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It’s almost been everyone’s dream seeing their favourite Final Fantasy characters battles themselves to the death in the Final Fantasy universe. Dissidia 012 [Duodecim] is both a prequel and remake of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, revealing what occurred before the events of its predecessor.

The game’s story may be the weakest part about this game, and will completely make no sense to most fans out there. It revolves around the twelfth cycle of the eternal conflict between the gods Cosmos and Chaos, who have both summoned several warriors from different worlds to fight for them. With the battle turning in favour of Chaos, Cosmos entrusts her warriors with the task of retrieving the crystals that will help them defeat Chaos.

The main story follows a group of six warriors; Laguna, Lightning, Vaan, Tifa, Yuna and Kain, who investigate and deal with an army of crystalline soldiers known as Manikins. The Manikins pose a threat due to their ability to negate the gods’ power to revive the warriors after they are killed.

Gameplay: If you have played Dissidia and have a save of it, you can transfer it over to Dissidia 012 which will have all levels and abilities to what characters you had levelled to maximum. You may also notice a few changes taken in and out of Dissidia, but if you you haven’t played it before it isn’t really problem; you will learn how the controls will work, and the right times to attack – and you’ll need these tactics as some opponents will keep attacking you non-stop.

The game consists primarily of one-on-one battles, taking place on what’s known as a battle map (like any Final Fantasy environment) where the two characters will duel. You are able to perform two types of attacks: a Bravery attack which is circle and an HP attack which is square. Both characters start with a set number of Bravery points, the number of Bravery points being equivalent to the amount of damage dealt by an HP attack. You must attack to steal Bravery points from the opponent so as to increase the power of your HP attack, as Bravery attacks do not cause any damage. You can use summons which some can be very useful to increase your Bravery attacks or Defending or Decreasing Bravery points.

A change you’ll notice in Dissidia is Assist Attack where you can summon another Final Fantasy character to help you out by press the L button and circle together.  EX gauge is another tool in gameplay; you build up its gauge and enter EX Mode by pressing R button and Square together – you can do some serious damage to your opponents by pressing the following buttons you can see on the screen.

Graphics and Sound: Like the first Dissidia it still has some outstanding graphics and visuals from the character artwork and animation and to its battle maps. People would complain that there aren’t any good games for the PSP but when they see Dissidia you’re totally blown away by how much has gone into a handheld game.

If you are a fan of the Final Fantasy series you’ll remember some of the environments that were in Dissidia which do make a return but there are some new arenas in this edition, which are all from various Final Fantasy games like the Bahamut ship from Final Fantasy 12 or The Crystal Tower from Final Fantasy III or even the Theatre Airship from Final Fantasy IX which some were disappointed not to find in Dissidia to begin with.

During the main story or when completing quests you can run across the Dissidia world map to get through each of the Gates that you need to get to, though there isn’t much else to see apart from collecting treasure and fighting random enemies.

The camera can be a little fiddly during battles depending on what style you play the game; some battle arenas can really make the camera go fiddly. One annoying aspect of Dissidia is its long loading times which can take forever for a cut-scene to appear or a battle. Fortunately you can avoid long load times by choosing Data Install, which can take 491, 573 or 815 MB on your memory stick.

Voice acting hasn’t really changed if you did play the first game, there is some good voice acting which is really well done, and there is some bad voice acting which can be really cheesy to listen to. Whether you’re a fan of the series or not, the soundtrack really does do a great job, some of the new tracks added in Dissidia 012 are pretty impressive and you can also purchase more Final Fantasy music from the PlayStation Store.

Overall: You may get some Deja Vu moments if you have played Dissidia, but however you’ll be earning new rewards from your battles making you wanting more. As if that’s not enough, it also comes with the original story for Dissidia too, which makes it great for those who missed out the first Dissidia.

Dissidia 012: Duodecim Final Fantasy is more of a director’s cut title of the original, with tons of content added in, rather than a brand new game. There is a multiplayer mode, in which you can play up to 10 players at once in a lobby, but if none of your friends have a PSP you can still play with others online by heading over to the Adhoc Party on your PS3.

This will keep you busy for a very long time, from 30-60 hours, which is really a long time and it’s game you’ll be coming back to now and then on your PSP for more rewards and content.

Once again Square Enix sure knows how to keeps its fans happy when it’s anything Final Fantasy related.