The Unfortunate (But Inevitable) Death of Final Fantasy Dissidia
On March 5th, we got word of the last update that would come to the Dissidia NT game. This final update marks the end of the game as a whole, while the online servers would continue for a little while longer. Hazama stated in an interview, "The online service will still continue running so it won't be a case where you cannot play the game anymore.” However, the online servers will eventually end and we are supposedly supposed to hear more about that when the time is near. As for the character DLC and new outfits, locations, music tracks, etc , all of this comes to an end.
Many of us can most likely easily determine why this happened, it comes down to one word: SALES. The sales for Dissidia NT despite their weak and scheming efforts to make $16 off of a skin were terrible and the game got some backlash for its 3 vs 3 mechanics that would drive even a totally sane person to insanity. (Not to mention the lack of core mechanics that made the game so lovable to begin with.) The story was flawed, boring, and unorganized. I could go on. Even though I had fun with the game at times, for the most part I played the game just to show appreciation for the characters that managed to make the limited roster. Which brings me to another issue the game has: the character roster. Upon release, Dissidia NT had a very limited character roster and took forever to release new characters. Tifa who was a part of the Duodecim package to begin with was only released several months after NT came out. Why wasn’t she a base game character? When it comes down to it, Dissidia NT was a slopfest. It looked good, there were characters I was overjoyed to see make it, and the battling in rare situations could be considered fun, but it overall just fell apart. In early trailers, I was EXCITED to see NT come together. I imagined how cool it would be to have an extensive storyline involving all the new characters and seeing all kinds of awesome character interactions and gameplay, but when reality set in, I realized the Dissidia NT I imagined and the one we deserved was all but a dream.
It’s upsetting to come to the conclusion that Dissidia NT has quite frankly ruined the legacy of what was once a successful and grand mini franchise. Final Fantasy Dissidia Duodecim was a great example of what a Dissidia game could be if enough effort, time, and care was put into the product. But we must face reality: Dissidia for the time being despite its past success, is dead. No more characters. No more updates. Nothing. It’s all due to the failure of a game we all wanted so badly to succeed.