You’ve seen new information about the game including summons entering the field, 3 on 3 battles and the like. This time however, we’ve been treated to a good chunk of gameplay footage for all currently revealed playable characters. Furthermore, we finally get to see an entire match played out in its entirety and we finally get a better look at the complex looking UI and battle mechanics. It’s confusing and needs to be examined a bit deeper; so let’s do just that!
Firstly, it looks like the matches while being a 3 on 3 battle; will have a ‘stock’ objective. In the top left of the screen are blue and red bars that are segmented into 5 blocks. This is the life bar for the team, the goal is to empty the opposing color’s bar. On top and below these bars are a flashing bar that seems to indicate the availability of summons; it seems to charge upon hitting the enemy team.
Break bonuses return that offer bonus damage when a person breaks the enemy; which means to reduce their attack damage below zero. Your attack damage number is in the bottom middle of the screen with your teammates being on the left side next to their respective portraits. Your enemy’s are next to their name on the right side of the screen. Furthermore, because it’s difficult to keep tabs of all 6 sets of numbers, each character on the screen will have their attack damage number on top of their name and health points.
It was also mentioned that EX cores are missing; and this looks to be the case; however on the minimap (which is also a new inclusion to keep track of the chaos) there are sometimes ‘crystal’ icons on the map that looks similar to the EX core. The trailer also mentions ‘EX Skill’ which serves to be the replacement. Next to the playing character’s portrait are 3 skills with different variants of ‘triangle’ input. These charge up over time and seem like the ‘special’ abilities for each character. For instance, Cloud’s neutral triangle input activates Limit Break; Terra’s causes her to activate Trance.
Further regarding characters, there seems to be 3 ‘types’ of characters that categorize their play style. Heavy includes Warrior of Light and Cloud, speed includes Onion Knight and Lightning and finally shooter which includes Terra and Y’shtola. So heavy, speed and ranged; each that seem logically seeks to create a ‘weapons triangle’ where heavy will dish out more damage to the speedster but lose to the maneuverability of ranged combat; speed will easy push into and pressure the ranged characters whilst not being able to out-damage the heavy characters, and ranged will obliterate heavy from a far with mass heavy spells and ranged combat while not being able to keep up with fast characters that run right into them. An interesting composition mechanic that they’re planning.
The new types of character categories also gives purpose to the new ‘dash mechanic’ where it is now limited to a bar that appears on top of the player’s attack damage number. The bar drains as you air dash around the map and regains quickly when you stop moving for a moment.
And with that, is an examination on newly learnt mechanics in the next Dissidia game. It looks fantastic, some frame issues are noted however but hopefully they’ll be able to fix some of it before release. Oh and who can forget, the music is a very upbeat arrangement of past games which is always fun! If there’s something else you notice, let us know!