Video Game / Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015)

"The dawn of a new era. One where battle reigns supreme..."

Dissidia Final Fantasy, later known as Dissidia Final Fantasy NT for the console release, is an entry in the wall-jumpingly popular Final Fantasy series. It is a pseudo reboot-sequel to Dissidia Final Fantasy, perhaps sharing the same name, but being distinctly different. Like the original, Dissidia is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover Mascot Fighting Game based on the Final Fantasy series, with characters from the Final Fantasy series appearing to battle each other across different worlds. It is developed by Team Ninja, of the famed Dead or Alive franchise.

Gameplay is based on the original Dissidia; all characters have Bravery points and can perform Bravery attacks to decrease the opponent's Bravery while raising their own. Landing an HP attack deals HP damage equal to the user's current Bravery, but saps their Bravery to 0 at which point it recovers back to its base value. The major draw of the game is 3-on-3 gameplay, allowing for six characters to fight together as teams. Each team shares a number of lives, and defeated characters cost the team a life until one team suffers enough KOs to lose the match. The other new mechanic is a new Summon system, where Eidolons are now Guest Star Party Members that fight alongside you for a time. Other changes include the omission of EX Bursts and EX Mode (the new "EX Skill" mechanic variably acts as either of them, being a powerful attack or a temporary power boost depending on the character), no Assist Characters, characters only have one HP attack each (some HP attacks are now Bravery attacks), and numerous other tweaks to characters, ranging from minor to massive.

The cast is comprised largely of returning characters as well as a handful of newcomers. The developers had expressed the desire for the final product to have 50 available characters, which would have eventually included all characters previously in 012, but only 38 were released, with Laguna, Prishe, and Gilgamesh still absent from the returning roster.

Note: Names in italics denote newcomers to the Dissidia series, names in bold denote characters which were added as DLC after release

• Champions of Materia: Warrior of Light, Firion, Onion Knight, Cecil Harvey, Kain Highwind, Bartz Klauser, Terra Branford, Locke Cole, Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart, Squall Leonhart, Rinoa Heartilly, Zidane Tribal, Tidus, Yuna, Shantotto, Vaan, Lightning, Y'shtola, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Ramza Beoulve, Ace
• Champions of Spiritus: Garland, The Emperor, Cloud of Darkness, Golbez, Exdeath, Kefka Palazzo, Sephiroth, Ultimecia, Kuja, Jecht, Kam'lanaut, Vayne Carudas Solidor, Gabranth, Snow Villiers, Zenos yae Galvus, Ardyn Izunia

At the time of release the game was only for Japanese arcades, but subject to numerous content and balance updates.

An Updated Re-release for the PlayStation 4, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT, has been released on January 11, 2018 in Japan, and January 30 overseas. Besides the customary content updates and balance tweaks, this version also incorporates a story mode, "Battle of the Gods", set in a cycle of conflict following that from the original Dissidia, now governed by Materia and Spiritus, who like Cosmos and Chaos before them, respectively summon heroes and villains across various Final Fantasy games. On February 2019, it was announced that Dissidia Final Fantasy NT Free Edition will be released on PlayStation 4 and Steam, giving players a rotating selection of free characters as well as the opportunity to buy characters to play permanently. On February 18th 2020, it was announced that support for the game would be discontinued in March and that there were no plans for a sequel.

In addition, there is a spin-off game, Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia, for mobile phones that is based on this iteration of the series.

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This video game contains examples of:

• Actionized Sequel: The RPG elements from Dissidia were removed, including leveling, experience points, equipment, and customizable abilities, to focus on making it more of a pure fighting game^* In the console release of NT, most of the above returns for non-RPG reasons; levels dictate how many HP Attacks/battle quotes a character has access to, and equipment is limited to weapon/outfit changes and is purely aesthetic. Characters are generally much more mobile than before, able to attack while moving and rapidly run around the arena. The game also runs on PS4 hardware instead of PSP, allowing for attacks to be bigger and flashier than ever.
• Adaptational Wimp: Subverted by the manikins. 012 established that manikins possess the power to kill off champions for real, but NT's story mode describes manikins as "more nuisance than threat". As the manikins only ever actually threatened proper kills in massive numbers, it can be presumed that the champions' casual disregard for the threats on their lives is a matter of there being so few of them.
• A.I. Breaker: In story mode, as well as on higher difficulties of the other offline modes, the computer will sometimes respond to the player getting close to a kill via high bravery by having all enemies switch focus to the player and start spamming them with attacks to lower their bravery and keep them from attacking. If this keeps happening, simply pick Shiva as your summon and just spam your target with HP attacks and the A.I. won't respond to you as if you're a bigger threat.
• All Your Powers Combined: Bartz's fighting style now has him combining the special abilities of V's different Jobs, previously seen only with his Spellblade-Dual Wield-Rapid Fire EX Burst in the original games.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • During summon battles conditions are changed so you have to be the one to die in order to lose a point for your side. This is due to summons being solo only and having wide, hard hitting attacks that will take out the A.I. a number of times and you still only have 3 points. This makes it so the player won't lose due to the A.I. jumping into a HP attack for the 11th time.
