Dissidia Final Fantasy NT aims to once more bring back fan favorite heroes and villains to a new duel of epic proportions. Those who love the Final Fantasy series will be in awe seeing their favorite warriors battle it out on familiar battlefields. With tons of things to unlock, online multiplayer where friends and other players can choose their favorite warriors to control and a lengthy story mode to enjoy Dissidia Final Fantasy NT offers a real treat to fans of the franchise. Are you ready for a new battle? Then enter Dissidia Final Fantasy NT to pit various fighters together and see who is the strongest.

Similar to its 2011 predecessor, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT once more pits Final Fantasy characters like Noctis, Cloud, Tidus—and some spin-offs characters like Ace and Ramza—in a 3D fighting arena. Players must attack either each other or cores to win matches depending on the game mode chosen. Use summons from the Final Fantasy franchise to aid you in combat and unleash destruction on the battlefield. As you play Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, you’ll unlock various goodies such as new outfits to customize your heroes/villains in and unlock Memoria that allows you to enjoy the lengthy story mode. Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is aimed at those who love the Final Fantasy world and wish to fight as their favorite characters from this legendary franchise.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT takes place several years after Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy. Two new deities—one being Materia the goddess of protection and the other being Spiritus god of destruction—have come to obtain power in dimension B leading to them needing vanguards to fight for them. Thus, heroes and villains from various worlds have been summoned one more to this familiar world to fight one another. If they wish to return home, they must abide by the rules and dual foes to honor their respected gods. The time for a new war begins in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT.

In 2009, Dissidia Final Fantasy released on the PSP—if anyone remembers that amazing but underrated handheld—and wowed fans by allowing them to control fan favorite characters in combat. Players could see who would win in a fight against each other Cloud from Final Fantasy VII or Squall from Final Fantasy VIII just a name a few of the legendary matches. A sequel—titled Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy—released a few years later in 2011 but then the Dissidia series went dark from the gaming world. Skip to 2018 and developer Team Ninja alongside Square Enix released Dissidia Final Fantasy NT to bring this niche fighter back onto the PS4. Does Dissidia Final Fantasy NT bring back the love—and semi hate—of the Dissidia games before? Why don’t we here at Honey’s Anime HQ find out in our review of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT for the PS4?

First, we’ll assume that many of you might not have played the original Dissidia titles from a decade ago. In Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, the main concept is similar to the past titles: take control of three-man teams and battle against other teams to emerge victorious. There are two main ways to win a battle in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. Either players do Core Matches where teams try to eliminate the opposing enemy’s core or Regular Battles where each team has three lives and the first to extinguish the enemy’s lives comes out the winners. These mechanics haven’t changed from the previous Dissidia titles but Dissidia Final Fantasy NT does things slightly different with the Story Mode and the offline mechanics.

The Story Mode for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT can’t be played all in one shot like the other Dissidia games. Now, players must gain Memoria to watch or play parts of the Story Mode. This can be a double-edged sword for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT as it allows players to enjoy the online and offline combat but equally, these Memoria randomly unlock—or at least feel random—before you can enjoy the story of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. Honestly, we here at Honey’s Anime would have preferred the Story Mode to be fully unlocked from the gate but we can understand why Team Ninja wanted players to take a break from the story—which can be a bit confusing at times—to enjoy the fighting portions of the game. The Story Mode does have fighting though but its with set teams.

Another similar idea with Dissidia Final Fantasy NT returning from the previous titles is that once more, players in offline modes control 3-man teams. Players can freely switch combatants before battle which will come in handy as you will need to strategize which team combinations work best. Will you control the slow Cloud while you have Ace and the mage Terra rely on magic for a solid singular offense with a magical defense? The choice is yours ultimately in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. However, what is also unfortunately similar to Dissidia 1 and 2, is that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT still has an awkward fighting system that feels stiff at times and other times bareboned. Most heroes fight exactly the same with the only major difference being how they actually do attacks. A better way for us to explain it is that Tidus and Cloud fight very differently—Cloud is slower but hits harder while Tidus is fast and combo focused—but they still use the same button to initiate these combos and don’t ultimately control much differently. It just means that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT doesn’t impress with amazing combo like in most fighting games but it at least works in execution.

One element we really do enjoy about Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is easily the impressive graphics and wide arrangement of songs from the Final Fantasy franchise. You can tell Team Ninja used some idea from their Dead or Alive franchise with characters in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT getting dirty while fighting and having very strong details in the armor, clothes and even hair. The backgrounds are also incredible with some having dynamic shifts that change depending on the fight, for example one field of ice turns into a beautiful green field with flowers that bloom in a stunning fashion—All this while you get to listen to music rearranged from classic songs that fans know all too well!

Now we’ve said mostly positive things about Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, but there is one major issue we saved for last that we need to address. The first major issue with Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is the terrible lag online. We have fought numerous battles online and often some battles become slow and clunky fights causing people to time out or even to quit because a battle becomes unplayable. We pray that Square Enix and Team Ninja do some updates to fix the online latency but for now Dissidia Final Fantasy NT sometimes plays fine online but often doesn’t. Expect to enjoy the single player—which has multiple modes to enjoy thankfully and also gives rewards too—as the online mode at the moment is pretty meh to say the least.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT isn’t a perfect fighting game and it has a slew of problems with its design. However, for people who consider themselves true die-hard fans of the Final Fantasy franchise, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT does exactly what it’s meant to accomplish. Pit the favorite heroes and villains against each other so people can rejoice as swords and magic clash. The beautiful character models, dynamic backgrounds and the huge roster of characters as well as music from the Final Fantasy games also helps Dissidia Final Fantasy NT appeal to those who love the franchise or the original Dissidia titles. If you can look past the odd design choices and the questionable online servers, we can honestly say Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a solid title with a lot of heart. Just don’t expect a great fighting game out of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT as it still lacks that in many ways.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a truly fun title in many ways just hampered by a weird story mode system and horrible online servers. There’s also the fact that the fighting game mechanics of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT leave much to be desired. However, with wonderful animation, graphics and a truly epic score of rearranged classics and new Final Fantasy songs, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT does do some things right. Your love for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT will be solely based on how much you love Final Fantasy and for us here at Honey’s Anime that’s enough to recommend it to fans. What do you guys and girls think about Dissidia Final Fantasy NT? Have you played it yet or are you going to wait for a possible price drop? Comment your thoughts down below and for all your gaming article needs be sure to keep coming back to our hive here at Honey’s Anime.