Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy

Unreleased

Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy​ is the prequel to Dissidia Final Fantasy. It is currently in development for the PlayStation Portable and it will be released in Japan on March 3rd, 2011, Europe on March 25th, 2011, and sometime later in spring 2011 for the rest of the world.

Gameplay
Dissidia Duodecim's gameplay will be very similar to the original's, featuring all of the original gameplay elements, characters and arenas. Fighters will attack to steal Bravery from opponents, which increases their own bravery,as a character lands Bravery attacks. By completely depleting an opponent's Bravery to zero, they become inflicted with Bravery Break, preventing the opponent from inflicting HP damage until their Brave regenerates to a base amount, and granting the attacker a large boost in Bravery from the Map. When a HP attack is used and hits, the opponent takes damage equal to the attacking player's Bravery. By collecting EX Force characters can enter EX Mode, boosting their strength, adding exclusive abilities and letting them execute EX Bursts similar to Limit Breaks. Several characters have gained new attacks since the original Dissidia, and it has been stated that Firion has been severely modified, as well as Kefka, and Shantotto. New summons, arenas, music tracks and characters will be included.

Dissidia 012 will feature a story structure similar to the Destiny Odysseys of the original game, and will include the ability to play as the warriors of Chaos as well. The story mode utilizes a different method of storyline gameplay than the original Dissidia: a world map is used rather than tiled boards, and players are able to form parties and wander the world freely. The map shown in scans appears to be based on the map for the original Final Fantasy. Depending on the story mode being played, players can either form their own parties or have their parties pre-determined - other mechanics of the party system are currently unknown. The "Skills" command returns. Treasure chests, enemies, shops and other features can be encountered on the map. The enemy system is similar to Final Fantasy XII or Final Fantasy XIII, where enemies are visible on the map and approaching one initiates battle. . However it seems that the enemy will be able to attack and damage the player while on the world map, as shown in the Jumps Festa Trailer. It also appears, that several battle mechanics, such as quickmoves, will be included on the World Map gameplay. Tetsuya Nomura has also confirmed that it will take around 60 hours to beat the game.

Save data from the original Dissidia will be able to be transferred to Dissidia 012, but the effects of this are currently unknown. The storyline of the original Dissidia, adapted to the new story gameplay mechanics, will be playable after the new storyline of Dissidia 012 has been completed.

New Features and Tweaks
The main new gameplay feature shown thus far is the "Assist" system, represented by two bars underneath the HP gauges. The bars fill during battle and can be used to call a pre-set ally into battle to perform an attack, depending on how many bars are filled. This allows new combos to be executed by combining the skills of different characters. Assist can also be called in to take hits from enemy combos with "Assist Change,", but the Assist will then be locked out for 22 seconds. The commonly known EX Guard - going EX while under attack - has been changed to the new feature called "EX Revenge," which blocks the opponent's attack and slows them down for a period of time, but this consumes the entire EX Force Gauge to do so, which means no entering EX Mode. In addition, a new feature called an "EX Break" causes your opponent to exit EX Mode prematurely with a successful Assist attack, which also empties their amount of EX Force afterwords. Because EX Bursts are intended to be Limit Break-like attacks used to end battles or do heavy damage, Assists are meant to act as an opposite mechanic to them by doing minor damage over time and being used repeatedly. To accommodate this new system many equipment pieces and attacks have been re-balanced. A character's HP now goes past the normal limit of 9,999 and into five figures, although it is currently unknown what the new maximum is. The damage dealt through Wall Rush has also been reduced for both HP and Bravery attacks, from the normal 50% damage down to 25%. The multiplier used for boosting damage on Critical hits has also been reduced from its x5 multiplier down to a x2. Chase Mode has also been sped up considerably, and now gives a small amount of EX Force for each attack.

