On one hand, it's kind of exciting to play a new videogame and find myself inundated with lots of new gameplay, unfamiliar concepts, and intriguing detail. Especially when it's Final Fantasy Dissidia on the PSP, a fighting game with unique characters, RPG leveling, lots of inventory goodies, a story mode that plays like a boardgame, and flashy 3D graphics of gaudy anime characters beating the ever-lovin' snot out of each other.

But on the other hand, what the holy heck is going on?

Read the review of Final Fantasy Dissidia after the jump.

You're tellin' me, sister!

At first, I was just leveling up Cloud, who seems to be the most vanilla character. He pretty much just smacks stuff with a big sword. He can throw a fireball too, but whatever. After doing this for a while, I started leveling up Cecil, who changes between light and dark forms, each with different attacks. Tricky! Next I'm thinking of trying a speed-based character like the Onion King. Maybe I'll take a chance with a spell-caster, like the scantily clad woman above. Of course, since I unlocked The Emperor, Exdeath, and some sort of jester fellow, maybe I should work with them for a while.

Cloud is the one guy everyone knows from Final Fantasy. But otherwise, I have no idea who these people are. I mean, seriously, Onion King? I'm really not here for the mythos, which has me skipping a metric ton of cutscenes. Instead, I'm here to fight, level up, and unlock stuff. Final Fantasy: Dissidia offers those activities in spades.

There are many ways to play, but so far, it seems the way to go is story mode, which is apparently called that because of all the cutscenes I have to skip. It could have also been called "strategy game mode", since you move across a grid, picking your way among enemies and treasures to get to the end, where you'll win various bonus awards. Along the way, there are chocobo alerts, gifts based on the day of the week, special objectives, crafting, spells cast at the map level, and generally a whole lot of stuff going on.

The actual fights take place in trippy fantasy arenas with breakable bits, wild vertical changes, and crazy shortcuts. I flit about like a dragonfly, doing stuff that defies even the craziest wire-fu, with flashing lights and bullet time and supernova punches and sword slashes that rend the fabric of reality and strange sidekicks popping up to do things for me. In other words, typical anime action sequences.

The fighting system is based on charging up your bravery and then unleashing it in a mighty attack that does damage to hit points. It's a nice back-and-forth, with the constant choice between unleashing your power now or holding out for a bigger attack. That's good gameplay.

You also get ranged attacks, spells, and races for magical doo-dads that unleash characters' superpowers. There are environmental hazards, wall running, and clearly displayed bonus effects in the corners of the screen. There is stunning, chasing, wall-bashing, blocking, and one guy even drops traps that I keep stepping on. I hate that guy. Maybe I'll play him next.

Eventually, the great thing about Dissidia is also the infuriating thing about Dissidia: there is just so much stuff in here, much of it beyond my ken. So it's not unusual for me to be bopping along, kicking anime ass and taking wacky names (Onion King? Really?), earning xp, unlocking new weapons and baubles, maxing out my spell abilities, and generally getting into a really gratifying RPG groove. Then I come to a battle, get slapped down before I can get in a single hit, and have no idea what happened or how I was supposed to beat that guy. Who I then hate even more than the guy who drops traps.

Dissidia reminds me a bit of an obscure and possibly great game on the Nintendo DS called Knights of the Nightmare, which was a combination of spreadsheet, tactical combat, and touchscreen stress-testing. I say "possibly great", because I could barely figure out what was going on in that thing. It was a daunting combination of frantic and detailed. Who would have thought such a shotgun marriage of minutiae and action would ever be made? "Only in Japan," I told myself, still flummoxed after about ten levels. Dissidia can be more forgiving than Knights partly because it doesn't take much of an investment, either in terms of time or brain power. Just focus on Cloud's big sword smacking stuff and you can have a great two-minute brawl with a little RPG payoff. In fact, it's even possible to play Dissidia like you might play a driving game if you have no skill. Just earn a fast car and drive it in races against pokey cars. Repeat as needed. But once you venture out into the wider game of Dissidia, you're going to be thrown into the deep end with a sea of numbers and some serious twitchplay.

I wasn't given a copy of the manual, but there's no shortage of ingame documentation. At pretty much any point, you can hit the start button and bring up help screens. The problem with Dissidia - if it is indeed a problem - isn't that it doesn't explain itself very well. The presentation isn't the least bit afraid to overwhelm you. There's a lot to wrap your head around, and a lot of timing to master, and long lists of baubles and abilities demanding that you make choices. Oddly enough, you can play from a menu system while an AI handles the actual gameplay. I can't imagine anyone actually using this, much less making any headway with it. But it's there. If you want this to be a purely cerebral exercise, have at it.

Finally, kudos to Square/Enix for allowing various sizes of install to a memory card. There's a whole lot of loading in this game: lists, maps, cutscenes. If Dissidia had relied on slow UMD access, it would require even more commitment than it already does.