8th September 2009, 11:53 PM
It is out, and it is good!
The gameplay itself is rather simple. They took a page from the "simplicity" mantra of Super Smash Bros, at least here they did. The game actually plays a bit like a 3D smash bros. Instead of knocking players "out of bounds" to win, you take HP to 0, but not in the traditional way. In the same way that you can take hit after hit and still drag on a battle in Smash, the same can be said here. There's two scores, the HP score which is the only one you can reduce to actually "win" a match, and "bravery". Some attacks reduce HP and others reduce bravery. The catch is the amount of HP damage you do is entirely based on your bravery score, so in order to win you have to hit with lots of bravery attacks to build up enough points to actually do significant damage to the enemy's HP.
There are more details. Hitting the opponent with bravery not just raises yours, it lowers their's. If their bravery hits 0, it "breaks". A bravery break will significantly raise your own brave, and further the enemy will need to wait for their brave meter to raise to "base" before their HP attacks will do anything at all.
Special items appear on the stage to unlock "super" moves for each character. This fills a meter. As time goes on and you do more bravery these items get bigger and fancier. Wait long enough and one of them will fully fill the so called "EX meter".
Pulling off moves is very easy, much like Smash Bros. One button does brave attacks, the other does HP attacks. Holding the stick towards, center, or away from the enemy will activate different moves. There's a button to lock onto the enemy (or an EX core), and one to block/dodge. Finally there's a button to jump and a button to speed dash.
That's the basics. Where it gets complicated is that all the characters can be fully customized. They have a huge list of moves they learn as they "level up" which can be equipped to the HP and brave commands (and each direction pushed in conjunction with those buttons) which allows for a lot of personalization. There's also extra abilities that can change how a character does things like jump, dash, and so on. Your character specializes in long range? Replace the "dash towards" command with one that dashes away.
There's also equipment. Equipment does all the things one might expect, boosting stats, additional effects, and taking a page from MMOs, "set bonuses" for equipping a bunch of parts from a single set of equipment. There's also some level restrictions on a lot of gear. Accessories make for some intersting gameplay decisions. There's the standard ones to boost things like bravery damage or recovery, but the majority of your planning is determined by the way you play. There are a number of "booster" accessories that take those standard fairly weak ones and boost them based on battle conditions. Being on the ground vs in the air covers two of them, for example. They also stack with each other, so for example if you are really good at prolonging a fight (you coward), equip a single strength booster and about 7 "time boost" accessories. The longer the fight goes on, the stronger the bonus becomes. Find yourself getting knocked around all the time? Equip a bunch of Low HP boosters to dramatically boost your accessories when you are low on HP. All these things are taught to you by the in-game tutorial explained by all manner of familiar faces, like Selphie or the FF6 Biggs and Wedge (Vicks? THERE IS NO VICKS! ONLY BIGGS!).
Lastly there's summons. These will actually have limits on consecutive use, so you can't depend on them for too long, even in multiplayer. Many automatically trigger based on certain conditions, but some need you to summon them yourself. There's ones to copy the enemy's brave whenever it is at least triple your base brave (one time per battle, 3 battles before it needs to recharge). Don't want to have to manually reequip summons due to these cooldowns? There's an easy setup for rotations to automatically switch in. Along those lines, you can save up to 3 different entire setups for each character.
As for the characters, they took the main protagonist and antagonist from each of the first 10 Final Fantasy games. Some of them required a little imagination. For example for FF1 they picked "Warrior of Light", a fighter/knight class type with no name and no past, since just about everyone puts at least one fighter in their group to take the hits. His antagonist is the rouge knight Garland. (Hint: Chaos, which he turns into, is also in the game, and it all ties into the story in an interesting way, but Chaos is not playable.) FF2 has Firion and the overbearingly "I rule you" The Emperor (no name, I think that's his way of more or less forcing you to call him emperor, for only he is fit to rule).
The rest:
FF3 Onion Knight (not any one in particular, apparently the original Famicom version had them as just generic kids with no default name) vs Cloud of Chaos. I'd think Xande would have been the main guy since the Cloud was just sort of a last minute final boss from nowhere appearence, but it works pretty well and the Cloud, unlike some final bosses, actually does have some storyline around it.
FF4 Cecil (Really cool, he can switch between Dark Knight and Paladin throughout battle, HP attacks in the air make him a Paladin, on the ground make him a Dark Knight, and both forms have their own full list of bravery attacks, some of which switch him back and forth themselves), and his rival, Golbez (Yeah, Zemus is the final boss of that game, and was controlling Golbez, who was controlling Kain, and once Golbez was freed everyone sorta forgot that he basically stole Kain's storyline from under him at the end, but Golbez has a much more personal connection to Cecil than Zemus.)
