Cosmos, the goddess of harmony. Chaos, the god of discord. Reigning from distant realms, the two gods have gathered warriors from all lands to led them in savage war.
Beaten: 2009 (twice)
Version played: Playstation Portable (Japanese and English)
I was at a local anime convention when I stumbled upon a booth with a lot of Final Fantasy merchandise. Among these was a copy of Dissidia, which had recently been released in Japan but hadn't come out in English yet. And for whatever reason, I thought, "hey, I can totally make sense of this and play it."
And... I did?! I must have put 50+ hours into the game, despite the fact that I don't know Japanese. I beat the entire campaign and spent tons of time going through all the different battle modes. And when it came out in English, I did it all again.
In fact, I enjoyed Dissidia so much that I created a small fansite for it, which detailed all my thoughts on the game and characters. I've since closed the site, but it should be clear how much I liked it.
Today, however, I don't remember it very well! I haven't played it since it came out. The story was pretty lackluster (not that I expected anything more from a character brawler) so I'm not really driven to go back to it. I never beat Dissidia 012, so if anything I'll check that out instead if I revisit the subseries.
Favorite character
This is an exceptionally strange choice, but: Warrior of Light, the stand-in for the playable characters of the original Final Fantasy. I tried out all the characters, of course, but the only one I was particularly good with was Warrior of Light, so he's who I focused on.
Favorite music
My website, redcrown.net, is named after a lyric from Dissidia's theme song, so you can probably guess what my favorite track is.
This is mostly an arrangement album that pulls from the games it includes, so I don't see much point in listing my favorite tracks. I really enjoy the whole album, though; this is more of Takeharu Ishimoto at his best.
Favorite location
This is a fighting game. The arenas naturally all call back to the other games in the series. They're mostly the final dungeons from each game, in fact, which is a fun touch.
If I had played this game in the last decade I'm sure I would have something to say about them, but as it is, I don't even remember which ones I liked...
Gameplay thoughts
Dissidia is a fighting game primarily, but because it's a FF game, it had some RPG elements as well — you had to level up the characters, unlock their moves, pick your moveset, and so on. This added some nice depth to what would have otherwise been a very simple game.
Dissidia has two "health" meters: BRV (Bravery) and HP. The higher BRV you have, the more damage you deal to the opponent's HP. If your BRV is reduced to zero, you can't do any HP damage at all. Fights end when one side has no more HP, so the gameplay is mostly about building up your BRV as high as you can, then spending it on HP attacks to take out your opponent.
From the outside, it sounds pretty weird, but it worked surprisingly well. You also had a special ultimate move, which was usually the character's signature move or limit break from their original game.
The story mode involved a sort of game board you would travel across. Most of the fights were against "copies" of the various characters rather than the real deal; you'd only fight real enemies when the story called for it.
As noted above, I have very little memory of how the game actually played. I remember throwing Warrior of Light's shield around a lot, but that's about it...