Dissidia 012 : Duodecim Final Fantasy

Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy for PSP is Square Enix's 2011 crossover fighting game and a direct follow-up to Dissidia Final Fantasy. Pronounced “Duodecim,” the title places heroes and villains drawn from across the Final Fantasy series in a conflict between the gods Cosmos and Chaos. Its new central campaign looks back to the twelfth cycle of that war, then also includes a revised presentation of the original game's thirteenth-cycle story, making the PSP release both a prequel and an expanded companion to its predecessor.

Matches are fast, one-on-one battles in large three-dimensional arenas. Rather than simply reducing an opponent's life bar with every strike, players use Bravery attacks to take Bravery from the rival and build their own attacking power. HP attacks spend that advantage to inflict actual HP damage, so a successful fight depends on choosing when to pressure, when to protect accumulated Bravery, and when to commit to a damaging blow. Characters can run across floors and walls, jump through open spaces, and use their individual move sets to pursue or escape an opponent around the stage.

Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy expands the first game's combat with an Assist system. Filling the Assist Gauge lets a player call a selected supporting character into battle for an offensive interruption or defensive rescue. This sits alongside the returning EX system: collecting EX Force and EX Cores builds a gauge that can place a character in EX Mode and open the way to an EX Burst. The game turns the relationship between these resources into a tactical contest, with options such as breaking an opponent's assist or interrupting EX Mode, rather than treating every encounter as a straightforward exchange of attacks.

The roster combines the returning cast with new representatives from Final Fantasy IV, V, VII, VIII, X, XI, XII, and XIII, among others. Lightning, Vaan, Laguna Loire, Yuna, Kain Highwind, and Tifa Lockhart are among the major additions, while the full selection brings together characters who originally belonged to very different role-playing worlds. Their encounters are framed by the twelfth war, in which Cosmos's warriors search for crystals while confronting the threat posed by the artificial Manikins. Familiar Final Fantasy settings, music, costumes, summons, and terminology give the crossover its identity without requiring every fighter to play alike.

For its single-player mode, Dissidia 012 shifts its story progression onto a world map. Players move parties across the map, visit marked locations, speak with characters, prepare equipment, and enter arena battles when they meet enemies. Some story sections assign a party, while others allow the player to choose its members. This structure gives the PSP game an RPG-style framework around the arena fighting, and the original Dissidia campaign was adapted to use the newer map-based approach as well.

Square Enix released Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy first in Japan in March 2011, followed by North American and European PSP releases later that month. It was designed specifically for Sony's handheld, with single-player content and multiplayer battles part of the package. As a Final Fantasy anniversary-era crossover, it connects characters and stories spanning many numbered entries while refining the original Dissidia's blend of action, character growth, and tactical arena combat.