Final Fantasy Dissidia 012 PSP
Final Fantasy Dissidia 012
Final Fantasy Dissidia 012 or Final Fantasy Dissidia Duodecim is the second version of Final Fantasy Dissidia on PSP. The game was released in 2011 in Japan and in North America. The game reveals what occured before the previous game Final Fantasy Dissidia.
During the twelfth cycle, Cosmos entrusts her warriors, Warrior of Light, Firion, Onion Knight, Cecil, Kain, Bartz, Tifa, Squall, Laguna, Zidane, Jecht, Vaan and Lightning to retreve the crystals to defeat Chaos. However, Chaos is emplying an army of crystalline soldiers, namely Manikins which pose a threat due to their ability to negate Cosmos' power to revive her warriors after they are dead. Therefore, Kain and Warrior of Light defeat most of their allies because they believe that their defeat is inevitable. However, Lightning is against their plan and she leads the other active warriors (Vaan, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa and Kain) to stop the Manikins by sealing their emerging portal. They succeed, but Cosmos is weakened after using much of her power to diminish the Manikin army when they are trying to kill her and the Warrior of Light, while Lightning and her group succumb to the Manikins' power and fade away. After that, the returning warriors of Cosmos participate in the thirteeth cycle and end the conflict between the 2 gods.
During the twelfth cycle, Cosmos entrusts her warriors, Warrior of Light, Firion, Onion Knight, Cecil, Kain, Bartz, Tifa, Squall, Laguna, Zidane, Jecht, Vaan and Lightning to retreve the crystals to defeat Chaos. However, Chaos is emplying an army of crystalline soldiers, namely Manikins which pose a threat due to their ability to negate Cosmos' power to revive her warriors after they are dead. Therefore, Kain and Warrior of Light defeat most of their allies because they believe that their defeat is inevitable. However, Lightning is against their plan and she leads the other active warriors (Vaan, Yuna, Laguna, Tifa and Kain) to stop the Manikins by sealing their emerging portal. They succeed, but Cosmos is weakened after using much of her power to diminish the Manikin army when they are trying to kill her and the Warrior of Light, while Lightning and her group succumb to the Manikins' power and fade away. After that, the returning warriors of Cosmos participate in the thirteeth cycle and end the conflict between the 2 gods.
Characters in the game
The major and most obvious difference between the 2 games is the addition of several side and main characters from the previous Final Fantasy game series. For example, in Dissidia 012, you have Kain Highwind (Final Fantasy 4 side character), Tifa Lockhart (Final Fantasy 7 side character), Laguna Loire (Final Fantasy 8 side character), Yuna (Final Fantasy 10 side character), Vaan (Final Fantasy 12 main character) and Lightning (Final Fantasy 13 main character). They have their own unique story lines too. After you have finished all their story lines, then only you can proceed through the game by using the classic 10 main characters, just like in the classic Dissidia game. There are also 3 remaining characters which can be unlocked through various means of gaemplay. They are Prishe (Final Fantasy 11 side character), Gilgamesh (a villain from Final Fantasy 5) and Feral Chaos (a stronger version of Chaos).
The party departing on a journey in the world map
Another difference between the 2 games is the use of RPG mode throughout the entire game. This time you will be moving around in a world map using your characters and you will encounter some enemies when you are moving towards your goal. You can choose to fight them or just simply dodge them if you are running out of HP. Remember to pick out some valuable treasures at the same time too. After you have finished the entire game, there will be some additional side quests available too (Confessions of the Creator and Labyrinth in the battle mode) and this time you really need to farm for the most powerful weapons, armors and accessories since the side quests will be extremely difficult. Imagine that you will be facing feral choas, as tronger incarnation of Chaos with a HP over 120000 at the end of your side quests. You will take a lot of time if you try to beat him the normal way. In this case, I will strongly recommend you to use the famous lai strike to save all the troubles. I will explain iai strike in more details in this article later.