  • Your allies in battle will gain experience and level up even though you weren't directly controlling them, severely cutting down on the time needed to grind everyone to Level 10 to unlock all their HP attacks. You're also allowed to set DLC characters you haven't unlocked yet as AI allies, so they don't miss out on the experience either and you can indirectly get a sense for how they play.
• The Artifact: In a cutscene in the story mode, Y'shtola uses her Vivifying Lance attack to cancel out Kefka's Forsaken. With her later rework, Y'shtola no longer has Vivifying Lance anywhere in her moveset. Despite this, the cutscene wasn't changed after her rework.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • In Core Battles, the AI characters tend to not pay attention to you as long as you're not within their Core area and aren't too close to the AI characters themselves. This means that Marksmen with ranged attacks can often stand outside the Core area and attack it continuously while all three AI opponents focus on their teammates. If they come back to defend their core, it will almost surely be by accident, and they'll often continue to leave it undefended even when its HP is critical. This is so well-known that it's actually the advised way to quickly grind up your rank, since battles can be completed in under a minute if done properly, even against the highest-difficulty opponents.
  • Unfortunately, the player's AI allies often suffer from the same stupidity and will leave their core entirely undefended; there's no way to give commands to them, they'll pretty much do whatever they feel like doing. Even at Crystal A, the highest rank possible for offline play, allies will also often just stand around doing nothing.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: A common strategy of the computer as well as lower rank players. It's often called "tunneling" or "tunnel vision" by other players, and an important of getting better is learning to switch targets or hold off. Players will sometimes have builds to try and exploit it, such as a Vaan spamming White Whorl and sitting back expecting to be attacked relentlessly.
• Battle in the Rain: Certain stages such as the Orbonne Monastery will feature rain falling when the battle progresses long enough.
• Boring Yet Practical: Some of the first EX Skills you'll acquire are Mighty Strikes and Rend Shield, which grant allies in range an attack buff and enemies in range a defense debuff, respectively. Nothing flashy, but they can be a terrific boost to the party's damage output, especially if both are in effect.
• Boss Battle: The summoned beasts of this game now manifest in full, and all seven of them are fought at some point in Story Mode.
  • Boss Rush: Once all of the summons have been fought in Story Mode, a Summon Trial is unlocked in Gauntlet Mode that has you fighting them all in succession.
• Canon Welding: Characters comment on how they had forgotten everything about the cycles of war previously, but now that they've been summoned again, they remember everything. This explains why none of them would have mentioned the events of the Dissidia series in other titles, if one presumes Dissidia to be canon. Additionally, by the end of the game, they've departed home again but left behind their memories of World B to be infused into Manikins, so Materia and Spiritus can keep the war going and keep their world alive with the energy it generates. This allows any future Dissidia titles to avoid having to worry about continuity altogether, since it isn't really the canon cast anymore, while also explaining why in future appearances the characters will probably not mention the events of the Dissidia series.
• Character Rerailment: Invoked and Justified; unlike the original Dissidia and its prequel, the summoned warriors here are not stripped of their memories, so they act much more like they did in their original titles. The more humorous tone of the game as compared to the prequels is also closer to the tone of the games most of the characters originated from, meaning a lot of characters who got over-serious treatments at first are more like themselves here.
  • Firion was presented a fairly romantic character in the first games, whose ideal was "to see wild roses bloom," with flowers becoming the main theme of his character. NT changes his designation from "Liegeman" to "Idealist" and changes his personality to be more of a committed revolutionary with strong reasons for following his cause. Also, his nigh-memetic awkwardness around women has been omitted, although that might more be a case of the only female he really speaks to being the Tarutaru Black Mage Shantotto.
  • Cecil's quotes are now written in the cod-Medieval tone of Final Fantasy IV DS's localisation, rather than the more neutral language from the PSP version.
  • Bartz's Mime gimmick, while well-received, somewhat eclipsed his actual personality by forcing him to talk and fight the same way as other FF characters, at least in battles; in NT, his moveset has been redesigned to reference all of V's silliest and most broken game mechanics, making him feel more like a representative of his game while maintaining his goofiness.
  • Terra, an insecure but genuinely heroic character in her original game, underwent heavy Chickification in the first Dissidia, getting rescued by all the boys, believing herself too weak to fight, and having battle lines that indicated she was lashing out only in desperate self-defence. In NT she enters battles confidently declaring the need for unity and her intention to fight to protect people, much closer to her portrayal in VI's endgame.
  • Cloud's personality in the first Dissidia was defined by his Deus Angst Machina aspects so that he could be depressed the whole time, a characterisation that fans were getting bored of. In NT, he has a Grin of Audacity, more lighthearted and humorous motion acting similar to the Character Tics of his PSX map sprite, and cool, cocky speech patterns right out of the dialogue boxes of the original game, while maintaining a thoughtful attitude in some of his quotes. While his role in the storyline still has him as cool and businesslike, his friendship with Bartz is secure and they spend their storyline joking back and forth. His derailing Character Focus which led to him being an irritant in his other crossover appearances is gone, with him being significantly more minor in the overall storyline here than he was in the original - partnering Cloud, the unrivaled fan favorite, up with the generally unpopular and charismatic Bartz could have been a recipe for trampling all over him, but instead they're played as equally important.
