Since I'm the resident Dissidia fan on the forum, and I was just whining about making a new entry awhile ago, I should probably talk about this.

So yeah... we got a new Dissidia and I'm currently Beta testing it. Yes, this is exactly what it looks like as we hit the video game equivalent of taking a franchise into space, and the FF cast are now in the real world, Tokyo to be exact. The plot is still a bit murky, even in the beta as the party just finds themselves trapped in Tokyo due to some weird crystals appearing everywhere. The FF villains corrupt these crystals which sucks the life force out of everyone in the vicinity and summons monsters. The heroes don't necessarily get killed, but instead have their powers drained, which is then used to create this game's versions of the manikens. The heroes have the power to heal the crystal if they can kill all the monsters but eventually a boss monster does appear which also needs to be taken down.

The game is a three team competitive actiony rpg where you choose a character from the current roster and play with two other people as a team to neutralize the boss monster before another three party team does. You have five slots for abilities which stem from spells and abilities from the series as a whole. These skills, in addition to what you can do in battle also dictate your stats, so make sure you're leveling them up and equipping properly. Characters also have unique skills that are tailored for them and getting them in the game's gacha mechanics will give you a major stat boost and unique skill tailored for the characters class and fighting style. Class is pretty simple. Melee for frontline fighters like Cloud, Tank for defensive types like Warrior of Light, Shooter for long range types like Terra, Support for characters like Krile, and finally agile for speed focused characters like Lightning.

So far we have Rank matches where the game lets three active players team up at random to fight for points used to advance the plot and earn loot for gacha stuff. There is also the challenge section where you can pick two AI versions of other players you've chosen to follow and are based on their current setups. These matches require you to do something in addition to winning the match such as using certain skills a certain amount of time or killing X amount of something. Completing these challenges nets you items and job badges which can be used to modify stats. I won a Monk job which increased my HP values for instance. There is also a casual mode which lets you team up with other players you've met for live three team battles, but this mode is not active in the beta.

The narrative starts with Cloud being caught in a void along with Sephiroth. Sephiroth figures out how to escape and Cloud tries to stop him only fro Cloud to get sucked into a portal and wake up in Tokyo where he meets a kid named Ren. They see Sephiroth who corrupts a crystal that drains the life of all the people in the area except Ren and summons monsters and manikens. Cloud gets ready to fight when he's stopped by the arrival of WoL, Lightning, and Terra. They catch Cloud up to speed and they all battle it out with the Manikens and the Behemoth. After winning, the party speaks with Ren who calls them Ghosts due to the nature of the FF heroes always "vanishing" after these weird crystal instances. Cloud joins the fray and offscreen gets his smart phone and dashing fashion change. Other cutscenes are done on cell phones with WoL and Terra both struggling sometimes to figure out how to get phones to work since their worlds don't have the technology. Cloud is right at home though, but it is hilarious watching stoic WoL posting chibi pictures of himself on there.

The gameplay is pretty smooth, though the game concept is not really for me, seeing how I don't care for competitive team gameplay which largely turned me off of Dissidia NT. The setting also feels a bit scratching the bottom of the barrel in terms of ideas, but I guess it gives the development team the freedom to put the familiar FF characters into cute modern outfits in addition to some of their classic outfits. The narrative feels slow, but that's largely because I'm not playing ranked matches as often as I should, so I'll get back to you on that.

One issue I have noticed is that sometimes the opposing team, and even your own team will spend more time killing each other than the actual boss monsters resulting in everyone losing the match. I chose Terra as my starter, but I've already managed to unlock Kain, Zidane, and Prompto. Other characters include, Gaia, Krile, Cloud, Lightning, and Rinoa. There is already plans for a second wave of characters in the main website.