Dissidia Again: Knocking you all down!

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Mac

POS: Here is a direct link of the Decisive Battle if you care to hear it.

Haha, yeah, I found that a night or two ago, but thanks.

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

That reminds me, my copy of the OST just arrived. The Messenger (a remix of Cosmos, or Chaos' battle theme) works a lot better with a much faster tempo.

It's still a very weird choice for a vocal theme song.

Who's performing those vocal tracks, by the way? I've been wondering for a while but haven't been able to find any information.

EDIT: Nevermind. It's a Canadian band called Your Favorite Enemies.

And I'm still mad that The Fierce Battle made it into the game, but not Battle Theme.

I rather prefer it, though I'd have taken either one. I think they opted to not go with "Battle" simply because there were enough songs in the soundtrack from other games that used that same opening bass line, so I can accept it. "The Fierce Battle" was always a pretty great theme anyway and it's a solid arrangement of it.

Incidentally, the arrangement of FF2's "Battle Scene 1" has quickly become a favorite of mine from the soundtrack.

Anyway, to those of you who have gotten some time in with the game, what are your thoughts overall on character balance? I've been hearing a lot of complaints about mages being completely overpowered against melee fighters, though I'm skeptical about how much of that is actually the case as opposed to the people complaining about it just not having their dodge timing down.

[Regulus Tera]

It's kind of difficult considering I've not played against any actual human opponents. In my opinion, Butz and Squall are more likely to overwhelm you than any of the magical characters, but it's true that these do have an advantage for camping, which strangely gets even more dangerous in close arenas. This is somewhat lessened by the fact that they get lower HP caps, which is very worrying when you can get to 9999 Brave in less than ten seconds under the right multipliers.

Nevertheless, I feel the game, barring summons, is actually pretty balanced. You can dodge almost anything if you're actually paying attention, so it's more about tricking your opponent into attacking you at the right moment. Kefka's HP attacks, for example, are very difficult to connect in comparison to Terra's long-range projectiles, so this makes him more reliant on mind games than the heroine would be.

[POS Industries]

Yeah, that's more or less what I figured from watching a fair amount of videos for most of the characters, but there's always like two or three people in a lot of discussions on the subject elsewhere that just can't figure out how to get their melee characters within range of mages, Kefka and Terra in particular. I chalked it up to them perhaps needing to undergo training with Piccolo.

I am seeing the gamebreaking factor presented by the summons. I get where they were going as far as the strategy factor involved in choosing summons and knowing when to use them, but the application was a tad flawed. Doesn't mean I don't have some hilarious ideas in mind on how to use them for the purposes of repairing the imbalance they create, but yeah, they kinda screwed up there.

[mudah.swf]

The fact that you can just spam air dodges whenever and wherever you want helps to get near mages. I don't think Terra would be much of a problem considering most of her magic attacks at a low level at least are slow as shit and not difficult to see coming and deflect. I guess if Terra chooses to just spam Tornado everywhere it'll be hard. If anything it's Kuja people should probably be worrying about.

[Kerensky287]

Tornado wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that she can move while she does it, and it pulls you at the same time. It drives me nuts.

Kuja isn't so bad in my experience, except that I STILL haven't found a reliable way to dodge fucking Flare Star. Really, most of the Brave attacks aren't too hard to avoid, but I'm sick and tired of wondering where he's gone off to only for him to pop up behind me and make me explode - even more so if he's in Trance mode.

EDIT: And another thing... yes, MAYBE I'm still a little new to the game, and MAYBE I'm bad terrible at it, but Paladin Cecil is also annoying as anything. Really, really fast and with this one powerful anti-brave attack that launches the player straight down... I can beat him sometimes, but not with my main characters (those being Ultimecia, Sephiroth and WoL). To make it clear, I'm fine with Dark Knight Cecil, but once he gets in the air he's unstoppable.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Kerensky287

my main characters (those being Ultimecia, Sephiroth and WoL)

Interesting mix. Did you give up on Exdeath? Kudos on working on Ultimecia, though. She looks like she's got a pretty neat moveset and seeing how interesting she is in Dissidia makes me sad that she was arguably the worst FF villain ever in her own game.

[Kerensky287]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Interesting mix. Did you give up on Exdeath? Kudos on working on Ultimecia, though. She looks like she's got a pretty neat moveset and seeing how interesting she is in Dissidia makes me sad that she was arguably the worst FF villain ever in her own game.

I've KINDA given up on Exdeath, but it's more that I feel like limiting myself characterwise (to only characters from games I've beaten) so when the game comes out in English, I'm not bored of it. I've been trying to beat FF5 for ages but I kinda got bored when Dissidia came out... oh, and also, I suck at guarding of any kind.

Ultimecia is a LOT of fun to play because it's so easy to mess with people. Games with her take a long time, but that may be just because I usually play against characters 15+ levels higher than me, and I usually end up doing almost no damage to them... I'm interested in seeing how she acts in story mode though, seeing as how she was an unfortunate casualty in a game that suffered from poor character development all around. I mean, she didn't appear anywhere except for right at the boss battle, and she had like 3 lines of dialogue. But there's plenty of evidence that she's related to Rinoa, if not outright BEING her (strong facial resemblance, also Rinoa's the ONLY FUCKING SORCERESS LEFT so Ulty's powers had to come from her somehow) and if they had left hints that Ulty was perhaps a descendant of Squall/Rinoa, that would have been a hefty plot twist.

...Sorry about that. I really like FF8. Not sure why.

Back on Dissidia topic, though, has anybody else got any ideas of what characters they like? Sephiroth is probably my favourite because his attacks have large hitboxes. You can be riiight out of your opponent's range (if they're melee) and still hit them, or you can hit a quick character with relatively little effort. Plus, it's fun to watch them just walk into your combo.

[Regulus Tera]

I'm having the most fun with Kefka and Terra, as the FFVI whore I am.

I find Butz' all-for-one gameplay style to be very satisfying, since you take the best from everybody else into him.

I thought I would have liked Gabranth a lot more, but his playstyle doesn't lend himself to much variety. He's rather sluggish.

Shantotto is pretty cool with her ranged yet large attacks, although broken against Chaos. Bio (Poison?) is a bit slow, but I love to spam it to attract the opponent.

From the other villains, I'm really enjoying Kuja (speed + magic ftw) and Jecht for those random moments I want to just smash things down.

[mudah.swf]

I like Gabranth and Kuja and Butz and Squall. Cloud too but mostly because I like his AC look.

[Regulus Tera]

For those interested, this dude over here is translating the story mode cutscenes: http://www.youtube.com/user/sinnesspiel