  • Squall is played less as an edgy, aloof hero, and used more as comic relief, getting so lost in his own head that he doesn't realise Y'shtola is behind him and visibly jumping when he does. This is much more like the tone of his original game, where, although he was a serious character, most of his interactions were drily funny social comedy. Much like Bartz, his power set has been adjusted to make gentle fun of VIII's more controversial game mechanics, as well, allowing him to Draw magic from enemies.
  • Zidane's flirtiness is less lascivious and more respectful, with his flirting with Terra being based on genuine attempts to appeal to her as a person, rather than just seeing her as a pretty girl.
  • Vaan remains blithe and adventurous, but is quite a step down from the full Idiot Hero he was in Dissidia 012 and gets a few moments of insight. Likewise, while he again ends up traveling with Onion Knight, he doesn't try to be a Big Brother Mentor and treats him as an equal companion (though Onion Knight obviously remembers their last interactions and grumbles about them).
  • Garland is an odd case in that his personality was mostly created for Dissidia since he had no personality in his home game. However in 012, his character largely became obsessed with fate and the whole cycle, something that was mentioned a few times in the first game, but was overplayed more in the second game. NT makes him more along the lines of his original portrayal as the loyal follower of his factions leader, while making him more honorous as his knight history would have likely implied.
  • Exdeath's obsession with the Void and nothingness in previous Dissidia titles may have been good for a meme or two, but were more reminiscent of Neo-Exdeath than the original warlock. NT restores Exdeath to his normal hammy, supervillain self, with much of his dialogue now consisting of the melodramatic, scene-chewing death threats he was known for in FFV (his "viscera" catchphrase is even present as his Shiva summon quote). While Exdeath still mentions the Void, it's no more than he did after obtaining it in FFV. And now that he's more active in the game's story, he has more opportunity to properly ham it up and expose viscera to the light of day than he did in previous Dissidia titles, where his role in the story was comparatively passive.
  • In the original Dissidia Tidus was portrayed as somewhat of a loud and overly energetic character compared to his allies, and came across as being somewhat immature compared to his character arc from his home game. His relationship with Jecht was also based on him hating him and wanting to beat him, which when combined with his personality, makes him seem to be from very early in his home game. 012 didn't do much with him so he was largely the same, but because he was a Warrior of Chaos in the 012 cycle, his personality was a lot more antagonistic, which Tidus is rarely like in his home game. In NT Tidus is more mature and calm then he was before, reflecting his character development across his home game, and his relationship with Jecht is much better, with him refusing to fight him because the two had already made amends in their home games.
• Clothing Damage: As characters take damage, their clothing becomes dirty and damaged to show the toll the fight has taken on them. It's also surprisingly diverse - characters wearing fabric like Y'shtola and Ramza have small tears that don't look like they're there depending on how the cloth flows, whereas armoured characters like the Warrior and Cecil receive more solidly visible cracks in their plate and removed protrusions.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Significantly downplayed compared to the previous games; in combat, no CPU character can do anything the player can't. That being said, the enemy teams in Gauntlet Mode are allowed multiple of one character on one team, which the player is prohibited from, and on higher difficulties they have higher HP than the player's party.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the story mode, characters who have multiple outfits from their home games appear in their latest canonical outfit (as of the original release of NT). Cloud is dressed in his Cloudy Wolf attire, Lightning wears her Equilibrium garb, and Y'shtola is blind-eyed in her Scion Healer's Robe. However, four characters subvert this.
    • Kain and Ramza wear their Aloof Dragoon and House Beoulve Thirdborn outfits, respectively, rather than Kain's Sanctifying Dragoon from The After Years and Ramza's Virtuous Mercenary from Chapter 2 on in Tactics. Although they do not appear in story mode proper until later updates, they do have brief appearances during the credits, and are selectable for the post-game rematches with the summons and Shinryu.
    • Golbez wears his Bad Blood armour from IV, with his Man in Black outfit from The After Years not appearing in NT. However, as he was a villain while wearing the armour and shows up in the villains' side in this game, this is more understandable.
    • Noctis wears his Prince's Fatigues, his initial outfit from XV, rather than the Kingly Raiment he wore for the endgame. However, his lack of facial hair and introduction scene implying he was in the Regalia indicate that, unlike the rest of the cast, he arrived in World B from early on in his journey.
  • In the original Dissidia and 012, anyone paying attention to the Reports and the lore they provide will pick up on the fact that Shinryu is the Greater-Scope Villain, and Chaos was an Unwitting Pawn. The developers remember this, because now with Chaos out of the picture, Shinryu ascends to proper Big Bad status.
  • It was a plot point in the epilogue of Dissidia 012 that World B will slide into ruin without the cycles of war to sustain it. It's a plot point here that Materia wants to stop that from happening. Eventually, she and Spiritus begin using the energy expended by their warriors in battle to do so.