FF5 Bartz (his job of choice, and his movesets, are based on the ultimate job in the game, Mime, which makes for some total awesomeness seeing him wielding both Cloud and Squall's swords AT ONCE) and his nemesis, ExDeath (Penello is right, this guy talks about nothing but the void, it gets old but his hammy overacting is part of his charm).
FF6 Terra (her EX form is obvious, esper mode, and it is awesome, she specializes in the magics, of course, and it's fun to eventually learn her devastating holy/flare/ultima combo attack), and the nihilistic sadistic madman Kefka (his moves are all just so ridiculous, and then suddenly terrifying (DON'T MESS WITH ME *stabs you to death with wings*), and EX mode is his evil god form. Kefka in particular has some hilarious intro comments for a lot of characters.
FF7 Cloud and his guy he hates, Sephiroth, this one needs no explanation. Sephiroth has a lot of demeaning statements to everyone. Most of them try to cut to the quick, but in the case of Kefka, all he can say is "you're annoying", which is hilarious to me.
FF8 has Squall who's attacks are just so... direct and "I kill you now", and the baddie his entire SeeD life was preperation for, Ultimecia (aside from a cutscene, she really doesn't have much time control, but plenty of spells and traps to set). Kefka to Squall: I smell a poser!
FF9 has Zidane the monkey thief (as in, he's a monkey that is a thief, not a thief that specifically steals monkeys) and his rival Kuja (Necros or whatever that guy was that just sort of, showed up as the final boss from nowhere wasn't picked because, well, he doesn't have that much of a connection to anything in that game).
FFX has Tidus who's moves are just, wild and unpredictable, and as the baddie, not Sin, but Jecht. This one's a little odd, considering that Jecht was only the boss of his game because he was merged with Sin, and here he's clearly not under Sin's control at all. Seems he's just been caught up in something he can't do much about and just is working with Chaos because he thinks it will get him and Tidus home. His EX does turn him into a sin-like creature though (not as big mind you).
Oh and if you look hard, there's also an NPC Taru Taru from FFXI named Shantotto (extremely egotistical black mage, hilarious actually), and Gabranth the judge from FFXII.
The story and cinematics were done by the same guy who did the story mode of Smash Bros Brawl (and the entire Kingdom Hearts series for that matter) so expect the same extremely ultra fantastical style. He does a great job really capturing the look of the Amano designed characters I'll note, adding a few extra touches, like the messy "Dark Knight Joker" style lipstick on Kefka. The basic premise is that all the Final Fantasy worlds had been shattered and gathered into one world to aid two gods (Cosmos, goddess of harmony, and Chaos, god of discord) in a battle that has lasted for an eternity, as the combatants are all simply revived with no memory of their previous fights every time they fall. The story revolves around finding some way to end the cycle and return everything to the way it was. The whole idea of an endless cycle is also the big revelation in FF1's storyline, and that's no coincidence, as that first game's storyline is what ties it all together. The two warring gods apparently used to be a couple or something. There's a lot to it I've yet to reveal, as like the Kingdom Hearts games there are a number of hidden "reports" to find that reveal the full story (wish Brawl had those, there's a number of questions I had about that).
I've played through the story mode, and it's been an amazing experience. Cloud fighting Terra was certainly one of the high points, and further the final battles relive some of my favorite lines from each of the end bosses (why strive to live when everything must die?).
Oh, and if none of that convinced you. Chaos has the same voice actor that played Goliath from the Gargoyles animated series.
Amazing game that really shows off what the PSP is capable of, and certainly an original and surprisingly engaging combat system. This game has been an addiction, which is more than I can say for most fighting games.
I thought I'd add all the little touches they put in here. The little story telling quirks of various FF games make it into the story modes of each character. For example Squall does a lot of inner monologue, and Tidus does a lot of narrating as characters silently talk. The extra costumes for the Amano characters allow one to play either with the coloring of the original artwork or the coloring used in the game, for example Terra's got either her blonde hair version or the green hair version with the extremely bright red clothes. If you don't like the blue coloring of Warrior of Light, you can pick his alternate red costume that looks a lot more like the in-game warrior/knight sprites from FF1. Onion Knight's main costume is styled after his NES look, but if you prefer the DS remake, his alternate costume, right down to the hair color and style, is based on Luneth from the remake's Onion Knight class appearance.
The gameplay itself is rather simple. They took a page from the "simplicity" mantra of Super Smash Bros, at least here they did. The game actually plays a bit like a 3D smash bros. Instead of knocking players "out of bounds" to win, you take HP to 0, but not in the traditional way. In the same way that you can take hit after hit and still drag on a battle in Smash, the same can be said here. There's two scores, the HP score which is the only one you can reduce to actually "win" a match, and "bravery". Some attacks reduce HP and others reduce bravery. The catch is the amount of HP damage you do is entirely based on your bravery score, so in order to win you have to hit with lots of bravery attacks to build up enough points to actually do significant damage to the enemy's HP.
There are more details. Hitting the opponent with bravery not just raises yours, it lowers their's. If their bravery hits 0, it "breaks". A bravery break will significantly raise your own brave, and further the enemy will need to wait for their brave meter to raise to "base" before their HP attacks will do anything at all.
Special items appear on the stage to unlock "super" moves for each character. This fills a meter. As time goes on and you do more bravery these items get bigger and fancier. Wait long enough and one of them will fully fill the so called "EX meter".
Pulling off moves is very easy, much like Smash Bros. One button does brave attacks, the other does HP attacks. Holding the stick towards, center, or away from the enemy will activate different moves. There's a button to lock onto the enemy (or an EX core), and one to block/dodge. Finally there's a button to jump and a button to speed dash.
That's the basics. Where it gets complicated is that all the characters can be fully customized. They have a huge list of moves they learn as they "level up" which can be equipped to the HP and brave commands (and each direction pushed in conjunction with those buttons) which allows for a lot of personalization. There's also extra abilities that can change how a character does things like jump, dash, and so on. Your character specializes in long range? Replace the "dash towards" command with one that dashes away.
There's also equipment. Equipment does all the things one might expect, boosting stats, additional effects, and taking a page from MMOs, "set bonuses" for equipping a bunch of parts from a single set of equipment. There's also some level restrictions on a lot of gear. Accessories make for some intersting gameplay decisions. There's the standard ones to boost things like bravery damage or recovery, but the majority of your planning is determined by the way you play. There are a number of "booster" accessories that take those standard fairly weak ones and boost them based on battle conditions. Being on the ground vs in the air covers two of them, for example. They also stack with each other, so for example if you are really good at prolonging a fight (you coward), equip a single strength booster and about 7 "time boost" accessories. The longer the fight goes on, the stronger the bonus becomes. Find yourself getting knocked around all the time? Equip a bunch of Low HP boosters to dramatically boost your accessories when you are low on HP. All these things are taught to you by the in-game tutorial explained by all manner of familiar faces, like Selphie or the FF6 Biggs and Wedge (Vicks? THERE IS NO VICKS! ONLY BIGGS!).
Lastly there's summons. These will actually have limits on consecutive use, so you can't depend on them for too long, even in multiplayer. Many automatically trigger based on certain conditions, but some need you to summon them yourself. There's ones to copy the enemy's brave whenever it is at least triple your base brave (one time per battle, 3 battles before it needs to recharge). Don't want to have to manually reequip summons due to these cooldowns? There's an easy setup for rotations to automatically switch in. Along those lines, you can save up to 3 different entire setups for each character.
As for the characters, they took the main protagonist and antagonist from each of the first 10 Final Fantasy games. Some of them required a little imagination. For example for FF1 they picked "Warrior of Light", a fighter/knight class type with no name and no past, since just about everyone puts at least one fighter in their group to take the hits. His antagonist is the rouge knight Garland. (Hint: Chaos, which he turns into, is also in the game, and it all ties into the story in an interesting way, but Chaos is not playable.) FF2 has Firion and the overbearingly "I rule you" The Emperor (no name, I think that's his way of more or less forcing you to call him emperor, for only he is fit to rule).
The rest:
FF3 Onion Knight (not any one in particular, apparently the original Famicom version had them as just generic kids with no default name) vs Cloud of Chaos. I'd think Xande would have been the main guy since the Cloud was just sort of a last minute final boss from nowhere appearence, but it works pretty well and the Cloud, unlike some final bosses, actually does have some storyline around it.
FF4 Cecil (Really cool, he can switch between Dark Knight and Paladin throughout battle, HP attacks in the air make him a Paladin, on the ground make him a Dark Knight, and both forms have their own full list of bravery attacks, some of which switch him back and forth themselves), and his rival, Golbez (Yeah, Zemus is the final boss of that game, and was controlling Golbez, who was controlling Kain, and once Golbez was freed everyone sorta forgot that he basically stole Kain's storyline from under him at the end, but Golbez has a much more personal connection to Cecil than Zemus.)
