Dissidia: Final Fantasy is probably the most-awaited game on the PSP, if not all handhelds, this summer.  Most fans of Final Fantasy have been researching the game in countless fansites, reading various impressions and previews of this highly-anticipated title.  Fortunately to their delight, a downloadable demo of the brawler is available on the PlayStation Network, and now that we finally have some English in the game, we thought we’d take another look as well.

The demo’s character selection includes the Onion Knight from the original Final Fantasy, Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, Terra from Final Fantasy VI, as well as Cloud Strife and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII.  In turn, the game has you do battle with the likes of Squall from Final Fantasy VIII, Tidus from Final Fantasy X, as well as the evil Golbez from Final Fantasy IV–just to name a few.

Players will immediately notice that for every character that’s used, music will be featured from the appropriate game in which they came from.  In our bouts with Tidus, not only did we come across the regular battle theme to FFX, but Jecht’s song was played in the background as well.

If you haven’t checked out our E3 Preview, players should know that for the most part, the game mainly makes use of the circle and square triggers.  Most of the attacking will be done with the circle button.  While it doesn’t deal direct damage to an opponent, it does decrease their bravery meter.  This is essential because the more bravery one character has, the more powerful their physical attacks will be.  So if your bravery meter is over 9000, expect to deal that much damage with a Limit Break combo of your own (which can be performed with the Square button).

When using Sephiroth, we noticed that when mashing the circle button to oblivion and sending our opponents up in the air, a button icon would appear on the screen, and when pressed at the right moment, devastating combos can be thrown to put the hurt on our opponent.  Also, with a high bravery meter, overdrive limit breaks such as Sephiroth’s Octaslash and Tidus’ Omnislash become usable, and they’re quite devastating attacks.  In fact, most of the time spent with the demo was with each character and computer simply showcasing their special moves.

Visually, the game’s pretty tremendous, but with the size of every arena, camera problems are going to be a problem.  A lot of times, characters will have their large share of distance between others, and you can expect some slowdown, especially when the camera move their way out.  We don’t expect Square to fix this, mainly because the best way to solve it is to simply move on in. With that, because of the game relating itself to past Final Fantasy titles, the sound is fantastic, and the English voice acting works.  We’re not sure if everybody’s accurate yet, but for now, it all sounds good.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy is due out by the beginning of the summer, and it’s going be quite a big release.  If you want to try the game out now, be sure to check out the free download available in the PlayStation Store.

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Related posts:

1. Review: Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP)
2. E3 2009: Dissidia: Final Fantasy Preview (PSP)
3. Don’t You Disappoint Me, Final Fantasy XIII
4. PadSmashing: Final Fantasy XIII
5. Review: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, Xbox 360)

About This Author: Danreb Victorio

Danreb Victorio is SmashPad's longest tenured staff member and has been writing for the publication since its existence as Gaming-Nation, Inside Gamer Online, Amped IGO, Amped News, and Gamer 2.0. Though SmashPad has gone through many branding changes, Danreb has remained the same--he pushes out content while also improving his craft with every piece that gets published. As a Co-Managing Editor, Danreb, along with Chris Selogy, is in charge of assigning, maintaining, and providing SmashPad's editorial content. Danreb is currently an undergraduate at San Jose State University studying to earn a bachelor of science in magazine journalism. In addition to SmashPad, you can read his work on Yelp.com and San Jose State University's student newspaper, The Spartan Daily.

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