Dissin’ Dissidia

I’ve played through about half of the story mode in Dissidia, and all the various game elements are starting to click. I can’t shake the feeling, though, that the game is held back by its strict adherence to a set of rules about what could and couldn’t be included.

Remember how Smash Bros. Melee had Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser all in the same game? And Fox and Falco? And like 14 Pokeymans? Imagine, instead of just putting awesome characters in from wherever they happened to come from, they decided to use only one hero/villain pair from each series. So they could use Link and Ganondorf, but not Zelda. Mario and Bowser, but not Peach. And they’d have to really reach pretty far to find villains from the more obscure entries. Ice Climbers vs. Polar Bear! Andross instead of Falco!

That’s kind of what happened to Dissidia. Everyone wants to play as Cloud and Squall and Terra, and that’s awesome, but some of these villains are barely characters. Cloud of Darkness? Really? And Ultimecia? Did Ultimecia even have more than four lines? Is she really the best choice, considering Edea and Seifer both come from the same game and are both much more interesting?

Some of the hero choices were misses, too. FF heroes tend to be Dudes With Swords, which means the majority of the Dissidia roster gives you your choice of which Dude and which Sword you’d like to use. They try to mix this up in places, but that only really works in the older games where weapons aren’t as iconic. They can get away with giving Cecil a spear, But Cloud, Squall and Tidus are practically defined by the weapons they carry.

I realize it’s just not possible to have a game with absolutely every character ever, and twenty characters is already a pretty lofty number. But why not nix the characters nobody cares about and give the games with more popular casts higher representation? The Warrior of Light doesn’t even look like any of the guys from FF1. Nobody would miss him if he were gone. Leave Garland in to represent the ol’ grandaddy game, and use your free slot for Kain, or Auron, or Vivi, or any of the Cids.

Seriously, there isn’t one single playable Cid in this whole game. That’s just… it’s just criminal. And the decision to include Giant Armor Guy from FF12 as a hidden character, where he can exist alongside all the other Giant Armor Guys, rather than any of FF12’s awesome player characters… ugh. I hope someone got fired over that.

On the other hand, none of the characters are Dr. Mario. So I guess that’s good. (The game itself is good too, of course, or I wouldn’t have wasted 500 words on it.)