i don't think your that far off from what i've seen as well, i definitely agree about the fan boy thing being one myself i understand the awesomeness that is a ff fighting game however being a vg programmer in the making, seeing that game makes me cringe, i don't think its gonna be too good of a game, but i can't say much about it other than my assumptions seeing as how i haven't actually played it yet and everyone knows what assuming does.
*Has the game*
I'm not even an FF Fanboy...the most FF thing I've ever completed was Kingdom Hearts I & II[And CoM], and the Advent Children Movie.
As a Indy VG Programmer/Designer, I love this game.
The character building aspect is just how it would be in any other final fantasy game- items, skills, equipment, levels up, summons, etc, and they all serve a use for each of their character's game play.
The story mode probably has a good storyline, I just don't understand Japanese. I like how the story "board" works, its like Super Final Fantasy Chess...except its you against everyone else, and the other little optional bonus elements that are worked into how efficiently you rule the board provide for a depth of strategy to get rare items or to completely forgo strategy and blast away all the enemies and get lots of exp and such.
The characters
are "balanced", but I use that term loosely, which I'll explain later. Each one of them has their own set of unique moves, which is pretty impressive since Final Fantasy tends to reuse a lot of moves throughout their games, but each one appears unique when used. All characters have their drawbacks, and all characters have their strong points
Example:
Sephiroth-
+Super long range, lots of hits per attack, pretty fast.
-Lag times if moves miss is kinda huge, moves are easy to see coming, magic/long range attacks are on the slow side.
Squall-
+Strong moveset, easy combos and can hit behind him during attacks. Relatively easy to perfect EXMove.
-Lots of start up lag, suffers against long-range users, a little too easy to read.
ExDeath-
+Can teleport around, has the strongest defensive powers in the game, can alter gravity and easily sap all of the opponent's brave. Attacks have a decent amount of range.
-Slowest character in the game. Teleport has lots of lag, and has a hard time chasing down EX Items.
The only flaw I find with the game is the "endgame". The max HP is 9999. The max Brave is 9999. Brave = How much damage you do with an HP attack. >_> See the issue? There is also this one summon, which I believe is Odin[Guy on a horse? Looks kinda spooky to me.], who, when summoned, instantly breaks the opponent.
[Breaking is reducing the opponent's brave to 0 and adding it plus the brave pool(The sum of both player's initial brave stat) to the breaker]
Now, this means that the player who was "broken" has to play defensive until the effect of being broken subsides, and at that point its basically a one-hit-win for the other player- if he can land one, which, thankfully, as long as they both know how to dodge decently, shouldn't happen unless some good strategy is put forth.
So yea, the characters are balanced pretty well- they can all one-hit-kill each other once they max out on everything with their items and skills and such.
Now, I realize I'm taking it to an extreme, since to train my characters I would fight the highest level ExDeath I could find[Usually my level +60] and abuse their terrible AI(all they really do is teleport around and attack every now and again), and I could still wear them down and dodge their attacks.
But yea- Dissidia is a good game at least. I feel it is a great game, but it really is at least a good game. Each character has its own playstyle which can be further customized through items/accessories/skills/etc., each stage is different and offers different advantages to different characters based on the terrain and size. The graphics look great to me, and it all flows nicely and loads quickly, and its difficulty level can appease every level of gamer.
And as Sandra said just a few minutes ago [after wrangling the PSP away from the deathgrip she had it in all weekend], "I really did think the game would be epic fail, but then I started playing it and it was really ...epic win. I couldn't put it down, it was just way too much fun."
So yea. That was much longer than I thought it would be.
LOL.
-DD
