Dissidia Playing Log: Part 9

Hello, Space Monkees!

I BEAT THE GAME!!  Oh yeah!

Following the end of the ten unsatisfying Destiny Odyssey chapters, the game then opens up the four-part finale epic called "Shade Impulse".  Instead of blindly running around collecting Crystals and finding themselves, the heroes now have to band together to save the world without the help of their fallen sexy Goddess.  You see, thanks to an extremely convoluted series of events that will take me until Christmas 2010 to explain, finding the Crystals has killed Cosmos, and now "the Great Will" (whatever that is) has decided that Chaos will win the war.  And being a Final Fantasy villain, Chaos has decided to end existence so that he doesn't have to feel so lonely anymore.  Pretty much par for the course then.

So this is looking good, the tension has finally been picked up, we get to see plenty more of Keith David, and its all flying towards an explosive final battle.  Indeed this is finally where Dissidia picks up.  Took it long enough.  So you run forward through the enemy boards, slowly killing off all ten Chaos villains one by one until finally you fly right into Chaos, for a three-part ultimate boss battle... which has some of the lamest and most inappropriate final boss music ever - but its still epic!  Keith David drowns out the music, so no worries!  Beat him, and then all the heroes return to their own worlds.  Except for the Warrior of Light, who then marches off to Cornelia in what I believe is the start of "Final Fantasy I".  That's pretty awesome right there.

Easily the best part of these chapters, and indeed, the entire game for that matter, is the touching ways that the story sends off the villains once they're killed.  Unfortunately, only three of said scenes are mandatory in the main storyline:  Garland, the Emperor, and (weirdly) Exdeath.  For the rest, you have to load up the chapters with the right characters.  So if you want to watch Sephiroth's big moment, you have to fight him as Cloud.  I, still going with Onion Knight, only got to see the one for Cloud of Darkness.  Luckily we live in a modern age, so if you want to see Kefka's end, go to Youtube and find the right video. Saves mr a Hell of a lot of trouble in leveling up the other characters who I've been neglicting.

Anyway, here's a few final scattered comments I need to make about the storyline:

• No, I have no idea what the heck is going on half the time either.  Everything is left really vague, characters are mentioned in passing, random dialogue is thrown around without any explanation.  This is all in anticipation of a sequel, I imagine.  Watch, much like the Kingdom Hearts series, things are going to get more and more complicated, darker, and more absurd in Dissidia 2.  Though I'd follow Kingdom Hearts straight down into Hell if it goes there, I don't think I'd follow a possible Dissidia series for that long.
• All game, the Emperor from "Final Fantasy II" had been built up, with plenty of claims about how he'll "be greater than the Gods" or whatever.  All this time they've made such a big screaming deal about his evil scheme... only for it to go nowhere.  He decides to fight the heroes for no good reason, and well, dies.  I'm disappointed.
• I neglected to mention this earlier, but Golbez's voice sounds ten times better in this game than in "Final Fantasy IV DS".  It was bugging me why, until I caved and looked it up.  He's changed voice actors.  Power to you, Golbez.
• The way this game treats the "Final Fantasy VII" characters, even in the end, is completely lame.  But I can accept them being out of the spotlight, this is supposed to be an ensemble piece.  Still, I would have liked to see more out of Sephiroth instead of just recycled lines from old games.
• During the end credits, there's a long orchestral piece made out of tunes from the main series.  Its like traveling through time, watching the series' evolution through the years.  Sort of like we're watching the series grow up from the mediocre NES games to the glory its become...  Well, until "Final Fantasy XI", because everything after that doesn't count as much in the universe of Dissidia.  Which curiously enough leads me to my final word and conclusion on the subject of this game:
• WHERE IS "FINAL FANTASY XII"?????  (Actually this was my original word on this game, so if nothing else I've remained true to who I am.)
  

Gameplay:  Naturally, things get more and more difficult as you go along in Shade Impulse.  You start out fighting enemies at level 20, but by the last few boards of Chapter 3, the enemies are in the 60s and 70s.  I even ran into a level 99 Garland... who I couldn't beat (I suck), so I just restarted that board and ran straight to the real boss.  This is interesting, since you'll run around fighting level 70 regular enemies, then fight the real Sephiroth as a boss, and he'll only be at level 44.  So after huge epic battles where you survive only by the skin of nose, only to fight a boss who is wiped out in ten seconds.  Then for the last two boards before Chaos, the game's difficult suddenly nosedives completely off the radar.  These final enemies are so piss easy that I thought I was playing a Mario game for a brief second there.

With only the slightest bit of level grinding outside the main storyline, I was up to level 70 by the time I ran into Chaos.  So it just wasn't a fair fight at all.  He has three forms...  all of which are more or less exactly the same, though I didn't get to see enough of it to really know.  Here's a play by play.  In the first battle, I guarded against his attack, then killed him with a ground HP attack.  Over in five seconds.  Second battle, took a bit longer, but still won with ease.  Final Battle, Chaos beat me up a bit this time, had me down to 1500 HP, and then started using his Limit Break.  He suddenly grew to five thousand feet tall!  This is no job for the little Onion Knight:  we need Godzilla or the Power Rangers for this!  Luckily he couldn't hit me the first time because I broke his Brave, and the second time I learned how to dodge the attack.  Finished with Comet.  Sorry Onion Knight for doubting your ability to fight five thousand feet tall avatars of pure evil.  You're my little buddy, you know that?

Its a curious thing being much more powerful than the boss you're fighting.  Backwards, to say the least.

Now that I've beaten the main game, Dissidia has finally decided to let loose the FFXII that I've been wishing for all game.  Its just an extra mode where you fight all the main villains then Gabranth, after which you can get him as a character.  I'm playing it now, and rocking out to the Theme of the Empire.  Even so, this is certainly not enough FFXII...  not at all.  Maybe in the sequel it will be properly represented, by which I mean anybody but Vaan.  Also we need some "Final Fantasy XIII" and "Tactics" too come to think of it.

Next on the Log, the very last entry. Its nice we have ten parts, but why have ten, when you can have eleven?
 
Update:  There never will be an eleventh chapter to this.  The FFXII and FFXI sections were so incredibly boring that I simply could not bring myself to write anything about them.  Its like describing a sandwich you kinda enjoyed back in fifth grade.  I don't want to talk about it and nobody wants to hear it.