Calling out assist
The battle system of the game is almost the same as the one in the previous version, except that Square Enix has added several features. For example, assist is involved in this game. When you are in the middle of a fight, you can call upon an assist to help you if ever the assisit bar is charged. You have 2 assist bars in total. If only 1 bar is charged, then you can call upon your assist by pressing the L and circle buttons simultaneously. In this case, you will be spending 1 assist bar for a bravery attack. If you have 2 assist bars charged, then you can either call upon your assist for a bravery attack by pressing the L and circle buttons simultaneously or for a HP attack by pressing L and square buttons simultaneously. One thing to take note is that if you will be spending 1 bar for a bravery attack but 2 bars for a HP attack. There are several ways to charge your assist bars, for example, you can do so by using attacking with or without hitting your opponent for several times. Successful attacks, however, will charge your assist bars more quickly. You also need to use a variety of attacks in order to buil up your assist bars faster. The assist bars will deplete if you sit around and do nothing. The bars will be charged slowly and once they are charged, you can use them whenever you want. Note that you can choose to use your assist automatically and this is done by equipping the auto-assist skill in the ability customization of the character. However, if you are skillful enough, I would not recommend you to do so.
Assist locked after taking damages
There are actually several uses of your assist. The first thing for sure is to help you to attack your enemy by performing combos together. One thing that I like to use my assist is after I have rushed the opponent over the wall of the battle field. At this time, I will call upon my assist and his attack will land 100% on my opponent without any chance of missing it. At this point, I will rush over to my opponent, and after my assist has finished all his attacks, I will continue on with my attack, and this is actually a beautiful combo chain. Many people are doing the same thing as I am doing and you can actually find some video tutorials on youtube. Another important use of your assist is to take damages in your place. If you are going to be defeated by one single HP attack and if your assist is charged for at least 1 bar, then you can call upon him before your opponent has landed his final blow on you. After that, your assist will come out and take that last blow in your place, whereas you can escape from that tough situation without being hurt. Pay attention that your assist will be locked for some time after he has taken that single blow. Don't worry, you can still use your assist afterwards, and you can actually call upon him to take more damage later in the battle. It is all up to you, but just like I said before, you will need to have at least 1 bar charged if you wish to do so. So, think twice before you want to use your assist for attacking purposes. If ever your opponent can finish you off in 1 single blow, then I would advise you to keep your assist with you for the time being and prepare for the worst situation.
Opening assist menu
You can change your assist character whenever you want by pressing the triangle button to go into the customization menu. Different characters have different skills, choose the ones that suit you the best. There are, however, some secret assist characters and they can actually be bought on the PSN network. I have heard about Aerith in the Final Fantasy 7 being an assist, but it can only be bought on PSN since she is not a playable character in the game.
Ex revenge
Limit break in this game is slighty different from the one in the previous game. In the classic Final Fantasy Dissidia, you can counterattack your opponent by using limit break (pressing R and square buttons simultaneously) at the correct timing without spending the limit break bar. It means that after you have counterattacked, you will be able to use your limit break on your enemy. But, for Final Fantasy Dissidia 012, you will need to spend the entire limit break bar to counterattack your enemy. When you do so, your opponent will suffer from a slight duration of slowness until you have hit him with a HP attack called Ex revenge. You won't be able to carry out your limit break anymore in this case.
Using iai strike to fight against feral chaos
Well, for those skillful players, I think they have also noticed that the famous iai strike in this game is different from the previous version. Iai strike can only be carried out after you have equipped the accessoire Smiting Soul (iai strike+1%, Defense-20%). This accessory is obtained by battlegen from the Farplane Mog friend card or by buying in the shop with 3 Discord's Dreams, 2 Discord's Hopes and 1 Tome of the Orator. You can still boost the chance of carrying out the iai strike to 100% by equipping some effect enhancing accessoires. For example, you can try Level Gap 90, Weaponless, Armorless, Hatless, Gloveless booster accessories. They can be bought from the Cornelia Moogle on 1 of the 2 days following your bonus day. Other booster accessories are Side by Side, which can be bought in the shop with 1 Battle Ring, 5 Fal'cie Husks and 2 Tomes of Adventure and Level 1-9 which is obtained by clearing 012 prologue - Path to Sanctuary. By doing so, you will be able to inflict the bravery break status on your opponent simply by landing 1 single bravery attack. Well, it is extremely useful when you are facing feral choas in the late game. You can watch the video below.
Final Fantasy Dissidia 012
Personally, I love this new version of Final Fantasy Dissida, not only that the battle system has become more complex, but there are also more playable characters. I especially like the fact that we can now use those female main protagonists such as Yuna and Tifa in the game. Assist gauge is also introduced and it makes the battle become more fun and interesting. The only thing that I don't like is the new feature of Ex revenge which will spend the entire Ex gauge to carry out. Unlike the previous game, I hardly have used any limit breaks in the game, I prefer to keep my Ex guage in case of emergency. If you wish to buy the game, please click here.