Earlier this year, I took part in the closed beta for SquareEnix’s Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy. They went with a session-based beta trial, where you could only play on select weekends for a couple of hours. It was fine, but it didn’t blow me away. As someone who enjoyed the series’ PSP roots, I was curious how they would translate the game onto mobile. Now that it’s out of beta and available for everyone to play, it has promise, but won’t appeal to a wider audience.
Not quite a fighter, not quite a MOBA
The original Dissidia games were famous for their gameplay. They took popular characters from the many Final Fantasy games and put them into an action game. Yes, the series is famous for its quirky titles. But its combat was a lot of fun.
I haven’t kept up with the series in recent years. They attempted to bring the series to the PS4, but I never played it. There might have been a free-to-play version as well, but that might be the same game. So, while it shouldn’t be a surprise that they went the mobile route, this isn’t what we may have expected.
Instead of this being a one-on-one fighting game, we have a team-based MOBA-lite approach. You form a squad of three characters and proceed to duel it out against another team on a battlefield. Yes, you do fight against the other team, that’s not the focus. Instead, the goal of victory is defeating a boss character that terrorizes the stage.
Frantic action with a frustrating camera
Defeating the stage’s monster is not a simple task. You can only attack boss characters when your character builds up enough Bravery. Bravery is your character’s special meter that fills up. You can fill it up by doing different things in combat. The best way is to defeat your opponents to steal their Bravery. The other is to destroy any of the five Crystals that appear in different zones on the map.
You can only destroy a Crystal when the minion foes around it have perished. So, in most instances, you and your team will run up to a Crystal zone and begin attacking the foes. Then, one of you will trigger the destruction of the Crystal and move on. Luckily, everyone gets Bravery points, so you don’t have to all attack the same zone.
Stages are pretty small, and because so much action happens in these zones, the camera can pose a problem. In most battles, I had difficulty keeping my camera focused on the action. This often left me to times when I’d trigger a special attack only to hit nothing because my camera moved out of place. Special attacks do significant damage, so missing out on a key hit can swing a battle out of your favor.
Not a lot of content at launch
As you would expect with any free-to-play mobile game at launch, the content here is lacking. When it comes to game modes, you have: ranked-online, casual, and character-specific challenges. While these are fine to start, there are limits to everything. After every battle, win or lose, you earn Crystals that earn you ability rewards.
For the free-to-play crowd, you only have three slots available. If you win a battle, it takes around 2.5 hours for those crystal rewards to unlock. So, after a few fights, you will have to wait or spend money to unlock them quicker. This limit means you won’t be playing for very long unless you buy the season pass.
Also, the current roster of characters is small. The game launched with only 10 characters. A recent update added two more characters, the Onion Knight and Iroha from Final Fantasy XI. I guess that they will drop new characters every couple of weeks. While that’s fine for now, the process for unlocking characters is slow, especially if you’re not willing to pay.
Slow progress
Everything here feels slow on purpose. Outside of waiting for your rewards, the Season level system is also slow. Most games that incorporate a ranked season system won’t penalize you for losing. So, if you’re in the Bronze category, a match loss will give you 0 points. This encourages people to keep playing.
However, here, even in Bronze, if your team loses, you lose points. Not only do you lose points, but you can also drop in rank. This happened to me, and it was discouraging. This is annoying since most matches are close contests. It’s very rare to have one-sided victories. So, to lose in such a manner and to also go down in rank feels unfair.
Those who are willing to spend money in the game will unlock and upgrade their abilities at a faster rate. I am not a staunch “I don’t pay for mobile games”. If it makes sense, I will drop a bit, especially if it feels meaningful. Unfortunately, the early content here isn’t worth it. That will change the longer the game is playable. But right now, I’d rather save my money until that’s possible.
Wait for now
Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy has some good elements, but it’s not enough for me. In 3-6 months, this might be more fun to play. At launch, it still feels like it’s in that beta phase, unsure what works best to keep players engaged. If they can address my concerns, I may reconsider. For now, I’d recommend holding off unless you love everything Final Fantasy.
