RipTen Videogame Blog » Dissidia

Cosplay Spotlight: Terra Branford (Final Fantasy VI)

Stephanie Gutowski — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:48:05 +0000

Dissidia [duodecim] may not be the best game in the world (nor does it’s title make a lick of sense), but it certainly does give way to some smokin’ cosplay. She’s had a face lift since she debuted on the SNES in Final Fantasy VI and she’s gone onto become on of the most iconic FF heroines of all time. Long before Lightning (grumblepuss), Yuna (dress-up Barbie), or Tifa(Tits McGee), there was a hero in a league of her own. There was Terra.

What could be better than one Terra? How about two Terras? Tali of American Cosplay Paradise and Haruki of Cure Cosplay both possess the grace and talent to play the part convincingly. The Dissidia variant is an elegant combination of Yoshitaka Amano’s original art and the character sprite from Final Fantasy VI. The careful details in the embroidery and accessories make Haruki appear as though she just stepped out of the game itself. I could spend a great deal of time simply admiring the craftsmanship… so I will. Have some photos.

I do magic and stuff.

"Get this mutha#$%^ing Ultros off my mutha#$%@ing boat."

Tali, on the other hand, took a few creative liberties that I absolutely adore. She opted to use three-dimensional flowers and included a lot of texture to help create a vibrant, beautiful costume. While it might not be one hundred percent accurate according to fanboy standards, it’s a stunning take on the character and it leaves no doubt in your mind as to who she’s portraying.

Mmm. Ruffles.

SOMEONE GIVE HER A PHOENIX DOWN.

Good thing you saved.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got an evil laughing mage to kill.

Know of a great video game costume that’s worthy of the spotlight? Send a Twitter tip to @RipTen @SigmaRue or @DaveOshry. There may be a cookie in it for you.

Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy will have a “Battle Watching Mode”

Garrett Hartman — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:11:55 +0000

Japanese retailer Gamestar has let slip some Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy details and among the features listed is a battle watching mode.

The feature works as a type of scouting mode for tournaments with multiple participants. Fighters not involved in the current fight will be able to watch it and perhaps “scout” their opponents.

Other features mentioned include: improved wireless support, exchanging friend cards, and the ability to create and exchange original quests.

There will be bonuses for those with the original Dissidia. Importing data will allow players to carry their character level over and receive an accessory.

More details are expected to be released at Square Enix’s premier event on January 18th.

Source

Final Fantasy VII’s Tifa Returns to Kick Ass in DISSIDIA 012[duodecim] with Screenshots

Garrett Hartman — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:55:25 +0000

Tifa, one of the Final Fantasy series more popular characters, returns to fight in the follow-up to Dissidia: Final Fantasy for the PSP. She’s back, as sexy and dangerous as ever with her EX Burst (an attack method which recalls her limit break from Final Fantasy VII).

Definitely a girl who you wouldn’t want to piss off.

PSP Review — Final Fantasy: Dissidia

Sean Mitchuson — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:15:02 +0000

I decided after getting my Japanese stimulus check that I should use it for something good, like video games. I chose to pick up another new PSP and the games Final Fantasy: Dissidia, and another secret game that I will review at another time. Dissidia turned out to be more than I thought it was, which was great. The game looks beautiful, plays pretty well, has a mediocre story, and lots of extras to keep the player interested.

The Basics

Dissidia lets you control one of ten characters from the first ten Final Fantasy games. Some are main characters and some are not. There are a couple secret characters as well but I won’t be dropping any hints and ruining it, so if you wanna know who they are, sorry! As you complete the game you can unlock the ability to play the bad guys that are also a big part of the game. All in all, though, there are 22 characters to choose from, so it’s a pretty decent selection.

The story is a pretty standard affair. Good, evil, crystals, and fighting. There really isn’t too much to say about it, it’s really just there to keep the game rolling instead of moving constantly from fight to fight for no reason.

The Fighting

The battle system in Dissidia is very action orientated. This is very different from the RPG games that the characters involved in the game are used to, but if you have played Kingdom Hearts or Crisis Core you will pick up on the combat really quick. Combat can become repetitive if you just feel like winning as opposed to trying different things with your character.

As you level up you unlock and master abilities. You can completely change the play style of each character from how they act when you start with them, but it takes so long to get into the interesting abilities, you have already programmed you’re muscle memory to a certain play style so it may make you feel weaker to change it up a lot.

Each character has two modes in battle. One is your regular look which you will see most often. As you beat on your opponent, though, they lose small crystal flashes or something which you collect to fill your EX gauge. When that gauge fills, you can go into “EX mode” which is a buffed version of your character with a different outfit (which is usually a lot flashier). Also, your special attacks get much more interesting in this mode.

Square really thought about its fans with the EX attack. Each character has their own cut scene-style special attack — you participate in this attack which reminds me of the limit break attacks. You either do a combination button press, or a button mash, etc. to try and get a perfect attack. Those of us that aren’t very good at these sorts of situations, have no fear — there is an ability the characters learn at later levels that does this automatically for you, but as another neat little thing thrown in by Square, until you master the ability, the character can screw up the limit break.

