Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy Has My Attention, But It Still Has a Lot to Prove

Dissidia has long been one of those game ideas that should have been a slam dunk, emphasis on should. While the first two PSP games were solid fighters with some incredibly fun character moments, the Final Fantasy fighting series has absolutely struggled to figure out what to do with Dissidia since then — a misguided arcade fighter and now shut-down mobile turn-based RPG.

That brings us to Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy, yet another bizarre step in the franchise that, once again, has me scratching my head at some of its design decisions. After spending nearly six hours with it, I can't deny that the game has its hooks in me in a way, though I can't properly articulate why. The novelty of seeing these iconic FF characters interact, specifically in this modern-day setting, but the combat also has a kind of unique flair to it that I'm enjoying. That being said, I have some real skepticism about the long-term appeal of Duellum, especially in the face of Square Enix's less-than-stellar history with free-to-play mobile games.

Dissidia Duellum is a reverse Isekai that transports the heroes of Final Fantasy to modern-day Tokyo, combating a strange outbreak of monsters and magical crystals. That modern take on the story is fused with what's called a "3vs3 Team Boss Battle Arena" where two opposing teams rush to take down a single boss the fastest.

It's all still built on the 'Bravery' and 'HP attack' formula of the Dissidia series, but it pretty immediately feels decidedly different from anything that's come before. The core combat feels somewhere between an action-RPG and a brawler, laser-focused on speed and teamwork — so much so that a coordinated team can end a match in literally 1-2 minutes. 

At the moment, Duellum only has that 3vs3 boss rush mode, where you pick a single character, outfit them with different equippable abilities, and rack up Bravery to attack the boss. Essentially, you gain Bravery by shattering crystals or attacking enemy players, and once you reach 9,999 Bravery, you can enter a Burst mode, allowing you to attack the boss. There are some extra layers of strategy, however, as doing Burst the same time as allies can lead to combos for increased damage, and you need to manage growing your own Bravery while choosing how much you want to fight the enemy team. 

We covered combat in our original preview of the game, so I won't delve too much deeper into the those mechanics, but what I do want to focus on, is how different each character feels, and how they can lead to different team synergies. The dynamics between characters is honestly what's kept me interested so far, with each one feeling uniquely enjoyable to play.

For example, I loved playing Zidane as a hit-and-run character, dashing around the field to quickly take out enemies. By going into Trance and duelling another player, to quickly backing out as their teammates tried to help, let me essentially aggravate the other team the entire time. Meanwhile, Krile is entirely about support, with abilities to constantly buff and heal your team, but she's incredibly vulnerable when on her own. Even further, Kain is a deliciously fun character because of his jump abilities, letting you hop to a crystal from across the map, thus focusing more on area control.

Even though Duellum is decidedly simpler than other Dissidia games, it's that focus on dynamic characters that still provides an undeniable hook to its gameplay systems. Still, I do hope that the gameplay can grow in new ways with additional characters, or that Square Enix considers additional modes and/or twists, because even after just six hours, I can see how this system will grow stale after a while. 

The other vital part to touch on is how the gacha system affects gameplay. The gacha in Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy is split into drawing characters and then drawing abilities for said characters. I spent a few hours trying to get a handle on the game's story and gacha systems, particularly how, in this instance, those two are blended together. For full disclosure, the preview account I had access to was loaded up with all of the game's currencies, but I deliberately avoided that initially to see how much I could earn by playing, and then using some of said currencies to play around with the character-specific abilities.

The good news is that Duellum doesn't feel anywhere near as egregious as Final Fantasy 7 Ever Crisis. However, it's still going to take some investment. Draws for abilities are relatively cheap, and even though character-specific abilities are rarer, you get a ton of them that can be equipped on every character — meaning it's fairly easy to make different builds. For characters, you can use a single Character Ticket (earned in-game) to draw for specific characters or new outfits, or you can spend 5 Character Tickets to buy a specific character you want. 

The other catch here is the game's second biggest focus outside of combat, the Season Pass, is also where the entirety of the story takes place. As you play matches, you'll earn Points for the Season Pass, filling a meter to take you to the next tier. Each tier has rewards, sometimes different in-game currencies, Icons, Growth items for abilities, etc. There are also story scenes of two different kinds mixed in, full cut-scenes, and text message conversations. 

As you might expect, this can make the narrative feel a little scattered and unfocused, as you're seeing little bits of text message conversations or a few minutes of a cut-scene before having to grind out some more matches. From what I measure, it seems like about 3-4 matches would always get me to the next tier, and there are Daily/Weekly challenges that can reward more Points for the Season Pass, too. 

I'm just not quite sure of the story element right now, though that isn't a huge surprise for a Dissidia game. There's some overarching story about a "Committee" helping Final Fantasy characters fight off the monsters, with the heroes using technology to cloak themselves from being seen by humans, causing them to be known as "Ghosts", but it's a bit hard to follow where things are going right now, like seeing snippets of the story. 

There's certainly some delight to be had in seeing these characters interact and adapt to life on Earth. I particularly like details like Zidane turning off his cloaking to let people see his face, because he's so self-absorbed in having fans. Firion texting Cloud to come play him in darts because Balthier started flirting with women and made everything awkward was also a highlight.. 

If the game can lean more into these slice-of-life moments, I think there's a lot of potential here, but I have almost zero understanding or attachment to what's "supposed" to be happening. I also don't love the story itself being attached to a Season Pass system, inherently adding a sense of "grindiness" to the entire thing. 

This is only compounded by my fear that Dissidia Duellum may not fully get the chance it needs to turn into something special, given Square's track record of shutting down mobile games these days. It's hard not to look at the flaws that are already here and wonder what could happen to this game if it doesn't attract enough players. 

And that's a shame, because I think a lot of the core ideas are good. The boss rush battling is fun, the art style is honestly gorgeous, and I'm even fully onboard with the idea of bringing all these characters into the real world and seeing the hijinks that play out. But at the end of the day, all those mobile and gacha elements still feel like they're there to excruciatingly draw out the experience, and sap your money and time. 

I'd love to not be cynical about Dissidia Duellum, but I equally don't think it's wrong to feel burned by games like Brave Exvius, Dissidia: Opera Omnia, and NieR: Reincarnation, being shut down. So while I like a lot of the elements of Dissidia Duellum, I haven't seen enough to fully commit my time and money. I need to see if this game is doing something more interesting with its storytelling, consistently updating, and really leaning into those dynamic character differences in gameplay. 

I'm willing to give it a shot, for now, but Square Enix is really going to need to come out of the gate swinging with a robust roadmap of post-launch content and a commitment to keeping it alive. At the end of the day, I'd love to see Duellum succeed, because Dissidia is too good an idea to be lost to time, a fate that I'm far too familiar with when it comes to Square Enix's free-to-play releases. Until then, Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy a bizarre game that has me along for the ride.