In the story mode, you'll be playing as Cosmos's warrior such as Lightning and Tifa Lockheart. The story mode isn't that well crafted and planned out. The overworld is direct copy from the original Final Fantasy but in 3D. You'll use the overworld to go through gates to get to the crystal. In these gates, you'll usually find manikins to fight through. There are cutscenes along the way, usually at the end of these gates. Basically, you'll be going through continious battles with limited contact with other characters.
The graphics are not very impressive. In fact, they are pretty basic for a PSP game. The most impressive thing about the graphics is the fact that there are so many things going on without an inch of slowdown. You'll be attacking with swords, bows, guns, and even casting many magic spells in these battles. The stages themselves are well textured and have nice looking backgrounds. The character models are decent for a PSP game. There is a CGI intro along with a couple CGI cutscenes throughout the story. They look really good!
What I love about this game isn't the story or the graphics, it is the gameplay. You are thrown into a Final Fantasy battle field from Kefka's Tower or Ultimecia's Castle. There are two types of attacks in this game. A bravery and HP attack. Bravery attacks will increase your bravery number and HP attacks will deal how much bravery you have to the opponent. Use this to your advantage as bravery attacks will decrease your opponents and could even end up "breaking" it causing you to gain a load of bravery. You should never stay too low on bravery. Unfortunately, using an HP attack will set your bravery back to 0. The higher the bravery you had using your HP attack will increase the amount of time it takes to replenish itself. There is also another type of attack, an EX MODE attack. When you fill up your EX bar(EX orbs are made when you attack an opponent, and EX CORES summon throughout the battle)you can enter EX mode. You'll regain HP along with dealing higher critical hits. If you do an HP attack, you can do a finisher which deals tons of damage to your opponent. Another option is to use EX Mode while being attack. You'll enter EX revenge which will break you out of a combo and slow down time. This gives you chance for a free attack. Last but not least, you can use summons. Summons have many different effects from gaining free bravery or shuffling you and your opponents braverys.
In the sequel, they threw in a new gimmick; assists. When you attack, you fill up the assist bar. If you use an assist, you can chain combos with the assist to deal bravery damage. Having two assist bars will deal an HP attack. You can also use assists while being attacked to break out of your opponent's combo. Assists are useful for offensive and defensive purposes.
Dissidia has a lot of nice tracks to choose from. A lot of the older tracks are remastered to take advantage of today's technology. All of the tracks are from Final Fantasy along with a couple tracks specially made for this game. You can easily recognize the tracks from previous Final Fantasy games and enjoy the nostalgia.
The re-playability is very high for this game. You can level up every character to level 100. You'll become much more stronger and gain more abilities and attacks doing so. There are a ton of stages and characters to unlock. You can also unlock additional music tracks to be played during battles. After you beat story mode, you unlock the story mode from the first game. You also unlock secret reports that you can play and read. Along with that, there is a quest creator in which you can make your quest and trade it with friends. last but not least, you can do wireless battles with friends to show off your skill.
This is one of the best games out there for PSP. The gameplay is just so fun and addicting you never want to stop playing. I already have 150 hours clocked JUST for this game. There are many characters to choose and master. This is a must for your PSP collection! Even if you own the original, you should still upgrade to the sequel. You can transfer your save from the first game too.
Rating: 8.5/10
