My intention was to put a vlog up today, but as it turns out I felt more like spending my first weekend home from my new job napping and playing video games. Funny how that worked out! Truth is I’m on a 9-to-5 weekday schedule for the time being, and my evenings are often taken up by one of those womenfolk that demand so much attention, so it’s tough to find a couple uninterrupted hours in which to write/shoot/edit/upload a three-minute video. I’ll be working nights starting the week after next, which is going to require a lot of rewiring, but I expect things to settle down a bit at that point. I should be able to once again fall into a nice comfortable rut. Vlogging will resume when I can devote some real time to it rather than just shoehorning it into whatever free time I happen to have laying around.
And I’ve decided I want a better camera. The little flip-cam was good when I was just experimenting, but I think now I have a good format worked out and could do with some better equipment. Christmas is just 3.5 months away!
Most of my gaming time this past week has been devoted to Dissidia. I have a pretty good handle on most of the mechanics now and am working on leveling everyone up and moving through the story mode. I don’t have many gripes about the game, really, except the cast and setting. The strict adherence to the “protagonist/antagonist/final dungeon from each game” format left us with a lot of same-y characters and locations. When you’re picking a map to fight on, for example, your choices are: old castle, weird metaphysical realm, weird metaphysical realm, moon, weird metaphysical realm, weird tower, weird metaphysical realm, weird castle (with strong weird metaphysical realm influences), weird metaphysical realm and weird metaphysical realm.
I think mascot fanservice games like this should strive for two things. First, they should be as represent the source material as thoroughly as possible. And second, they should offer a wide and interesting variety of options to the player. I think Dissidia succeeds on the first part and fails on the second. Each of the first ten FF games are adequately represented here, but character variety is pretty heavily slanted towards Dudes With Swords Fighting in Weird Metaphysical Realms. Square-Enix never asked me (they probably lost my number), but here’s how I would have fixed it for them.
FF1: Red Mage/Garland/Chaos Shrine
I don’t know who “Warrior of Light” is, but he’s not in FF1. Problem is, FF1 doesn’t really have a hero that is all its own. Even if they were to just take one of the six FF1 jobs and plug it in, five out of every six players would complain that the one who made the cut wasn’t their favorite. Of the six, I believe the most iconic is probably the Red Mage, but I could probably be convinced otherwise.
The villain and stage choices are already good. Garland looks awesome indeed, and I’m a big fan of his crazy transform-o-sword. As for the stage, FF1’s dungeons are pretty much all palette swapped caves. The Chaos Shrine is unique among them, and (almost) has unique music, to boot.
FF2: Firion/Emperor/Snowfield
They did a great job with Firion. His gimmick is that he’s a weapons specialist; each of his special attacks utilizes a different form of weaponry. This is a cool throwback to how weapon levels are gained in FF2, a system that remains unique to that one game (probably because it sucks and everyone hates it).
The Emperor is a dumb character, though. As is typical in FF games where the primary antagonist ends up not being the final boss, the Emperor is lame but his right-hand-man Leon is actually interesting. Unfortunately this would mean replacing the Emperor’s interesting magical trap-based style with yet another Dude With Sword. The trade-off isn’t worth it.
We can fix the stage, though. Only a few FF games have icy areas, and FF2’s requires a unique vehicle to pass through. The story of what happens there is repeated as a legend in FF9. An icy plain under a big blue sky would be nicer to look at than the boxy pink/purple atrocity that is Pandamonium, anyway.
FF3: Onion Knight/Xande/Airship Invincible
Onion Knight is perfect as-is; he’s distinct, he’s got a varied skillset, and he’s very obviously from FF3. Cloud of Darkness isn’t a character, though; she’s the boss that shows up in the last sixty seconds of the game for no particular reason. What’s more, the “Cloud of Darkness” in Dissidia isn’t even the “Cloud of Darkness” from FF3. For starters, she’s not a cloud. Kind of hard to play a cloud. I can see why they retooled her, but the better option would have been to fall back on the antagonist, Xande, who the heroes had actually spent a great deal of time fighting.
The Invincible is the series’s first “home base” airship, and is one of the first things people remember when they look back on FF3. It’s virtually criminal that there are no airships in Dissidia, so here one is.
FF4: Kain/Golbez/Lunar Surface
Now we’re starting to get into games with real, established casts. The first thing I’d do is abolish the rule that the chosen character must be the game’s hero. Cecil is fine, but Kain’s the guy everyone really loves. He’s the original bad boy of Final Fantasy. His aerial spear-based skillset would be a welcome digression from the rest of the Dudes With Swords. Heck, they all but compromised as-is by giving Cecil a spear and a couple diving attacks.
Golbez is wonderful and I wouldn’t change anything about him. The stage is already good too; it’s distinctively from FF4 and is pretty much the only stage in Dissidia that stands out alongside the others. For some reason though they call it “Lunar Subterrane” when you’re really fighting on the surface.
