E3 2009: Hands on with Dissidia and Crystal Bearers

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I had the chance to drop by the Square Enix booth for some one-on-one time with a few of their upcoming titles. I loved how they provided headphones for most of the games on the floor, allowing you to fully experience the music and voice acting that they clearly worked hard on.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy featured the newly recorded English voice cast, and sure enough the acting is top notch. Not once did it feel forced or out of place. The music–if you haven’t heard–is absolutely stunning and thankfully the PSP does a wonderful job providing quality sound output.  I thought the controls were definitely interesting. I expected it to be a fighting game but having heard that it actually played like an action RPG, in the same vein as Crisis Core, I didn’t know what to expect. Sure enough, Crisis Core was a great way to describe the game. It’s similar, at least in the freedom of movement, but with the ability to jump, and with a number of different commands available.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers ^[2] was up next, and the music fits the game perfectly. I had a lot of fun with the mini-games it provides, and the cut scenes are quite beautiful for a Wii game. The exploration gameplay was lacking a tad, but probably only due to the non-implimented text, making conversation with townfolk impossible with the demo on the floor. Still, I can’t wait to get the game as it was quite fun and definitely different than your typical Final Fantasy title.

Is anyone else as excited about these titles as me?