You also get the ability to equip armor and weapons on the characters along with rings that make the character stronger throughout the game. Something I didn’t like about this was nothing changes on the character when you equip new stuff. Something I really liked in FF7 and beyond was seeing a new weapon in the characters hands when I upgraded, not a big deal but it would have been nice to see.

The characters to me are very unbalanced. This is honestly not a con to me. It just means that I will have an unfair advantage against some characters and others will have an unfair advantage against me. This may ruin the multiplayer mode for a lot of people, but really that mode isn’t the point of the game or even really focused. It does make the story mode annoying sometimes when you get stuck on a character that you aren’t good against and they just mash you into the ground for hours at at time.

Some characters are able to easily tear through the game. Onion Knight, for instance, has moves that really don’t require you to get near the enemy if you don’t feel like it, thus winning every match for you easily. Characters like Squall and Cloud seem really weakened and are expected to get in rather close to fight their opponents. Their specials are nice, but working up the combo takes a lot of work. The characters can level up to 99 which I thought would take a very very long time. Luckily, as you level the stuff the character can do scales up so you are always gaining large amounts of experience for them. I took Warrior of Light from level 45 to 89 in about two hours on a lazy Saturday.

Graphics, Music, and Other

The graphics are superb in this game. Models look a little sharp and jagged but as this is a PSP game, this is to be expected. Otherwise the game has very well done cut-scenes and character design in general is rather pretty. The music is all songs taken from the games and some wonderful vocal tracks for important boss battles. Honestly, though, if I have to hear that choir sing about Sephiroth one more time I’ll probably smash the game.

The main point of the game, it seems, is to play until you unlock everything. One of the first things you do when you start the game is tell it what day you will play the most often and how often in general you will play. This will help you get through the game faster and help you unlock more items in the catalog.

The PP catalog is where you unlock all of the goodies that come with the game after you finish the story mode. You can unlock all the “evil” characters to play with them in quick battles, unlock items for the calendar, unlock icons to decorate your multiplayer card, etc. There is a ton of things to unlock, and of course after you unlock a bunch of different things, you unlock the ability to unlock more stuff, so you need to play the game more to pay for the rest of the stuff.

All in all this is a really good game. It is a bit repetitive, though. You fight the same battles over and over for ten stories with five chapters each. I think the average amount of fights per “chapter” is around five so that is 25 fights a story, at 10 basic stories that is 250 fights. Those ten stories, though, aren’t the end of the game, and you have a few more modes to go through to clear all the fights. To even begin to unlock everything, you better be ready to play well more than 1000 matches.

On the Ripten scale I give this an 8. It’s easy to pick up and play whenever, and you get a lot of fan appreciation. It can get boring, but it is just a fighting game, the only reason there is a story seems only to force you into taking a break every few minutes.

Dissidia Potion! Now With Two Flavors That You Still May Not Like

Sean Mitchuson — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:15:13 +0000

So there have been a few releases of Square Enix’s “potion” drink to celebrate the release of games or movies, etc. The most current is for the release of the PSP title Dissida. These drinks have new flavors compared to previous releases, which is good because most people really disliked the former flavors. With two separate flavors to chose from, you may be able to find something you like for two dollars a can.

I love theme drinks — there’s just something about getting to try something new for a limited time that drives me to a purchase. Maybe it’s the idea that not everyone will get to try it, therefore I have been a part of something not everyone will be a part of, or maybe it’s just that I like shiny objects and new — as you all know — equals shiny. These new drinks released for Dissidia are both new and since they are in cans do have a level of shine to them. What about the flavor, you ask?

Well, some of you may remember the former “potion” drinks released were not met with a positive response from fans. I remember them as tasting sort of bland and having no appealing value. There was also just the one flavor. These new Dissidia drinks come in two wonderful flavors, and they seem to have matched the idea behind the drink names to their taste. You can choose either the white can which is Cosmos or the black can which is Chaos.

The Cosmos flavor is a mellow citron flavor. Think semi flat orange soda. Not bad, but not exactly something you feel like drinking everyday especially for two dollars. The Chaos flavor has a bit more bite to it, as its name suggests, obviously bad guys have a harsher taste than good guys. If you try to drink a large amount of Chaos at once it sort of hurts, and not regular soda carbonation burn hurt, but almost sheer pain so I guess it works out great for the character it is named after.

The cans are also decorative items, each one having character art from one of the many games that Dissidia is drawing from. I, of course, had to purchase the FF7 can because I can’t get enough of angsty Cloud, and somewhat effeminate Seph. I didn’t see them in the black style, only white, so I grabbed FF2 just because I couldn’t think of any other FF game that would be important to me. I was really hoping for a Shantotto, but maybe they aren’t doing special characters.

To wrap this up, this is the best release of potion to date, at least for me. The downside is that its two dollars a can, you can get a liter of any other drink for about the same price so it’s hard to justify going out and buying a bunch of these, but if you’re into Final Fantasy that much and really want to support Square-Enix, check these out if you’re in Japan. Sorry America.