Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy continues Squeenix's tradition of stupid titles

[Ryong]

It seems like no one was ever playing the same game. AI was absurdly dumb, but fuck if it didn't have 100% perfect timing for everything. Jecht Block was incredible.

And yes, I'd like to agree with Kerensky: From everything I've seen, Exdeath is now absurd. He chains his teleport into anything he wants, his guards are instantaneous and let him dodge freely whenever he feels like it.

[Kerensky287]

I have faith that POS knows what he's talking about because I have found his Dissidia videos on youtube completely at random.

New Kefka is hilariously powerful, though. Shatter Blizzaga's massive ice chunk now guard staggers, which - despite still bouncing back and hitting Kefka - makes it very difficult to counterattack. Also, Havoc Wing has increased horizontal tracking, which means my old standby of just walking the hell away from it isn't nearly as reliable.

Lightning's paradigm shifts are truly beautiful things. Commando is straight-up attack power, which kind of feels like playing a slower, weaker Squall, Ravager has support abilities that feel like a combination of Kefka and Emperor, and Medic is just wonderful because if your reflexes are quick you can give yourself a jumpstart of ~100 brave every time your opponent gets knocked away. Or blinks. Too bad her HP attacks are trashy, though...

And as I said before, Kain's standard Jump attack is fairly godlike. It attacks on the way up, attacks on the way down, has a bit of AoE, and when fully charged it has mindblowing accuracy. I'm sure with a little experience it'll be somewhat more obvious what the timing is for dodging properly, but even the AI has trouble escaping from it a lot of the time.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Doc ock rokc

Have you seen Jecht Block and Jecht Combos? Jecht block is a almost guaranteed reflection back at any spell caster as long as it doesn't have a Defense break he can block it and revers it, so fast spells and those slow tracking spells become his.

Then we have Jecht Combos which allow him to ether chain a bunch of his Brave streams together or chain a brave in with a HP attack. This means that Once Jecht hits your are going to get hurt. Combine that with counter attack and Counter-counter attack and he becomes a Crit magnet with massive chaining ability. the caster would have to be fast to take him down (meaning Terra is the only one that can beat him regularly. fallowed closely by Kuja if he gets his attacks in order and Globez if he is tactical)

Oh, don't get me wrong, a good Jecht player is a sight to behold. The problem is that an equally good player of a great deal of other characters have the tools to deal with him without much difficulty. Combine that with the fact that, for Jecht to work, he requires precision timing to carry out both his combos and blocking (good luck pulling that off reliably with the PSP's shitty wifi capabilities) and Jecht's usefulness gets hit pretty hard.

His strengths are impressive, but they don't make up for his weaknesses.

Originally Posted by Kerensky287

I have faith that POS knows what he's talking about because I have found his Dissidia videos on youtube completely at random.

I'm a competent if somewhat predictable Kefka player, and one woefully out of practice at that, but thank you.

[Locke cole]

So, some info on Gilgamesh, thanks to people hacking that Prologus thing.

Apparently, Gilgamesh fights by drawing new weapons during battle. However, it's kinda random, and not even Gilgamesh knows what weapon he's getting next. I'm guessing that the really good ones are really good, to balance out the bad ones.

His EX mode has him choose one of eight weapons when he enters the mode, and that changes his EX Mode ability accordingly. It can be:

Excalibur All damage is multiplied by 2

Excalipoor All damage dealt is reduced to 1

Naginata Equips a spear with incredible reach/range

Masamune Generates a lot of EX Force

Genji's Katana Depletes opponents EX Gauge

Zantetsu Sword Quick Draw style of attack that can instantly cause Brave Break

Battle Axe (awesome) A weapon with a wide range of damage, if lucky can hit for massive damage.

Chicken Knife Lower HP higher damage will be dealt (by user)


So, either you get one of seven extremely useful powerups.... or you get Excalipoor.

[Doc ock rokc]

I can see someone cherry tapping with excalipoor.

[Locke cole]

I wouldn't be brave enough. I'd probably just go straight into a completely undignified EX Burst.

You know what's funny? Gilgamesh's Chicken Knife actually works more like the Valiant Knife.

Kind of like how Bartz uses the Brave Blade despite spending his entire story arc sneaking and running.

[Bells]

I have the Prologus right here with me.

You can play a series of 5 Lvl 20 Battles, or a few (i think also 5 couldn't finish) at level 50.

You can also play a small part of the story, just a 4 battle scene with Lighting. Her story portion has her Travelling with Kain, Jecht and WoL.

Jecht for all intents is a good guy. He acts and talks differently thing time around, at first sight, he is 100% Cosmos. Also, confirming that Cloud is with Chaos. He is the last enemy of the story portion of the demo

Lighting is Awesome to play, her 3 roles are basicaly a short ranged brawler, really fast but her Brave attacks are short ranged and the HP attacks have a small delay. She has also a magic role with very slow, but quite long lasting and powerfull magic attacks, and Last, her heal role actually lets her build up brave on the fly.

Kain is also avaliable in the Prologus demo, and he has some quirks too... but dude is awesome.

He is for all intents and purposes a realy vertical/horizontal fighter. Very closed ranged (surprisingly really) His basic Hp attack is a Jump attack that is chargeable AND tracks the enemy somewhat. He also has a Spear tossing attack that has a really short range... weird. And once it hits the enemy there is a second of delay before "bursting" and tossing the enemy away.

His basic Brave combo attack also triggers easy chases, can easily chain for wall rushes.

The demo also lets you use Jecht, Sephiroth, kefka and a couple of other characters from the first game.