  • Onion Knight apparently remembers Vaan designated himself his "big brother protector" in Dissidia 012. He still isn't impressed by the idea.
    • Onion Knight and Vaan both end up adventuring with Y'shtola. Much like with Terra before, they both volunteer to travel with her and protect her. Y'shtola welcomes their company, but being that she's Y'shtola, not Terra, she pretty much immediately takes the initiative to explore, confusing the two boys who thought they would be guiding her.
  • Just like before, Shantotto isn't much interested in the "war of the gods" thing and immediately strikes off on her own to find a way home.
  • While she was in the first two games as a fighter, in terms of story the warriors of Cosmos that fought in the 12th and 13th cycles never met Shantotto, because she escaped the cycles before any of them were summoned and the one time they could have met her, Confessions of the Creator, was a bonus storyline and it's unknown which warriors canonically participated in it. Thus the other heroes have no idea who she is when they meet her.
  • Terra remembers that Kuja was the one who freed her from Kefka's control in the 12th cycle, and she thanks him for it when they meet here.
  • Kefka once again crosses Onion Knight and Vaan; while Terra isn't part of the equation now, it's not like they need a reason to want to beat the snot out of Kefka.
  • Between the two lone wolf mercenaries, Cloud comes off at being a better loner than Squall. The former tells everyone in both this and the first game that he needs to go off alone and no one bats an eye; the latter on the other hand gets a companion no matter how hard he tries, whether it be Bartz and Zidane in the first game, or Y'shtola and then Terra, Zidane and Lightning in this game.
  • In 012, Sephiroth (during two of the "Official Quests"), as well as Onion Knight and Zidane (during an optional cutscene unlocked in the reports) feared that they might be manikins just imitating champions of their home worlds, although Sephiroth's experiment proved that most of them were genuine articles. After defeating Shinryu, the champions are sent to their homeworlds, but imitations of each are left behind to continue the gods' fight.
  • During their second cutscene together, Cecil and Noctis talk about their worries in their homelands. When Warrior of Light verbally realizes that they "all have a place to call home", Cecil is shocked to hear this. In 012, we learned that Warrior of Light actually originated from the Dissidia world and not from the world of the first Final Fantasy game.
  • At the start of this game's intro cutscene, Lightning dives from the air to strike at Garland, similar to their clash at the end of intro in 012, but taken from a different point of view instead.
• Dash Attack: All characters have attack(s) that require players to press dash button before pressing bravery attack command. While some of applies this trope literally, the rest of them subverts it by using mid-to-long-range projectiles or area attacks. Ramza manages to both plays this straight via his normal mode and subverts it via shout mode.
• Death from Above: Some characters have attacks that either drop energy or objects from above their targets (Area Meteor used by Terra and Onion Knight, Rinoa's Apocalypse and line attack version of her meteor, Ultimecia's line version of Apocalypse, Kuja and Ramza's Ultima ^note both differ in attack type, and so on) or drop themselves into the enemy (Kain's Jump Ex-Skill, Bartz's Dragoon bravery attack, Noctis's Shooting Star and Heavy Hand, Garland's Earthquake, and so on).
• Deconstructor Fleet: Basically deconstructs the story of the original Dissidia, and then pulls a Decon-Recon Switch.
  • In the original game, the Warriors of Cosmos fought for her without question when they were summoned. This was in large part because Cosmos was straightforward about their objective, defeat Chaos and the threat to the world will be over, thus they can go home. The warriors she summoned also had very few memories of home, and while they weren't mind-wiped to the point of Blank Slates, it meant they didn't have much else to concern themselves with except going about their duty, and the realization they regained their memories as they fought was further incentive for them to fight. When Materia summons champions in this game, she intends for them to fight each other to generate energy to sustain the world, then is surprised when Spiritus contacts her and didn't seem aware he existed. Thus the summoned become suspicious that there's more going on than they know because Materia's story is flimsy and she doesn't know as much as a goddess ruling the world ought to. Additionally, their memories haven't been affected this time, so their individual personalities are more prominent and they remember that the cycles of war were supposed to be over, fueling their skepticism. The result is that most of the summoned don't trust what Materia tells them at face value and go off to look for answers on their own.
  • While there were definite factions among them and the same few characters kept showing up together, mostly the heroes and villains got along fine with each other in the original game. Once again, this was likely a consequence of their memories being erased. Here, their conflicting personalities result in the heroes splitting up due to being unable to agree on objectives and methods, while some of the villains openly defect and others clearly don't like each other, and on a whole many villains never even interact because they have no interest in working together.
    • The result of both of these points is that the entire concept of a war between the gods is turned on its heads — the heroes and villains fight each other mostly incidentally because the villains are antagonistic towards them and the heroes are defending themselves. Plus, neither side in very keen on fighting each other just because a god they've never heard of summoned them to this unknown world and told them to do so, and the villains are just as eager to end the cycles and return home as the heroes are. When they learned the reason they were summoned again is because the world is in danger of being consumed by Shinryu, the two sides agree to a temporary truce and join forces to destroy Shinryu together.