FF5: Any Girl/Gilgamesh/Great Forest of Moore
Bartz is one of my favorite characters in Dissidia. They represent his constant changing of jobs by filling his moveset with a hodgepodge of skills from everyone else’s list and naming his EX mode “Spellblade Dual-Weild Rapid-Fire”, which is a reference so deliciously corny I couldn’t imagine it any other way. But you know what? All five of FF5’s PCs share those same traits, so why not go with one of the girls instead and even out the gender imbalance a little bit? I could make a good case for any of them, I’m sure.
The character everyone really remembers from FF5, though, is Gilgamesh. Why they’d pass up this fan favorite in favor of the ugly armor dude with the stupid name is beyond me. As for the setting, FF5 has a lot of good memorable ones (Steamship! Haunted library! Pyramid!) but Dissidia is sorely in need of some outdoor locales so I went with the Great Forest. I have an inexplicable fondness for that part of the game.
FF6: Terra or Celes/Kefka/Floating Continent
Terra is already the most distinctive hero in Dissidia, simply by virtue of being the only lady and the only one with an entirely magic-based skillset. It’s a shame that the only other primary hero in the series with the same attributes also comes from FF6. The two are pretty much interchangeable, although I’ll admit Terra has the market on awesome EX modes cornered.
The Floating Continent is one of the most memorable areas in FF6 and one of the most unique dungeons in the entire series. I’m envisioning landmasses rising and falling, the ground quaking beneath you, sections of rock opening up to swallow you whole and spit you out on the other side of the map. The Ω version would be darker, of course, and would be crumbling far more violently. It’s even a “final dungeon” in a sense, now that I think about it.
FF7: Cloud/Sephiroth/Gold Saucer
As much as I wish they’d picked someone other than Cloud, I don’t think there’s any way they could get away with it. Cloud is the face of modern Final Fantasy, and probably the most popular character in the series, ever. Ditto Sephiroth, when it comes to bad guys.
They botched the stage choice, though. The FF series has lots of caves with glowy bits, but only one amusement park. The list of stage gimmicks you could apply to the Gold Saucer is almost limitless, but even if you wanted to be lazy about it, a roller coaster track you could quicktravel on would be nostalgic enough.
FF8: Quistis/Edea/Balamb Garden
Now with FF8, I think you could get away with using one of the minor PCs instead of the hero. Which is good, because FF8 happens to have a blue-magic-using whipfighter on its cast. I don’t particularly care for Quistis in-game, but she would offer a new style of fighting and tip the gender scale a little bit, to boot.
Ultimecia was almost as dumb a choice as Cloud of Darkness. Edea is cooler-looking, has more personality, and is almost identical in function. They didn’t even keep Ultimecia’s one definining trait (replacing her Cs with Ks) when they brought her over! What a waste.
Ultimecia’s Castle is actually a pretty cool stage. There’s a scene in FF8, however, where you’re fighting off a bunch of bad guys invading Balamb Garden while it’s flying around. The scenery is very distinctive, and I think a stage harkening back to it would have been a much better fit in Dissidia. After all, you spend the entire game running around Garden, but only an hour or two in Ultimecia’s Castle on disc four.
FF9: Zidane/Kuja/Cleyra Trunk
Zidane and Kuja are already the perfect choices. I’m having a hard time thinking of a cooler location from FF9 than the giant sand-filled tree surrounded by an endless whirlwind. I guess Pink Crystal World is cool too though. You know. Whatever cranks your tractor.
FF10: Yuna/Jecht/Luca Stadium
I’m picturing hotpants Yuna here, dual-weilding pistols. Something tells me she’s more popular than Tidus anyway. Jecht is already great. I guess with a setup like this you’d lose the well-written and meaningful plot that develops between father and son in Dissidia, and if you wanted to preserve that sort of hero/villain relationship you’d have to replace Jecht with Seymour, but Dissidia’s writing isn’t capable of conveying meaningful plot anyway so I say pick the best two characters and call it a day.
There is a huge focus on aerial combat in Dissidia, so an enormous water-filled Blitzball Arena would fit right in. Handwave all that stuff about breathing and underwater movement with the Rule of Cool and you’ve got yourself a stage.
FF11: Who Knows
I didn’t play enough FF11 to be able to really make a judgment here, nor have I unlocked Shantotto yet in Dissidia. I’ll just assume Shantotto is the best character ever and move on.
FF12: Balthier/Cid/Ogir-Yensa Sandsea
I don’t know why FF12 wasn’t fully represented in Dissidia. As long and as turbulent as FF12’s development was, I can’t imagine it overlapped much (if at all) with Dissidia’s — especially since they were apparently going to originally include FF13’s heroine as well.
Balthier is by far FF12’s best character, the gentleman thief with the old-timey guns. His nethecite-drunken father Cidolfus is in many ways FF12’s primary antagonist, and including him would have the added benefit of getting a Cid on the roster (another area in which Dissidia is sorely lacking). As for the sandsea, well, desert locales are FF12’s most iconic trait. Throw in some oil rigs and jawas and it’s a party.
So there you go, Squenix. I fixed Dissidia for you. No need to thank me, just keep it in mind for the sequel, yeah?
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