Characters
In a recent interview with Tetsuya Nomura, it has been stated that all characters will return. In addition, six new characters have already been announced: Kain from IV, Lightning from XIII, Tifa from VII, Vaan from XII, Laguna from VIII, and Yuna from X. Also, bundled with the first shipments of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix and The 3rd Birthday are access codes that can be used to unlock Cloud's Kingdom Hearts and Lightning's Aya Brea attire as alternate costumes, while Tifa will have a fourth costume in the European limited edition. It is not currently known whether or not there are more upcoming games that will have access codes for other costumes, or if the known games have more access codes that are not yet revealed. It has been reported there will be more than a handful of new characters - but not necessarily an equal number of heroes and villains like in the first game. It has been stated that there will not be an equal amount of characters per game or per faction. It has also been stated that all new characters will be from the SNES era forward.



Arenas
All arenas present in the original Dissidia are set to reappear, with three new additions confirmed: Orphan's Cradle, Sky Fortress Bahamut, and the Crystal Tower. Areas resembling Prima Vista and the last floor of Pandaemonium has been seen in TGS 2010 Trailer. The Jump Festa Trailer shows two new areas which appear to be the Phantom Train and the Empyreal Paradox. It has been stated there will be as many new stages as there are new characters. It has been revealed that the new stages will not necessarily share a connection with the new characters, as is shown with the Crystal Tower since it has been confirmed that there will be no new characters from the NES era.

Music
It has been announced that Square Enix will include nearly twice as many music tracks and more of them will be original/retro, compared to the original. The game's soundtrack will be composed/arranged by Takeharu Ishimoto, who was also responsible for the first Dissidia's music. . Final Fantasy VIII's "Force Your Way", Final Fantasy XII's "Esper Battle", Final Fantasy V's "The Final Battle", Final Fantasy III's "Battle Theme", and Final Fantasy VII's "J-E-N-O-V-A" have been confirmed to be added. The soundtrack is scheduled to be released in Japan on March 2, 2011.

Summons
Furthermore, it appears that additional summons will be added to Duodecim as well. Brynhildr from Final Fantasy XIII has been seen in the Jump Festa 2011 trailer with her concept art. It is however as of yet unknown how many other summons will be added as well.

Plot
Dissidia 012 will tell the story of the twelfth cycle of battle between the warriors of the gods. According to Siliconera, the game will feature something like the Destiny Odysseys, only they will include Chaos characters as well. The game's main focus is on the new characters and explaining what happened to them, and why they won't be present in the thirteenth cycle shown in Dissidia.

Development
Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy was announced in the Japanese magazine Shonen Jump in early September 2010. It had previously been hinted at by the Dissidia development team, who stated that they would love to make a sequel and that the decision would depend on the success of the first installment; and JD Cullum, Kuja's English voice actor, who offhandedly stated he had recorded his lines for Dissidia 012 in the summer of 2010. Judging from statements by the other voice actors, it appears that the whole English script of Dissidia 012 was recorded at the start of summer 2010.

According to an interview between Takashi Arakawa and Yoshinori Kitase (director, writer, and producer of Dissidia) with a German gaming site, Kitase stated that a sequel would be "very interesting", and might even include Kingdom Hearts characters, although it would still have to be discussed with Disney. Tetsuya Nomura has stated that for a potential sequel, he would like to include Kain Highwind, Gilgamesh, and Sazh Katzroy, but would not include Kingdom Hearts characters. Nomura had previously expressed a desire to have Kain and Lightning in the first Dissidia, but they were left out.

Merchandise
Similar to the first Dissidia, the Dissidia 012 cast will be made into Trading Arts Figures, posing in their positions as depicted in their Dissidia 012 artwork.

In Europe, a special limited edition will be released and will include a special packaging, an artbook, a mini-OST, and a fourth costume for Tifa.

Etymology
Duodecim, which is normally pronounced with a hard "c," is instead pronounced with a hard "s." Duodecim is Latin for "twelve," which gives the title relevance to the game's story, as it revolves around the battles waged during Dissidia's 12th cycle.

Trivia

 * Prior to the official announcement, two separate hoaxes had "revealed" that Kain and Lightning would appear in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Universal Tuning. The hoaxes involved elaborate fake magazine pages created in Photoshop and complete with fake Kain artwork and fake Lightning 3D models.
 * Kain, Lightning, Vaan, and Yuna were all considered to be included in the original Dissidia but were excluded for various reasons.