During my time at the Square Enix booth at E3 2017, I was able to participate in a three-on-three combat round in DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT. There was one character from each of the prior mainstream FINAL FANTASY games (excluding FINAL FANTASY XV, for which Noctus has already been announced to be representing that title) that I could select to play as.
As I still raid in Reisenjima as part of the endgame in FINAL FANTASY XI, I immediately picked Shantotto as my fighter (Windurst represent!). The thing that surprised me the most about watching the character selection was that, unless you were communicating with your teammates or peeking at his/her screen, you do not know what characters your teammates are until everyone on your side has already locked their choice in. For the DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT E3 2017 demo, we were limited to only picking one from two move pools, which we could then change after seeing who else was on our team (but before we saw who our opponents are, presumably to prevent the teams from counter-picking each other). For Shantotto, her HP Attack was Retribution, and her EX Skills were Bravery Regen and Teleport.
Once everyone had picked, we then had to select a summon to play as in battle, with a majority vote deciding which summon we would get. Each summon provides different stat boosts during combat, and when summoned, can attack the enemy team and give an additional in-game buff. We unanimously picked Alexander (which I chose more out of my love for the FINAL FANTASY XI: Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion than anything else).
When the match itself started, the gameplay was clearly chaos. On my team (Blue), there was Cloud (FINAL FANTASY VII), Shantotto (myself, FINAL FANTASY XI), and Squall (FINAL FANTASY VIII). On the opposing team (Red), there was Squall (FINAL FANTASY VIII), Terra (FINAL FANTASY VI), and Tidus (FINAL FANTASY X).
If you’ve played either the original DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY or DISSIDIA 012 FINAL FANTASY, then you’ve already got a good grasp on this game’s mechanics, as they haven’t changed (in truth) all that much here. Your Bravery attacks drop the opponent’s bravery meter down while raising yours up, and then your HP attack drops the opponent’s HP down by the amount that is in your bravery meter. And of course, we have up to 240 seconds to complete the fight. The game itself was fairly easy to pick up and play, as the person playing next to me mentioned that he had never played a DISSIDIA title before and he was still able to contribute significantly to the battle in DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT.
During my DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT match, as Shantotto blasted her way across the battlefield with her black magic, whittling down the opposing team’s bravery and HP meters, I felt a similar rush to what I experienced when I first loaded up DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY on my PlayStation PSP so long ago, only on a bigger platform. There were some efforts at teamwork, and we were starting to become cohesive as a three-man/woman unit towards the end, and as a result we won (and I took third place overall!). We were not able to summon Alexander unfortunately, though that was simply due to the quick pace that we dismantled the other team.
Overall, I loved playing DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT, and I actually dug out my PlayStation Vita to give DISSIDIA 012 FINAL FANTASY another spin after this year’s E3 was over. The three-on-three combat system is a great addition to the franchise, and is a natural step forward and something that I cannot believe wasn’t added before. This was simply fun and an absolute blast to play. A port of the Japanese Arcade title, DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT is coming to the PlayStation 4 at some point in 2018.
Who do you want to fight as in DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY NT? Have you played any of the prior games in the series?
Let us know in the comments below!
