After writing a bit about Dissidia Final Fantasy NT recently, I decided to revisit it. After all, I bought the season pass and there've been a few new characters I never got the chance to try. I've said before that the game is disappointing, but it's still a pretty fun game to play and I absolutely love Final Fantasy in general. Living up to the lofty expectations I'd had for the game would have been pretty difficult in the first place.
Since I last played, about three new characters have been added. I'd already tried out the first three additions, which were Final Fantasy VI's Locke, Final Fantasy VIII's Rinoa, and Final Fantasy XII's Vayne. I was really shocked to hear these choices because they weren't the straightforward fan-favorite picks you'd normally expect to see for DLC in a game like this. Locke makes a lot of sense for another inclusion from FFVI since he's probably the most popular character in that game aside from Terra herself. Rinoa also makes sense since she's arguably Final Fantasy VIII's second main character, but Dissidia 012 featured Laguna from that game and I'm surprised that he hasn't been announced instead. Vayne is similarly surprising since another of XII's villains, Gabranth, has previously been featured in the Dissidia series.
The most off-the-wall inclusion so far is definitely Kam'lanaut from Final Fantasy XI. I've never heard of this guy before, but I guess it was finally time to incorporate a villain from XI since the series has previously only featured fan-favorite Shantotto and the brawler Prishe. He strikes me as some sort of weird, blonde Sephiroth with his floor-length ponytail. I played as him briefly but didn't have a very strong impression of him overall.
I was excited to hear that Yuna from Final Fantasy X was making a return to the series because she was one of my top favorites from Dissidia 012. Granted, this was partially because she had a nigh-unstoppable HP attack in Valefor's Energy Ray, but she was fun regardless. Her play style is quite a bit different this time since the Marksman class in Dissidia NT is meant to be very pokey in general. Like most casters in the game, I had a hard time landing attacks that could actually take my opponents down. I feel magic users in general benefit most from a coordinated team, and since I recall Dissidia's online connection being pretty terrible, I'm not sure I'll be testing that theory. It's a shame though, because I feel like I'm missing such a crucial part of the game.
The most recent inclusion to the game is Snow from Final Fantasy XIII, who is an almost impossibly unlikeable dudebro. His insufferableness is turned up to 11 in his appearance here, sporting a mustache-less goatee, a giant infected Cie'th arm, and a healthy serving of angst. His playstyle is very straightforward in that he excels at hitting enemies very hard and knocking them into things. He can also call forth pillars of ice with a few of his attacks, which is pretty cool to watch. He feels a lot like a second Cloud, to be honest.
My initial plan after trying out these new characters was to put the game back down and maybe play again in the future if more DLC ever came. On a whim, I decided to pull up the Story Mode to see if anything had ever been added since I finished it when the game first came out. To my surprise, many new scenes had been added to incorporate the game's new characters. There were even scenes with Ramza and Ace, who were included in the base game but did not feature in the game's story at all. This was exciting because a big part of why I wanted to even play the game in the first place was to see some of my favorite characters rendered in these cutscenes, interacting with each other. The actual plot is hot garbage, but man is it fun in a trashy way to see these ridiculous Final Fantasy characters talking to each other.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I would continue playing Dissidia NT regularly if Square-Enix continued to add new story and cutscenes. My dream is a Dissidia game with some ridiculously convoluted and intricate Kingdom Hearts style plot that you need a spreadsheet to keep track of. Alternatively, they could polish the online experience so it functions as a competent arena fighter. I would be okay with that too. I don't think either of these things are going to happen.
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