I'm just going to cut to the big joke of the game: the title. Just in case anyone is confused on how to say it, or just what it is: it works like this: Dissidia 012 [Duodecim] Final Fantasy. Dissidia (latin for conflict) 012 (pronounced duodecim) [duodecim] (the designers telling you how to pronounce previous numeral arrangement in brackets) and Final Fantasy (the game series this game is based on). So yeah, we have latin, a number, how to pronounce that number and a name of a series this game is roughly based around. For some reason, the 21st century have struck Square Enix with the inability to name games. Previously they've provided us with gems like: Birth By Sleep, 386/2 Days and the confusingly-titled Infinite Undiscovery. Maybe the next Dissidia game will have the year thrown in so we all remember when it came out.
Dissidia Duodecim's story is one of pretentious dialog, cliched topics about friendship and all that is good and right that modern anime is bursting full of and mock-moments taken from the characters' respective games; none of which amount to anything close to decent. The premise for the plot from the get-go is really flawed. Each Final Fantasy may have had a decently penned script and plot (except 8), but when you try to cut and splice them all together, there's very little chance to get anything good, much less coherent. It's like ripping out pages from Dorian Gray, Lord of the Rings, Old Man and the Sea and The Great Gatsby, and rearranging them together to make a new book; all you really have is a mess of pages and glue that no one wants to read, and some of the creators ate some of the paste. And that's exactly what Dissidia Duodecim's story is, an incoherent mess created by a bunch of glue-eaters. The overall story doesn't really make much sense, and when it 'twists' you can almost hear spine of the story snap in half.
You have a Tolkien-esque end-of-everything scenario with the god of Discord and the goddess of Harmony fighting it out, except neither of them really fight. They've summoned the souls of the antagonists and protagonists from the different Final Fantasy universes and make them fight. Though when someone is defeated, they come back anyways, so really there's not a whole lot of progression. The game's new story line actually points this out at some point which must mean the script writers gave up on thinking of a good reason for everyone to keep fighting. Along the way the protagonists meet up and work together to defeat evil, and boy do they not shut up about it. It came to the point where I was rooting for evil just so I wouldn't have to listen to it anymore. Eventually though, Chaos does take up his position as lead bad guy to fight, and he is a badass. But then on the opposite side of the spectrum has the Goddess who is flat out useless as far as goddesses go or just anything in general. She doesn't do anything the entire time except suck and die.
Voice acting is pretty solid overall, Chaos being voiced by Goliath from the TV series Gargoyles is just one big treat and easily my favorite voice actor in the game. Most of the male protagonists sound bland and run together, the only other stand out performance is by Kefka. Kefka is one of the few characters I enjoyed watching in the cut scenes as his demented personality has that Heath Leger joker-quality to it where you hate him, but you can't stop watching him. Sometimes he's evil, sometimes he's just goofy, but in the end, he at least has a personality which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast.
The soundtrack is a mixed bag. Some of the remixed tracks from the older games sound great, but others sound a little butchered like Terra's theme from Final Fantasy VI. I also liked the soundtrack a lot better before I knew Kidneythieves was involved in some of it. It's not that I don't like the band, I just don't want to hear them ever again... ever.
Thankfully, DynamicDuodecim took the grid-style map and replaced it with a real world map (more like a state map given the size) and a better grid-style map. The over world is essentially linear with multiple starting points for each character and one teleport crystal to go from one end to the other. There's no exploration or secrets, the only NPCs are your allies, enemies and Moogle shops, and there are treasures spread around on the slightly off-beaten path. It doesn't serve much of a purpose beyond being a freer area to roam around, but story battles still take place on a grid. But the major differences between the first game and the second are good ones, no longer does movement take KP, you can move from square to square freely. There are bonuses and actual strategy this time around. KP gambles, chain assists, bravery multipliers, level reducers and more all aid you in combat.
Combat is relatively unchanged except for the addition of an assist character bar which charges during actions like counter-attacking or blocking and countering which allows another character to jump into the battle temporarily to help dish out the damage. It's not that big of a game-changer, but it is something to mess around with. Players will still fight between exchanging bravery to beef up their attack power and then go for the throat with HP attacks, and this leads to some epic and intense battles just like the first game. The camera goes a little nutty when fighters are locked in tight spaces like a corner or during the close encounter moments where you have to dodge at the right moment but there's something in the foreground obstructing your view of the other person. There are some cheap moments to the game play, especially if you're good at figuring out the AI. Sometimes the computer can be predictable and exploited in funny ways which de-fangs the difficulty.
For the most part, Duodecaheron is the same game as the first with minor improvements and with a more bolstered roster, adding in 9 more characters: Kain from Final Fantasy IV, Tifa from Final Fantasy VII (jiggle-physics included), Laguna from Final Fantasy VIII, Yuna from Final Fantasy X, Vaan from Final Fantasy XII, Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, Prishe from Final Fantasy XI, Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy V, and Desperado Chaos from Dissidia / Final Fantasy. Just in case you're trying to pick between this game and the first, go with this one. Not only do you get the story mode for 6 of the new characters, you get the entire game from the first with the enhanced grid system and world map. But just in case you already own the first one, there is a feature which you can load data from Dissidia 1 into this game.
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