But if you play the arcade option you do get to fight all the other characters and they are there to show their new costumes. Saw Bartz (he uses Irvine and Yuna's attacks quite often), Emeperor, Gabranth, Shantoto, Firion, Onion Knight and Zidade. And of course, Cloud. All with their 3rd costumes.

PS: Gabranth still chagers EX at will.

Other changes

Mid Air duel really is MUCH faster, be ready to re-learn that.

Charging Ex takes MUCH longer.

Before a battle there is a screen saying who you are fighting and what map, there is also a "Judge" Option that is not used here.... i got FFTA goosebumps out of that one.

The Prologus also has 57 battlegems you can create, but you can't equip accesories and Equipment. I suspect what you get on the Demo transfers to the final game, like the Aerith assistent.

Also, each character in the demo comes with an Assistant, and i'm not sure if you can change it, but i think you can... each Assist has 4 moves, two ground and two air. Assists can deal Brave attacks (costs 1 Assist bar) or Hp attack (costs 2 Assist bars)

Assists can be blocked and if they get blocked or Countered it gets locked for a few seconds.

UH! Also, now i know how they plan on saving space in the disk, there are Cutscenes rendered with in-game assets with Text but no voices, there is also Voice sequences, but those seem to be only for the major points of the story

If you guys want any other info i can give, let me know!

[Kerensky287]

Originally Posted by Bells

I have the Prologus right here with me.

You can play a series of 5 Lvl 20 Battles, or a few (i think also 5 couldn't finish) at level 50.

The level 50 arcade set is 30 battles long. Once you finish it, you unlock Cloud for use in the demo. Tifa is his assist character.

Kain is also avaliable in the Prologus demo, and he has some quirks too... but dude is awesome.

He is for all intents and purposes a realy vertical/horizontal fighter. Very closed ranged (surprisingly really) His basic Hp attack is a Jump attack that is chargeable AND tracks the enemy somewhat. He also has a Spear tossing attack that has a really short range... weird. And once it hits the enemy there is a second of delay before "bursting" and tossing the enemy away.

His basic Brave combo attack also triggers easy chases, can easily chain for wall rushes.

Any of his spear-based Brave attacks can be followed up by hitting triangle to airdash toward the enemy as well, making him pretty relentless in combat.

The demo also lets you use Jecht, Sephiroth, kefka and a couple of other characters from the first game.

The characters available in the demo are Lightning, Kain, Warrior of Light (in his Fighter McWarrior costume), Garland, Kefka (in his retarded green suit), Sephiroth, Jecht and eventually Cloud.

But if you play the arcade option you do get to fight all the other characters and they are there to show their new costumes. Saw Bartz (he uses Irvine and Yuna's attacks quite often), Emperor, Gabranth, Shanttoto, Firion, Onion Knight and Zidane. And of course, Cloud. All with their 3rd costumes.

Bartz was using Laguna's moves, not Irvine's. Irvine is not in this game.

But yes, Bartz has new moves that combine aspects of new characters, and some of his old moves were changed up somewhat with moves used by new characters.

Before a battle there is a screen saying who you are fighting and what map, there is also a "Judge" Option that is not used here.... i got FFTA goosebumps out of that one.

The "Judge" line there is probably Cosmos/Chaos judgment, returning from the first Dissidia. I do wonder if they've changed those somewhat; maybe Chaos's thing where the game freezes you when you haven't attacked for a while has been looked at. And by looked at, I mean maybe it fucking works properly now. It apparently considers free airdash to be an "attack", and once in a while it ignores an attack someone is currently performing. I have been frozen mid-Beat Fang before.

Also, each character in the demo comes with an Assistant, and i'm not sure if you can change it, but i think you can... each Assist has 4 moves, two ground and two air. Assists can deal Brave attacks (costs 1 Assist bar) or Hp attack (costs 2 Assist bars)

Assists can be blocked and if they get blocked or Countered it gets locked for a few seconds.

Assists are definitely game-changers, yeah. I'm 99% certain you can change your assistant, but I can't figure out how to do it with the japanese text.

My best assist combo that I've done was as Cloud in Arcade mode. Omnislash v5, then call in Tifa to do an attack with large knockback, teleport after the enemy and do another Omnislash v5, call in Tifa again, then do another Omnislash v5. Then I lost because I was fighting Golbez at the time.

But yes, when your assist character does an attack that would normally lead into a Chase sequence, it gives you a split second to press X, which teleports you next to the opponent for a free hit against them. Obviously this will make some characters more useful assists than others. I do wonder though if you can set which attack your assist character uses...?

[Locke cole]

Here's a question: Is the computer as much of a cheater as it used to be, in terms of blocking and dodging?

[Bells]

To be honest? in this demo it felt really dumbed down. Lvl 50 Zidane wiped the floor with me, but in general i was pretty free to explore each characters attack and even pick how i wanted to finnish the fight.

I think they did this on Purpose so you can explore the Demo more freely.

I did notice that the Ai now goes for the Ex Cores more often


AH! I forgot, i'm not sure if this was a game change, but i was unable to perform any Ex-Traps this time.

As in: Fill your EX Meter, get closer so the opponent hits you, as soon as hi hits you, go into Ex mode to break his combo and stun him for a second, at that time, go for an HP attack and Finnisih it of.

I could not Pull this with 012. Maybe wrong timing? but i did it all the time in Dissidia... When i tried on 012 i was able to break the enemy combo, but as the enemy got stunned so did i! And the Ex meter got Flushed down to empty right on the spot.