Raise your Player Level through combat in any game mode to earn memoria—strange fragments with a faint power to them, something familiar… Memoria can be spent in story mode, unlocking new cutscenes and epic confrontations within the tapestry of Dissidia.
Separate Paths, Shared Fate: After the prologue scenes, you’ll have five potential paths to choose from. Each path centers on a different group of heroes and villains (with some overlap for frequent travelers). Completing a full path will involve spending 3-4 memoria and progressing through a handful of battles and complications, with escalating difficulty.
Seeing the story through to the end requires at least two paths be completed. The cutscenes Fighting Chance and World in the Balance must both be unlocked with memoria.
Escalating Difficulty: The farther you get down any one path, the tougher the going will get. Early battles in a story sequence will be Bronze-difficulty, easy to beat once you’re familiar with Dissidia’s many combat systems. Until you’re fully comfortable changing targets, guarding sudden surprises, and consulting the minimap constantly, among other crucial habits, any battle will be a little dicey.
Inflexible Teams, With Flexibility: During any given battle in story mode, you’ll only have a limited number of champions to choose from. Sometimes there are only two or three allies, in which case the party is decided, it’s just a matter of whom you want to control and how you assign HP attacks and common EX skills. In some cases, four allies band together briefly, so you can choose which three to include in a battle party.
The groups that stick together in the story make sense as teams. So, although you might stumble into a battle where you don’t really know how to use any of the fighters available, there will at least be a type you’re familiar with, and that’s a great place to start. For example, the first path centers on Bartz and Cloud, with a guest appearance by Shantotto. If you like melee characters, vanguards and assassins, Cloud’s your man. If you like marksmen, look no further than Shantotto. And if you like oddball specialist characters, who can usually alter their focus to suit the situation, Bartz fits the bill. Each of the storyline teams is like this. Also, don’t be afraid to try new characters. Once you’ve spent a memoria to unlock a battle, it’s always unlocked, so you have nothing to lose from reattempting it. And, not to mention the character chapters here in this guide are an ideal reference. Check the arsenal tables early in a character’s chapter to get a quick overview and find two or three attacks to start with, then delve into the detailed descriptions when someone seems especially fun.
Manikins: Mere thoughts spring landscapes and life-forms into being here, so unfortunately there are false copies of many combatants roaming around. They’re easy to tell by the strange glow they give off, and their odd monochromatic look.
Boss Battles: Occasionally the various parties will run into creatures far more imposing than another mere manikin or villain.
Summon monsters are huge and powerful, capable of taking on entire teams at once. Taking out a boss is not like destroying a manikin or knocking out an opposing fighter. Bosses aren’t vulnerable to HP attacks until they’re staggered by Bravery hits, temporarily dazed on the ground. It takes a lot of Bravery damage to knock a boss off their feet. Vanguards, with their high poise and damage, will knock bosses down the fastest, but at higher risk thanks to the needed proximity. Marksmen have a much easier time taking low-risk shots at bosses, but it takes ranged attackers much longer to build up enough hits to knock them over.
Once a boss is knocked down with Bravery hits, they’ll emit a golden glow, indicating they’re vulnerable. Any Bravery hits they take during this time will build up extra Bravery. But more importantly, at this point every ally will have time to unleash one HP Attack, inflicting real damage. Once everyone has dished out their best shot (or after a few seconds pass), the boss will shake off the cobwebs and return to their feet.
The function of your teammates in boss battles is different than in normal team combat. Consider your teammates decoys, and stay away from them. The most effective thing they can do is distract the boss, refocusing the boss’s dangerous attention. This gives you time to maneuver, to refill the dash gauge, to get in solid Bravery hits, and so on. It also makes it less likely the boss glances you with an attack aimed at an ally. When allies get incapacitated, it doesn’t count against your own stocks—to lose to a boss, your character must be knocked out three times.
Boss fights are not timed, so patience and discretion are virtues. EX Skills like HP Regen and Share HP that provide endurance benefits can be greatly useful for you or your allies to have, as you can use them as many times as you want without a time limit restriction.
If you are ever incapacitated during a boss fight, do not be in a haste to revive. Make sure your teammates are alive and that you are in a safe position, and remember that time is not a factor! If you engage bosses with all three teammates alive, you will be less likely to be targeted, allowing you more opportunities to dish out damage undetected.
When approaching a boss, don’t go in recklessly. Spend some time simply observing what they do. You’ll need to get some idea of how they’ll attack so you don’t give away Bravery needlessly. When these creatures get a lot of Bravery in hand, they’ll unleash devastating HP attacks way beyond the capabilities of any normal fighter. Not only will these be difficult for you to avoid, but even harder for A.I. teammates. The boss arsenal tables in this chapter will give you an overview of what you need to look out for.
Bosses don’t get knocked down by regular Bravery combos, only by an accumulation of hits. Attacks that last a long time, and don’t dissipate when they dole out a hit, are therefore incredibly strong against bosses. Normally, something like Terra’s Tornado hits a given opponent once then tosses them aside. Although Tornado persists, it’s very unlikely to hit the same enemy twice unless they’re cornered or they recover badly. On the other hand, since bosses are too sturdy for Tornado to knock them away, the twister will simply spin through them and keep striking, building up huge amounts of Bravery very quickly. This also happens to drain the boss’s Bravery efficiently, which is important. Once bosses have purple-number Bravery, they typically will use their HP Attacks very aggressively, all but guaranteeing your A.I. partners get incapacitated. This forces you to do some deft maneuvering while trying to reduce their Bravery under dangerous levels.
Story Bonus Level: No matter how good you are, or how much you like the characters down a given path, battles eventually become very difficult. Story Bonus Levels are earned by increasing your Player Level, which can be increased by playing in any mode of the game, granting bonuses to your HP and stats, and even the behaviors of your A.I. partners. Online battle modes have standardized stats for the sake of fair competition, but Dissidia’s one-player modes do allow EXP to influence battle abilities a bit. If you’re running up into a wall on a hard battle down a particular path, it might be time to take a break and explore other story mode paths and game modes. With a little more experience and a few more Story Bonus Levels under your belt, come back and try again for a fairer fight.
Hard Mode: Progress all the way to the final scene to unlock hard mode boss battles! These are accessed from a new, separate story mode map. (This map also allows replay of normal difficulty encounters, as before.) Things are a bit different here. Not only can you pick any fighters on your team that you want, but you can also choose between normal difficulty (similar to your first playthrough), or hard mode. During hard mode battles, a few things will change:
Bosses will not target your allies. Only you. “Be careful” takes on new meaning.
Allies won’t do HP damage. This really encourages you to maximize Bravery in between chances to drill them with an HP attack after knocking them over.
Hard mode has new rewards to go with the extra challenge. Not to mention the reward of besting the elemental gods in face-to-face combat!