  • When all is said and done, the summoned warriors return home. However, Materia and Spiritus still need energy to restore the world, and the summoned left behind their memories to be placed into Manikins to grant the gods new warriors to fight on their behalf, allowing the cycles to continue for as long as necessary until the world is saved.
• Demoted to Extra: Like in the previous two Dissidia's, the manikin's make a reappearance. However, they do not have the level of importance they had in Dissidia 012. They only appear in one cutscene in the story mode, with one about to attack Noctis before he is saved by Lightning, and are only fought in battles in between cutscenes and in the offline mode.
• Designated Girl Fight: In the opening cutscene pulled straight out of the final clash to lure out Shinryu, Terra, Y'shtola, and Shantotto are facing off against Ultimecia and the Cloud of Darkness. Lightning, however, goes straight for Garland, then ends up dueling with Sephiroth.
• Designated Villain: Several in-universe examples.
  • Kuja and Jecht are summoned by Spiritus with the rest of the villains, they, as well as Zidane and Tidus, have their memories intact, so they've made peace with each other (though Kuja and Zidane still aren't the best of friends) and aren't interested in fighting. Kuja and Jecht even help the heroes fight off the villains at points.
  • Even moreso with Snow, a newcomer to the cycles of war who was never a villain in his home game. He's part of Spiritus' crew, clearly shocked by what's going on, and hasn't totally recovered from his Despair Event Horizon in Lightning Returns, but the worst he does is not join in when Lightning and Squall face Odin.
  • Also Spiritus himself; the heroes realize the only reason they have for fighting him is because Materia told them to, but he actually isn't evil at all.
• Developer's Foresight: Firion's EX Skill Blood Weapon causes his Bravery attacks to deal a small amount of HP damage to the opponent and heals him. In boss fights, in the unlikely event that he's able to do enough HP damage to push them to a phase transition or KO them, it won't happen; the boss will be left with a Last Chance Hit Point, you'll have to stagger them properly to actually continue the fight.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Knight Bartz against higher skill opponents. Knight is an HP attack Bartz can take that will counter any attack with an HP attack while invincible, blocking only bravery attacks while unmastered and stopping HP attacks as well when mastered. Higher level opponents will understand and try an actively avoid him if possible, but he can still mess with them and block attacks not targeted at him.
• Early Game Hell: When you begin a new play file, everyone has only their initial HP attack and a handful of basic EX Skills, and all characters are at rank Bronze so your AI allies will be totally incompetent. As you begin to eke out wins, you'll rank up characters and they'll learn new HP attacks and EX Skills, giving you much more customization to form a team with and allowing allies to pull their weight in fights.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The normal fights you have, both in story mode and Gauntlet Mode, are perfectly manageable with skills and proper party composition. The bosses, as described under SNK Boss further below, are brutally annoying and difficult and just plain cheat sometimes.
• Easy Level Trick: Against summons, in one of the modes that gives you full roster selection, Emperor's dash skill drops multiple damaging mines meant to deter enemies normally but if you get close to a summon, who won't get Blown Across the Room like fighters, all of them will go off dealing about 1000 bravery damage. This lets you rack up bravery and break them a lot faster than others. Although it works better on some summons over others it can be used on all of them with proper timing.
• Enemy Mine: While they start off enemies, the heroes and villains eventually find themselves allied against a larger threat.
• Excuse Plot: This is actually an Invoked Trope. The story mode does continue the story of the PSP games, but mostly exists only to explain how and why World B is ruled by two new gods who have begun a new cycle of war. In-universe, Materia and Spiritus have summoned the warriors to fight and generate energy to sustain the world's existence before it falls into ruin, but the warriors aren't satisfied with this explanation and pick up on the fact that Materia seems a bit ignorant as the state of the world she's supposed to be ruling. For this reason they each split up and go their separate way to investigate things, and some have no interest in fighting at all and just want to go home. When they learn the reason World B is sliding into ruin is because Shinryu and its planesgorgers are devouring it, they team up to destroy Shinryu and the threat is removed, allowing them to go home right away. At this time they leave behind crystals with their memories of World B for Materia and Spiritus to infuse into Manikins to keep up the fighting and generating energy so World B can be rebuilt.
• Fake Difficulty: In the Hard Mode of the boss gauntlet, the boss will always target you unless you're incapacitated, and your two AI allies have their max Bravery capped at 2000. The targeting focus means you're going to be under additional pressure to avoid getting KO'd while building up Bravery, but the cap to your allies also causes fights to drag out longer since they can't deal as much HP damage as you can and the boss takes longer to kill.
• Fake Longevity: The main story mode is pretty short and simple, but the trick is unlocking it. Unlocking a story scene to view requires Memoria, which is acquired by fighting in other game modes. With a total of 30 Memoria required for the entire story mode and an acquisition rate of one per Player level, the game can take upwards of a hundred fights before the story mode is done, and if that 30 Memoria is not saved up and used all at once, the story mode feels far longer than it truly is due to the entirely unrelated fights endured to unlock it.