FF5 Bartz (his job of choice, and his movesets, are based on the ultimate job in the game, Mime, which makes for some total awesomeness seeing him wielding both Cloud and Squall's swords AT ONCE) and his nemesis, ExDeath (Penello is right, this guy talks about nothing but the void, it gets old but his hammy overacting is part of his charm).
FF6 Terra (her EX form is obvious, esper mode, and it is awesome, she specializes in the magics, of course, and it's fun to eventually learn her devastating holy/flare/ultima combo attack), and the nihilistic sadistic madman Kefka (his moves are all just so ridiculous, and then suddenly terrifying (DON'T MESS WITH ME *stabs you to death with wings*), and EX mode is his evil god form. Kefka in particular has some hilarious intro comments for a lot of characters.
FF7 Cloud and his guy he hates, Sephiroth, this one needs no explanation. Sephiroth has a lot of demeaning statements to everyone. Most of them try to cut to the quick, but in the case of Kefka, all he can say is "you're annoying", which is hilarious to me.
FF8 has Squall who's attacks are just so... direct and "I kill you now", and the baddie his entire SeeD life was preperation for, Ultimecia (aside from a cutscene, she really doesn't have much time control, but plenty of spells and traps to set). Kefka to Squall: I smell a poser!
FF9 has Zidane the monkey thief (as in, he's a monkey that is a thief, not a thief that specifically steals monkeys) and his rival Kuja (Necros or whatever that guy was that just sort of, showed up as the final boss from nowhere wasn't picked because, well, he doesn't have that much of a connection to anything in that game).
FFX has Tidus who's moves are just, wild and unpredictable, and as the baddie, not Sin, but Jecht. This one's a little odd, considering that Jecht was only the boss of his game because he was merged with Sin, and here he's clearly not under Sin's control at all. Seems he's just been caught up in something he can't do much about and just is working with Chaos because he thinks it will get him and Tidus home. His EX does turn him into a sin-like creature though (not as big mind you).
Oh and if you look hard, there's also an NPC Taru Taru from FFXI named Shantotto (extremely egotistical black mage, hilarious actually), and Gabranth the judge from FFXII.
The story and cinematics were done by the same guy who did the story mode of Smash Bros Brawl (and the entire Kingdom Hearts series for that matter) so expect the same extremely ultra fantastical style. He does a great job really capturing the look of the Amano designed characters I'll note, adding a few extra touches, like the messy "Dark Knight Joker" style lipstick on Kefka. The basic premise is that all the Final Fantasy worlds had been shattered and gathered into one world to aid two gods (Cosmos, goddess of harmony, and Chaos, god of discord) in a battle that has lasted for an eternity, as the combatants are all simply revived with no memory of their previous fights every time they fall. The story revolves around finding some way to end the cycle and return everything to the way it was. The whole idea of an endless cycle is also the big revelation in FF1's storyline, and that's no coincidence, as that first game's storyline is what ties it all together. The two warring gods apparently used to be a couple or something. There's a lot to it I've yet to reveal, as like the Kingdom Hearts games there are a number of hidden "reports" to find that reveal the full story (wish Brawl had those, there's a number of questions I had about that).
I've played through the story mode, and it's been an amazing experience. Cloud fighting Terra was certainly one of the high points, and further the final battles relive some of my favorite lines from each of the end bosses (why strive to live when everything must die?).
Oh, and if none of that convinced you. Chaos has the same voice actor that played Goliath from the Gargoyles animated series.
Amazing game that really shows off what the PSP is capable of, and certainly an original and surprisingly engaging combat system. This game has been an addiction, which is more than I can say for most fighting games.
I thought I'd add all the little touches they put in here. The little story telling quirks of various FF games make it into the story modes of each character. For example Squall does a lot of inner monologue, and Tidus does a lot of narrating as characters silently talk. The extra costumes for the Amano characters allow one to play either with the coloring of the original artwork or the coloring used in the game, for example Terra's got either her blonde hair version or the green hair version with the extremely bright red clothes. If you don't like the blue coloring of Warrior of Light, you can pick his alternate red costume that looks a lot more like the in-game warrior/knight sprites from FF1. Onion Knight's main costume is styled after his NES look, but if you prefer the DS remake, his alternate costume, right down to the hair color and style, is based on Luneth from the remake's Onion Knight class appearance.