A Great Game

This week, after having been on my Flavour of the Week chart for months, Dissidia - Final Fantasy (for PSP) has finally climbed to No. 2 (even above pooches Bolt and Batman)!!! When I first got the game (which was sold out in most game stores by the time I got around buying one) it appeared deceptively simple: in the Story Mode, there are Ten characters and each has a journey that needs completing. There are other game modes but I pretty much stuck to the Story Mode and the Quick Battle Mode, the latter purely to boost my character's stats.  

As in other fantasy games, characters are divided into different types: close-range combat fighters (with swords and axes), long-range combat fighters (arrows/missiles) and mages (magic, both long and close range but more the former). I always fancy myself as a magician so I ended up being ... TERRA ... as my Primary Character ... other (male) characters are all heavy combat fighters. Onion Knight (very irriating to play), Squall, Cloud and Warrior of Light can do a bit of magic but are basically only good for close combat ... so I ended up being this sexy Esper who turns into this purple, like, hairy thing (!) when she is pissed off.

Anyway, after I got Terra up to Level 100 and finished playing half the cast, I thought I was done with the game (strangely enough, I played WoL first and that brought me right to The End of the story! So I had to consult the Internet for tips and slowly worked myself through the game the proper order and beat the ultimate boss Chaos -- even though I still had five more journeys to complete). THEN, I realised beating Chaos was NOT the point of the game. The POINT of the game is to get your chosen character, in my case Terra, equipped and accessoried with all sorts of stuff so she can REALLY KICK ASS. Which, of course, meant I HAD to play through ALL characters in order to unlock special equipments and accessories (like the Gold Hourglass). God, some of these characters are MORE irritating to play than Onion Knight. Cecil, for instance is completely USELESS and Tidus is hard to control ... anyway, the past week I managed to complete EVERYTHING and my Terra is now a TERROR. 

But this really is THE best PSP game I have ever played: Better than Crisis Core (Final Fantasy VII), Yu-Gi-Oh (okay, this one is on Gameboy) and the various Marvel Comics titles (the trading card game comes in close second). The Dissidia game system is actually extremely complex and multi-layered. How to win a battle depends on how fast you deplete the opponents' "brave points" (like its state of health, so the higher it is, the stronger they are) and how powerful your own attacks are (by getting oppoents' brave points down, you boost your own attack power). But that is not all, the accessories and equipments serve as boosters as are the Summons. So you get your character really strong you have to take into many, many factors into consideration ... and THAT is the fun part of the game. Then there are also the Arcade Mode and the Duel Colosseum where you can farm many, many goodies (like Megalixirs).

There is, however, a down side to all this ... the game is, quite literally, a REAL pain in the neck ~ all that playing is placing this huge strain on my neck, which is NOT good, especially when I am spending all that $$$ on my yoga practice!