• Fanservice: Of the non-sexual variety. Kain, Ramza, and Ace are all in the base game despite having no story role.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Three of the character archetypes are Vanguard, Marksman, and Assassin, complete with Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Vanguards have high power and defenses but lack speed and mobility, Marksmen have powerful long-ranged attacks but their speed and/or defense tends to be lacking, and Assassins are quick with decent speed but poor defenses. Then there's the Specialist class, which is code for Mechanically Unusual Fighter.
• Friendly Enemy: Due to a combination of events from the previous Dissidia games and their home games, Kuja and Jecht are on more amicable terms with certain members of the other side, despite still being on opposing sides. Tidus and Jecht outright refuse to fight each other, having last interacted with each other on a peaceful note.
• Fuuma Shuriken: One of the Onion Knight's new attacks has him draw a shuriken bigger than most of the playable cast and hurl it at whoever is unfortunate enough to have his attention.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • It was a major plot point in the PSP games that the portal used to summon the Manikins was closed at the end of the 12th cycle, and the 13th cycle saw Cosmos' warriors destroy a lot of what remained. As a result there only seem to be a handful of Manikins left, which explains why the characters can travel across World B more freely and why there are so few battles with them in the storyline.
  • When Vaan, the Onion Knight, and Y'shtola confront Kefka in World B's version of Rabanastre, Kefka's insensitive destruction moves Y'shtola enough to attack him. Before he launches his Forsaken move, she counters with her Vivifying Lance technique, cancelling the two moves out. The exchange of those two HP attacks can actually be done in any given battle (provided two opposing players choose Y'shtola and Kefka respectively), and will indeed cancel out as most HP attack collisions do.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: During the storymode, when facing summons, you can only play at the units from that route of the story. However, during the storymode following Squall, Terra, Lightning, and Zidane, you fight Ramuh and then Odin with all four available, even though they have split up into groups of Terra & Zidane and Lightning & Squall and each of them encounters one of the summons on their own.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Someone more powerful than Materia or Spiritus rears its head, bringing both their warriors together to defeat. It's Shinryu, still seeking to spur on the cycles of war to keep absorbing power from the summoned warriors.
• Guide Dang It!: Originally played straight in the console version. While the basics of combat and certain higher strategies are outlined in the game's tutorial, character-specific matters like Lightning's Paradigm Shift, Noctis' Armiger, and Ace's Cut Cards get little more than a poetically-phrased mention on the single-character selection screen (only seen in the tutorial and online modes), leaving a player to figure out on the fly how they work or even how to use them. Averted after an update, which included character detail listings viewable during the party-confirmation screen or from the main menu.
• Happy Ending Override: The original Dissidia ended with Chaos and his forces defeated and the heroes departed back to their worlds with Crystals in hand. But now they've been summoned again for a new war.
• How We Got Here: The intro cutscene seems like the other Dissidia intros, another epic clash between the heroes and villains to get players hyped up for the game. As we learn in the game proper, this happens near the end of the story and it was an Enemy Mine situation by both sides to create enough battle energy to lure out Shinryu to be defeated and finally end the cycles of war.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The strengths of characters are named after recurring types/sets of equipment in the series, with the highest Harder Than Hard levels being more reflective of how fighting them will be. The scale goes: Bronze > Silver > Gold > Platinum > Mythril > Diamond > Adamant > Crystal. In offline battles the scale continues to Nightmare and then Chaos for AI opponents, while in online play it rises to Ultima, the highest possible level for players in ranked matches.
• Irony: When he and Terra first meet the summon, Zidane tells Ramuh that they weren't there to fight. After a lengthy discussion and a plea to help them, they have to fight Ramuh after all due to the latter wanting to test their strength.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The game spares players no spoilers for what happened in previous Dissidia games, namely that the war between Cosmos and Chaos ended with both gods being destroyed, and that the warriors have suffered a constant cycle of conflict thanks to the interdimensional dragon Shinryu.
• Lightning Bruiser: Unlike his counterpart in the earlier Dissidia installments, Exdeath can now move a lot faster than before, which appears to have been well-received by fans.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Invoked near the end of the game. Both factions stage a battle so intense, it forces Shinryu to show himself and gives the cast the opportunity to kill him.
• Lost in Translation: Sadly, a lot of Mythology Gags and Call Backs received this treatment, with the names of several attacks receiving different translations than in previous entries.
  • While not widespread, many attacks retained their names from the PSP Dissidia games, but were given different names here; For example, Firion's "Reel Axe" and "Straightarrow" are called "Boomerang Axe" and "Bullseye". However, given that these names only appear in the move list and are often recognizable as the same attacks anyway, it isn't a big concern. HP attacks, which show their name on-screen and could potentially confuse a player if the name was changed between games, universally retain their name from the PSP game if applicable.
  • Garland's gimmick is "Soul of Chaos", after his EX Burst in the PSP games, but it's translated here as "Deranged Soul". Similarly, the Cloud of Darkness' EX Skill was "Flood of Darkness", her EX Mode in the PSP games, but it's translated in this game as "Umbral Torrent". In both cases the names also lose their thematic connection to their games of origin (Soul of Chaos is the collective name for four Bonus Dungeons in the GBA and PSP ports of Final Fantasy, and the Flood of Darkness was a major story event in III.)
