Review of Dissidia Duodecim

As you guys all know, I play alot of portable games especially at work on my breaks, so naturally my home consoles barely get any love. Well, when I heard the new Dissidia Prequel was coming out, I was naturally pretty excited and to point I didn't give a flying fuck about Marvel Vs Capcom 3 (still don't). Square Enix had plenty of stuff they showed they were going to put in or do, but did it live it up to it, the answer is rather resounding "no" but a meh "yes".

Now is this game the complete same, no, there's alot of changes to core Dissidia gameplay due to how the original Dissidia was a mostly defensive game with right abilities and characters you can decimate someone is seconds. This time around they encourage more offensive and speed such an encouraging you to spam HP attacks and to be much more on your game in chase battles since they are much faster.
Now as for the new characters gameplay, all of them play pretty well and are easy to handle for new players, however discovering and playing their true strengths is much more difficult especially Kain or Tifa. The new areas, the few they added in are pretty good with exception of Crystal Tower. I say this because the AI doesn't seem to react well to Crystal Tower and will look like it's having a spaz attack because it can't figure out how to work around the tower. Now the newest addition to combat is Assist characters and EX Revenge, which are both meant to balance and counteract the Ex Mode which in the original pretty much guaranteed wins especially with proper EX Guard usage. Assist tends to be for me against me as the AI almost summons them perfectly in succession and combos me for a long time. Ex Revenge, is really hard to get use to since I was extremely versed in Ex Guarding and wasting AIs this way though it can be used properly and save you a few times.

Oddly, Duodecim's biggest flaw is "Opportunity". They had so many choices of characters they could have used and areas, however, I feel they put their selves in a corner when they put in the original Dissidia and the world map. Another area I find that annoys me is they limit themselves to the battlegrounds of the areas for cutscenes and it feels lazy. I mean a shiny hallway is better than this. Even better yet, they hyped up of how there was going to be certain characters in there but somehow didn't make the cut, you could do so much with this material. I mean they could have added interesting twists like some villains joining up with Duodecim squad and getting retconned as well (I could see Seifer, Vayne, Leon (FFII) doing this). They also hyped that we get to play from the villain's perspective but we don't, we get to play as Kuja for three fights and two cutscenes at best.

I imagine another possibility is having DLC characters and we could just explain they fell through The Rift and have their cutscene with whichever MC from FF they relate to, I mean it worked for Gilgamesh, c'mon, Square is it really that hard to pay for the voice acting or something. Now I mean you guys are charging a few bucks on fairly decent songs from the FF series along with skins, so why not?

Now for the story and trust me, it's borderline fanservice plus stupid and funny. Compared to the original Dissidia, most of the presentation and direction was stepped up in alot of departments. The story being that this is the 12th conflict thus the title name 012 / Duodecim, most of the plots are revolved to set up around the new characters and what they did during this time and sideplots which explains how certain elements and characters were changed for the 13th. For this one, the plot revolves around... The Manikins... you know those cloned rejects we fought, cried over, and leveled up several times over for, yeah. This time around, they are attacking en masse and we find out why they are a threat, as they can actually kill someone permanently unlike just taking someone to the bench before. The Duodecim's story is how they limited it and made it possible for the original Dissidia group to win through some really stupid plans like team killing.

Now one of the few things I can appreciate is the direction they took with the voice acting compared to last time where they made it more natural and heck they even redid some scenes in the original Dissidia (you can kinda tell with the video quality difference). They made it more endearing and put *effort* into it. Now the newer music tracks were pretty good as well. Though my issue with the DLC music is it sounds lower in volume than the games tracks and they barely put enough songs in each pack.

While they made the adjustments to characters in their attacks, strengths, weaknesses, the controls have not changed at all. This for veterans is good and bad due to the changes such as chase battles going way too fast for you to register a command or a thought as the AI will generally just cheese you with it. For novices however, it can be a pain in the ass literally hand cramps will be an issue.

While they did made alot of balance it and makes changes that would have made the original Dissidia better, it still didn't make this game stand out or be better than it's predecessor as it has just as many problems. This is like comparing KH1 to KH2, Smash Bros to Melee.You could say this game is the Melee version of Dissidia considering all these changes but still it doesn't seem enough for me to say buy unless you like the original or you want to try the new characters out even though the game is only $30 or you want to kick a friend's ass with your favorite FF characters.

I mean there is a good addictive game underneath this don't get me wrong, there is just alot of flaws and potential to be had here but not quite achieving it by the end of the day. I mean the game is a great buy for fans others not so much. This game is meant for the fans and is treated as such. Overall, it's okay but way under expectations.

And my computer refused to change...

If you are reading the title, obviously, my computer had finally given up the ghost permanently. The first sign of trouble was it not turning on though this had happened a few times before where all I had to do was switch the plug ins around on the surge protector. An hour later I figured it was not getting enough power which is what happened before but still no blue light on the power button. So I hit Best Buy, then check and said the 12 V is rather low, so they try a new power adaptor, no response. Then they tried the graphics chip, nothing there either. It was mystery to them as it was to me. So their best guess was the motherboard since everything else seemed to be fine for the most part.

At this point they left me, two choices: get a new motherboard which could/could not work or get a new computer all together. So I went all over town, checking to see which computers I could look into and well, the results were I could get like this uber model at Radio Active or the lower end they had. Best Buy had one more in the middle with a slightly reasonable price so I went with that. Though next time I am never taking my brother shopping with me for computers again because he seems to pitch in as well as the sales floor guy.

So for those watching my youtube stuff, depending on when I put my old hard drive in or get the data transferred to the new one whichever the case maybe, I may have to rerecord some things or not, KH1 is the most affected of the bunch since I recorded a huge chuck last week alone. Though I will not mind redoing it since KH1 is really short for RPG standards. Besides we are still trying to find a time to do the comms with Xero and if not, we'll find a suitable replacement like Eizen. I am not waiting 6 months finish a com, nope. The rest for the most part were backed up and saved elsewhere. Other than that, not much else except I am considering reviewing Duodecim and well, you may be in for a shock when that comes around.