A perfect combat game

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a 3v3 fighting game featuring characters from the Final Fantasy universe. You will be able to play as your favourite heroes, including Cloud and Lightning, cross various stages from the series, complete with their own background music. In the beta you can play offline, online and watch a few cutscenes from the game’s story mode. The four short cutscenes serve as an intro to the main story.

Moment to moment combat revolves around a Bravery system. All players start at 1,000 while attacking or taking damage, increases or decreases your ‘Bravery’. Once you have built up enough ‘Bravery’, you can use HP attacks to KO an enemy. The teams have a total of three lives each, as a result the final moments of every battle can be a tense affair.

Damaging summon crystals will fill up a metre which lets you use Summons such as Shiva or Ifrit. If I was losing badly, Summons did nothing to turn the tide of battle. They were, however, extremely helpful in securing a win or letting the team rest easy for a few seconds.

As expected, players can fully customise their fighters, from equipment to special abilities in addition to character and weapon skins. The game is played in full 3D, which also means that movement as well as positioning is extremely important. You must combine basic attacks with wall stunts, defending and dashing in order to gain the upper hand in 1v1 encounters in addition to helping teammates from time to time.

The battle system can often get overly chaotic and confusing. The UI doesn’t help as it bombards the player with numbers and information. At times, I had resorted to mashing X because I did not get a chance to catch a break, analyse the situation and plan my next move. Yet, the game is a blast to play. Building up your bravery and incapacitating enemies with one HP attack is incredibly satisfying, as it constantly rewards aggressive play.

The netcode is much better than the closed beta. Matchmaking is faster and the number of games that run smoothly is also much higher. But a lot of matches are still unplayable due to connection issues, which hopefully will be resolved in the final release.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a fan service game featuring all your favourite characters, levels and music. The flashy combat looks and feels satisfying, but it will take time to get used to the chaotic battles and intrusive UI.