Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia Is A Fun Mobile Game

*Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia is also a mouthful to say all the time (and to write). So for the sake of my sanity, we will refer to it in this article as simply Dissidia. 

I am always on the lookout for something unique in the mobile market. A lot of the times I see games that look like someone copy and pasted the hot new thing and slapped another name on it. I don’t expect much when I browse through the Google Play Store, and it is rare to find a solid mobile game. Well, I can say with confidence that I have found a really fun mobile game in Dissidia. There is a lot to do in this game, so let’s dive in.

To sum it up, Dissidia is a turn-based action RPG. One of the more appealing things about Dissidia is that you recruit characters from all around the Final Fantasy world on your team. I am currently running Auron, Jecht, and Seymour all from Final Fantasy X (my favorite entry in the series). Dissidia does a good job of porting over characters and their fighting methods to a mobile stage. I have about forty characters so far on my team and you recruit these different characters by completing story missions along the way. Now I’ll be perfectly honest, I do not watch the cutscenes when you obtain new characters. I simply grab the character and scurry about my way. But what I can say is that it is your typical story of the world is plunged into darkness and you must rid the world of said darkness. Here is a little snippet to further explain:

So nothing too groundbreaking here, and to be honest the story is far from the most interesting thing to do in Dissidia. Let’s talk about what you can spend your time on in the game. For starters, you have to level up your characters in order to participate in the high-level community events. Each character also has a crystal level. These crystal levels grant passive bonuses for your characters with things like increased health points, increased attack power and so on. You increase your crystal level by collecting different types of crystals from the daily crystal event. Each day there is a rotation on what crystal is being featured, so you can really stock up. 

Outside of the character leveling, the next important thing is leveling your gear. Each character has their own unique weapon and different tiers of rarity among those weapons. The best part about leveling up the weapons is that if you can acquire a character’s EX weapon (their highest tier weapon) you also unlock that character’s EX ability. This ability is a strong ability that really gives you an edge in battle. I recently obtained Auron’s EX weapon and it unlocked his Dragon Fang ability, which lets me hit multiple targets at once. It’s a ton of fun. 

Speaking of battle, I think my favorite thing about Dissidia is the bravery system. The bravery mechanic is similar to Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. The only real difference is that in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT the combat is in real-time. So you are running around trying to strike enemies to build bravery then unleash powerful attacks.  The bravery system is a system in which your character has a certain amount of bravery. Once you build up that bravery, you can then spend that bravery on an HP attack to deal damage to an enemy. The higher bravery you have, the more damage your HP will do. The other big part of this system is that you can “break” opponents by dishing out bravery attacks to lower the enemies’ bravery all the way down to zero, essentially “breaking” that enemy. This system, in my eyes, offers a few layers of strategy. Along with the bravery system, the turn-based combat shows the order of moves, and who the enemy will strike next. You don’t just go in guns blazing. It’s better to see who’s going to be attacked next so that you can possibly break an enemy, breaking an enemy also delays their turn. I found myself always looking for a way to set up my strongest attacks. It’s a fun way to battle, and it really makes you think once you hit the really high-level stuff.

So what else can you do? Well, it’s a Final Fantasy game so of course, you can summon. Once you have unlocked once of the summons you then work on leveling them up as well. I am currently working on Ifrit, who gives you some nice in battle boosts and when summoned gives you multiple turns in a row before the enemy strikes. Outside of the summons, there is always an event or two going on and these are also co-op. So you can queue up with two other people to fight together. And of course, you can emote to communicate and I have found that most people actually do emote back. It creates just that little needed social aspect that I feel mobile games need.

But what about energy and in-game currency? There is hardly any walled-off content behind energy (from what I have seen so far). The only energy-dependent content is playing through the summons levels. And actually it replenishes relatively quickly and you can also use potions to replenish the energy. And in terms of currency, you will collect Gil, of course, and you will collect a lot of it. You will also be on the hunt for diamonds. Diamonds are more important because that is how you obtain your gear for your characters. Every week or so Dissidia will feature certain character banners. What you do is spend your diamonds on drawing items from that banner. If you spend a high enough amount of diamonds you are guaranteed a powerful weapon. This is what I did for Auron’s EX weapon. I played through the story, collected diamonds and kept drawing from his banner and eventually got that weapon. But isn’t that just loot boxes? To a degree, yes, but what Dissidia does that is really cool is that every time you multi-draw (spending a high amount of diamonds for the guaranteed powerful weapon), you get another currency that you can spend on buying those powerful weapons directly from the banner. Essentially if you do not get the weapon you want from the banner, eventually you can just buy it. It is a really forgiving system and actually encourages me to play more.

Dissidia is a busy mobile game, I won’t sugar coat it. There are all sorts of activities to do, missions to complete, gear to obtain and events to participate in. And wrapped all around that is an enjoyable combat system with just enough depth to keep it interesting. Plus you can experiment and tinker with your party until your heart’s content with how many characters you can unlock. It can almost seem overwhelming at the beginning. But once you sink into it really starts to unravel itself into something really enjoyable. If you are a Final Fantasy fan or just someone looking to get a good game on your phone, I would definitely recommend Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia.