Hands-on with the Dissidia Final Fantasy NT open beta demo on PS4

Square Enix will be releasing a new fighting game later this year called Dissidia Final Fantasy NT on the PS4. We played the open beta to see what the game is all about.

I remember I had the chance to review the original Dissidia Final Fantasy video game on PSP and I loved the game to death. It was a huge nostalgia trip for me as the Final Fantasy franchise is my favourite game series of all time.

Well Square Enix is bringing the fighting game franchise back this year with the release of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. Unlike its handheld cousin, this PS4 version looks better although several changes have been made.

This new version of Dissidia Final Fantasy was released exclusively in Japanese arcades a few years ago, but this iteration for PS4 adds new features such as a Story Mode and other additional characters. Not to mention this version is the first time Western gamers are able to participate in the fun.

Square Enix is holding an open beta for the game where I got the chance to play through some of what this game has to offer. It's safe for me to say that this game is not for the average casual gamer!

Normally in fighting games, you either fight one-on-one or in a tag-in tag-out scenario. Dissidia Final Fantasy NT ups the difficulty because you are playing in the game in a tornado tag situation. This means all members of each team can fight at the same time.

The 3 vs 3 deathmatch style gameplay is where this game becomes quite chaotic. Thankfully, there is an encyclopaedia worth of text for you to read in the tutorial to help you get up to speed on what this game has to offer.  If you have watched the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children animated movie, you will now those fight scenes were fast paced full of swords and magic. Those fight scenes are essentially how battles are like in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT and it is super entertaining once you know what you are doing.

The only main problem I have with this style of gameplay is keeping track of what is going on. The gameplay is similar to that of the Dragon Ball Xenoverse series where there's so many characters on screen at once that it's hard to pinpoint who you should target next.

To make things even harder, the HUD is cluttered with a lot of things that block the screen. You have to keep track of your own life bar, the enemy's life bar as well as you own teammates. There's also visual aids for your attacks and magic skills to look at on top of that!

With so much stuff happening at the same time, the learning curve for this game is pretty steep. Not to mention learning the basics of fighting also takes a long time as the tutorial has a lot of material for you to read through.

Aside from the gameplay, the overall presentation of Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is excellent. I love the callbacks to the older games as it features familiar music and locations from all of the past Final Fantasy games.

The roster is pretty cool too as the beta allowed me to use characters such as Lightning, Cloud, Squall and more. Many of their signature moves are here in this game plus you can even summon monsters like Odin or Leviathan to help you in battles.

Anyway, the open beta for Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is available now on PS4 and runs ends until the end of the week. You also don't need to have PlayStation Plus either to give it a go. The full game itself releases on January 30th, 2018.