Dissidia Final Fantasy at 50 percent, gameplay details dropped

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Dissidia Final Fantasy details have once again been spotted and this time, they're coming from Japanese game magazine Famitsu. the game's producer Tetsuya Nomura, director Takeshi Arakawa, and planning director Mitsunori Takahashi all sat down with the publication and answered a few questions.

First on the agenda was the question of why the game is taking so long to finish. The devs answered that the team doing it is pretty young and adjusting was one of the most time-consuming parts of development. As for how far along into completion the team has gone, they said they're at about 50 percent and that character models are almost completely sealed.

No release date has yet been earmarked, but Nomura did tease the readers that it will come at "the time when it's good to buy games." Could he be hinting at a holiday launch? We'll see.

Several stages have been confirmed to be in Dissidia Final Fantasy such as Chaos Shrine (FF), Pandemonium Palace (FFII), Clock Tower (FFVIII), Crystal World (FF IX) and Braska s Final Aeon (FFX). There will be more and they will be revealed as we go further into development.

Character-wise, the devs say that there are about 20 right now. They also hinted that a "few small surprises" will give players some nice, nostalgic treats.

Lastly, a few gameplay elements were introduced to us. The first of them being that of the Brave Points system. These points are represented by a number at the bottom center of the screen and can be acquired by hitting enemies with special attacks. Once a monster's brave points hit "break" or zero, your character will gain them and will unleash some heavy "HP Attacks" which will soak up damage commensurate to the opponent's total health.

The devs say that this has been implemented to allow skilled players to beat higher-level enemies. Sounds like a nice way for people to power-level their way to victory, eh?

In any case, Nomura and company also explained what the bar to the edge of the screen is. This is called the EX Bar which indicates your character's capacity to deliver even more powerful blows, boost up their abilities, or undergo transformation to add more oomph to their stats.

What wasn't explained was how exactly the EX Mode gauge fills up. Let's just wait and see how it all goes down when more news is forthcoming.