that, in no small part to arcades being much more niche. So people either didn’t know that NT was an arcade game or never experienced it as an arcade game. And even those who did understand that the game was comparatively neutered, probably still expected, on some level, for the port to be more than a borderline standard fighting game port. Regardless of the reason, the point remains: Without the context of the new Dissidia being an arcade game, the western audience’s expectations were instead based on the previous games, which is understandable but meant that they were expecting something that the arcade game ultimately wasn’t.

I’ve seen people accuse SE of wanting to cash in on acclaim of the Gundam Vs series of arcade games. But I can’t quite see it that way. The official reason for going with arcades is because Taito approached the directors (who considering going with the Playstation Vita). Producer, Takeo Kujiraoka, notes that the biggest element was learning that Arcade games had cards that players could save data to. This made the idea of an arcade Dissidia particularly attractive – Consoles players will fall off with time and new characters and balancing has to distributed to players, but with arcades, players can just find a cabinet and instantly get access to an up to date part of the game, allowing the devs to focus on adding to the game. Most of the more “Gundam Versus-esque” elements feel more like concessions to make the game smoother for an arcade, multiplayer-heavy experience (the life system, for example). The general core gameplay still resembles Dissidia. There’s also claims of the NT being aimed as an E-Sport, but the developers say that that wasn’t their initial intention. And even if you assume that they weren’t being truthful… Did Dissidia arcade have tournaments? NT had one or two, but I don’t know if the arcade title had any tournaments (thanks Google, for making this question harder to answer than it should be) and that was out for 3 year prior. You could say “oh the arcade version didn’t do that well”, but it was supported for 5 years – sure the plug was pulled prior to a major update, but 5 years is still respectable, especially for an ‘alternative’ fighting game with no major competitive scene like Dissidia.

The overall point is, it’s ok to dislike NT. But don’t let your dislike of NT for not being the PSP games distract you from the things NT does that are praiseworthy. Or, at the very least, from the ways NT screws up on its own merits.

At the end of the day, though,

I still prefer Ehrgeiz.

#EHRGEIZSWEEP