Dissidia Playing Log: Part 5

Hello, Space Monkees!!!

Careening out of the mediocrity of "Final Fantasy IV", we now enter the brand new mediocrity of "Final Fantasy V". FFV is the kind of game that you play halfway subconsciously while on an airplane. It really only deserves half your attention while playing it, because really there's nothing to actually warrant the focus of every brain cell in your skull. There isn't much of a plot, honestly you can't say its much deeper than FFIII. At least there are characters this time, and one of them is easily the greatest character to appear in this series before the advent of the PlayStation - the one, the only, Mr. Battle on the Big Bridge, GILGAMESH!!! At the very least the battle system is quite good; far deeper and enjoyable than that load of shit that FFIV was trying to pass off as entertainment. This is the best Final Fantasy title there ever was... well, before the series started getting actually good.

So how has Dissidia done in transferring the feel of this early 90s 2D game to the modern 3D world? Terribly. Why? There's only one reason. I have one complaint with how Dissidia treated this game, one complaint: no Gilgamesh. Why in God's name would you not have Gilgamesh appear in your celebration title of the Final Fantasy universe? Are you seriously going to try to stare me right in the eye and say with complete honestly that Exdeath deserves to be here more than his lovable incompetent right-hand man? You can't. You screwed up, admit it.

Getting past that little bit of a personal issue I have, we will now move on to talking about the FFV representative for Destiny Odyssey V.

Bartz Klauser was not a well-crafted, deeply developed character back when he first appeared on the Super Nintendo. In fact, he has only one personality trait to speak of - he's kinda stupid. Remember, FFV did not really have a plot (I honestly believe they made up the entire thin storyline on the fly after the game had been put together), so you're lucky to get even that. In his newest appearance, he's retained his denseness. There is no lesson for Bartz to learn, I doubt he'd be able to even comprehend it. Instead all he does is race against "Final Fantasy IX"'s hero, Zidane to get a Crystal first, and wind up getting tricked by his arch nemesis, Exdeath. Then he fights said arch nemesis, and wins his Crystal. So I guess the game managed to boil down FFV's plot style by making it all really thin, and completely pointless.

Also, the game never does tell you who won the race. It bugs me.

As a playable character, Bartz is supposed to represent the Mime Job Class from his game. Mimes were definitely one of the best classes out there, since they had a few more slots for you to put in magic commands. FFV had like seven kinds of magic, and they all took up a slot on your command menu, so Mimes were perfect for mages in this respect. Oddly, Bartz is not a mage, but rather a physical fighter. What he does is mimic the combos of other fighters. So he'll swing around the swords of his fellow Light Warriors. It is indeed very cool to start off a combo with Cloud's Buster Sword and end it by shooting an opponent into the sky with Squall's Gunblade. Though being a Mimic I though that I could copy the actions of my opponents somehow, or at least add their swords into my combos. Dissidia has no such system, the Mimic thing is nothing more than visual style. Bartz actually fights like all the others. He's more of a physical fighter than anything else, and he's quite speedy. All of his HP attacks are borrowed from allies, but they're pre-set, so you can't decide which ones the game gives you. I'd love to have Terra's "Tornado" and Onion Knight's "Comet", but its all up to game as to which ones I might end up with. I saw Cecil's "Darkness" attack and a "Wind Shear" attack. I don't know which character that last one came from.

One thing I do like about Bartz is his EX Mode. Three stars appear over his head like you'd see in FFV's menu when you Mastered a Job Class. Then his Limit Break is named after my favorite strategy for FFV's endgame: Spellblade + Dual Wield + Rapid Fire. That right there is the recipe you need to defeating all of FFV's endless numbers of superbosses and difficult enemies in the last dungeon. If you do it correctly, you'll get eight hits, just like that combo would pull off.

Ultimately, I still like Onion Knight better. Though I've tried out Terra, and she can be quite lethal. Perhaps when I enter the glory of "Final Fantasy VI" this game will finally start to pick up? Ask anybody, Final Fantasies VI - X were much better than I - V. So I'm sure that the game will be much better after this to reflect upon that trend. Or maybe not... We shall see. We shall see.

By the way, I've bought all twenty characters. Now all that remains are those two secret characters. I guess to unlock them you have to beat the game or something. So let's get right on it then! Destiny Odyssey VI is next. You're going down, Kefka!