  • Terra's fourth HP attack is Chaos Wave, the summon attack of her father Maduin in Final Fantasy VI. The official translation is "Chaotic Current".
  • Jecht's HP attacks followed the Theme Naming of including his name in them like his Bravery attacks in the PSP games did, but the English translation does away with them in favor of more straightforward names. The exception is Jecht Beam, since it's named after one of his attacks in X.
  • Ramza gets hit particularly bad by this. His HP attacks Triple Break/Triple Rend and Shockwave, referencing the Knight's "Rend" abilities and a long-range Monk attack in Tactics, are officially translated as "Enervate" and "Earth Render"; his team-effect EX Skill Steel, after one of his unique Squire abilities, is dubbed "Galvanize".
  • In Final Fantasy XIV spells are categorized by number rather then the traditional -ra and -ga designations. Here, Y'shtola's spells were originally categorized with the traditional designations; post-refresh, the trope is averted in this particular respect.
• Magic Knight: While there's not much distinction between magical and physical attacks, there are some characters who fit this category.
  • Firion now plays like this, combining weapon and spell attacks into variable combos with a dash of Spell Blade.
  • Onion Knight is now able to freely change into his Ninja and Sage form any time he wants, changing his attacks between physical and magical, while his base Onion Knight job is the Jack of All Stats/Master of None between them. Also, all forms can still use HP attacks which doesn't really suit their playstyle. For example, Onion Knight in Ninja form can still use Meteor but it has less range than when it is used in Sage form.
  • Cecil manages to incorporate this in both The Paladin and Dark Knight, with Dark Knight having more emphasis on magic than Paladin.
  • Squall, if you choose Ultima as his HP attack.
  • Lightning's Paradigm Shift returns, and fits the bill even more than before due to the removal of Ruin magic from her Commando and Army of One being an EX Skill rather than part of her Ravager.
  • Ramza is also this. His backward aerial attack is Ultima and he has Holy as one of his HP attack.
• Magical Gesture: Any character who cast magic as bravery attacks will have different gestures for each of them.
• Make My Monster Grow: One of Shantotto's new abilities is to grow to giant size.
• Mercy Invincibility: A brief period after getting wall-rushed twice consecutively, and a longer period after taking an HP attack.
• Mirror Match: As Dissidia is a fighting game, this can happen. It is more pronounced when new character is released in the arcade, during which a battle can consist of six players with the same character.
• Mythology Gag: Enough for a separate page.
• No Kill like Overkill: The lack of level-based stats means that characters' HP is perpetually capped at 3600. Bravery still caps at 9999, which plays this trope straight in regular battles.
• Scenery Gorn: Once a team has suffered two casualties, the stages begin to change; many of the stages begin to fall into disrepair at this time. Midgar starts crumbling apart as Meteor approaches, Eden falls under siege with the tunnel you fight in getting rocked by explosions, and Pandaemonium's walls just kind of cease to exist in a storm of light. Inverted with The Promised Meadow, which changes from a desolate wasteland to a beautiful and bright field of flowers.
• Ship Tease: Terra and Zidane travel together and Zidane is his usual self, resulting in this.
  Zidane: Hey buddy, we're kinda on a date here!
• Shout-Out:
  • Noctis' manikin is dubbed the Twilight Prince.
  • The trophy for getting three A++ grades in ranked matches with the Cloud of Darkness is called Breath of the Void.
  • The trophy for getting three A++ grades in ranked matches with Noctis is called Now You See Me.
  • The trophy for getting three A++ grades in ranked matches with Golbez is called Let the Hate Flow.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: The cutscene between Shantotto and Ultimecia can only be described as this.
• SNK Boss: All of the bosses in the game: their attacks execute quickly and hit over a large area, making them very difficult to dodge and letting them hit multiple characters at a time so they can easily rack up enough Bravery to take out a character in one HP attack. They're immune to HP damage until sufficiently battered with Bravery attacks, which will stagger them and give you a short window to deal HP damage. Their HP can only be depleted halfway at first, at which point they Turn Red their previous attacks are powered up, they get new attacks, and they get their Signature Move that is particularly dangerous and difficult to avoid. They also each have individual gimmicks to distinguish them, each of them making them extra frustrating in their own way. The one mercy of bosses is that only the player's KOs are counted against them, their allies can be KO'd repeatedly without penalty (and they will).
  • Ifrit will ignite the arena on fire, dealing continuous HP damage to any fighter standing in the flames, and he can roar to blast you across the arena, like putting you out of range of hitting him and pushing you into the fire.
  • Shiva has less HP than other bosses, but at half HP she splits into two which can each attack on their own, making it difficult to tell which one is targeting you and which attack they're doing, and they can combo their attacks together to make it much more difficult to avoid them, or flat impossible.
  • Ramuh can summon crystals that will call down lightning nearby which stun, and while the crystals can be destroyed, doing so takes your attention (and the camera) off of Ramuh, who sits in the middle of the arena and is immobile.
  • Odin can block and reflect your attacks, and his attacks have ridiculous range unless you're high in the air. After he hits half HP, all of his HP attacks except Zantetsuken hit twice, making them that much harder to evade.
  • Alexander has multiple pinpoint attacks, and at half HP it raises its arms to the arena which grant it HP Regen and Bravery Regen while they're alive (you can KO them, but they respawn). Its HP attacks are also upgraded to hit all party members, making them hit over massive areas.
  • Leviathan's attacks inflict debuffs and it can create water spouts that launch characters into the air and whirlpools that draw them in and deplete their dash gauge. Two of its HP attacks also have it leave the arena for a moment before coming back, giving you no warning of which attack it's using except the name at the top of the screen when it reappears.
  • Bahamut can buff his attack and defense with Regal Arts and his Mega Flare can hit all the way across the arena, so no one is safe from it. At half HP he'll unleash light rays that rain down continuously on the arena, damaging characters and boosting his Bravery without him even doing anything. He'll also leave the arena when using Tera Flare, which is essentially a party-wide Mega Flare with three beams to avoid as they try to pin you down, and they explode over an even larger area.
  • Shinryu starts the battle by using an HP attack that has a large width, so you'll instantly lose half your HP unless you quickly dash to the side. For the rest of the fight it will use both that HP attack and another that is a pinpoint attack that hits all three characters, and at half HP it'll start randomly buffing itself by doubling its Bravery, freezing its Bravery, or inflicting Doom on the party. It also has a second form (though thankfully your KOs are reset for it) where it can buff its defenses, blast you to the far side of the arena, deplete your dash gauge, and use the Signature Moves of Ramuh, Shiva, and Ifrit, back-to-back. Also, both forms have their own Signature Move HP attack that hit almost every part of the arena and are impossible to avoid unless you know exactly where the safe spots are and can dash to them in time.
• Summon Magic:
  • Summons return in Dissidia. But unlike before, where they merely granted an effect, the full creatures appear temporarily to unleash devastating attacks.
  • Golbez's Shadow Dragon Mode can be also considered this with the dragon empowering his spells.
  • Yuna also summons Valefor with her EX Skill, who comes with several attacks of her own. To a lesser extent, several of her attacks invoke glyphs corresponding to Aeons of her home game, though none of the Aeons manifest properly.
• Super Mode: EX Mode returns, bestowing characters a temporary power boost. However, some of them were changed for specific characters.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Each character's class interacts with others in a rock-paper-scissors fashion:
  • Vanguards can use their strong defenses to withstand attacks from Assassins and counterattack.
  • Assassins can use their high movement speed and quick melee attacks to put Marksmen on the defensive.
  • Marksmen can use their long-range attacks to whittle down Vanguards.
  • Specialists don't factor into the rock-paper-scissors relationship of the other classes, having abilities that don't fit them into any category.
• Tagline: "Your fantasy. Your fight." (NT)
• Took a Level in Badass: Terra's Chickification-esque portrayal of her early-VI self in the original Dissidia was not well-received by her fans; in this game her personality is now based on how she was at the end of VI, with more confidence in herself and her abilities.
• Total Party Kill: With party-based combat comes party-killing capability. A single HP attack can take out any number of characters if it hits them all between the connection with the first and the attacker's Bravery dropping to zero. For champions, that usually means the enemy needs to be bunched together, but summons are fifty-foot whatevers that can cover the diameter of their battlefields with single attacks.
• Villains Blend in Better: Much as in the PSP games, the villains seem much more on-the-ball than the heroes. In particular, it's made clear very early in the story that they know all about the planesgorgers and their connection to Shinryu, or at least they figure it out much faster than the heroes do. Justified because this trope was also invoked in the PSP games — the villains are implied to have won most of the cycles of war between Cosmos and Chaos and so retained their memories across them, while the heroes were defeated and had their memories erased. It's implied the heroes may have never even known about Shinryu's involvement in the cycles in the first place, but the villains certainly did, so they realize what's going on in this game's story quicker than the heroes do.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • In the boss battles against the summons, you'll be hoping they choose to focus on killing your AI teammates. In boss battles only your character's deaths count towards the party's defeat, not your allies, and summons have ridiculously powerful Bravery attacks that cover massive areas to hit multiple characters. This means that your AI teammates are more of a handicap than a help, since they just give the summon more targets to attack to rack up Bravery and then deal a One-Hit KO to you, but if they KO your teammates you'll be no worse for the wear and the AI's Bravery will be reset, and they'll build Bravery slower with just you to hit.
  • Generally, if you're going for pure score in fights, you'll want your allies to be as useless as possible. The game awards points based on factors like how many EX skills you used, how much damage you took, and how much you inflicted. The grades for these areas are all relative among all fighters, so the less your allies do, the lower the curve is to do better than them and thus get a better score. This is why the advised way to go for a high score in the summon trial mode is to bring two allies with counter HP attacks — since summons don't attack when they're staggered and thus cannot trigger counters, your allies will be unable to deal HP damage, you'll basically end up killing the boss yourself, and you'll get a higher score for it.

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