We haven’t heard a whole lot about the North American release of Dissidia: Final Fantasy.  Its a action/fighting/RPG title for the PSP that pits characters from many games in the Final Fantasy franchise against each other in a typical “good vs. evil” battle.  What interests me is that each of the “hero” characters have an individual storyline that in some way relates to the character in their original title.  So, its a fighting game of sorts, and is reported to take roughly 40 hours to complete?  This should be interesting.

Needless to say, I haven’t played the Japanese version, or seen anyone play it in videos, so I’m unsure how everything works, but it looks like we’ll get to find out next week (July 23) when the demo is expected to hit the North American PSN.  It could get delayed, of course, but who wants to be pessimistic like that?  You can bet I’ll give my impressions of the demo here very soon after the download is available.

[Via Joystiq.]

I’m always trying game demos, although I haven’t had the chance to try many this week.  Let’s talk about the two I did try, however.

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite: The Japanese, with their small-ish hands, probably have no problem with the horribly awkward camera controls in this title.  A friend of mine wanted me to try the demo and buy the game, since it would be something fun to play together and I’m the only other person he knows with a PSP…but there’s no way on Earth I’m going to play this game with that mess of camera control.  There’s also no way to remap the buttons, which makes things even worse.

The graphics and general game play are what originally got me thinking this might be something I’d like to try, but not at the expense of my sanity.

Phantasy Star Portable: Like Monster Hunter, I’ve never played any Phantasy Star games, either.  As soon as I booted up the demo, I was greeted with a ton of customization options in creating my anime-inspired character and I was thinking, “Hmmm…this will be fun!”  It was, until I actually got control of my character.  Then I was presented  with the same horrible camera controls I found in Monster Hunter.  Seriously?!

The saving grace was that, in Phantasy Star Portable, the camera actually did a better job following your character and rotating so you could keep track of what was going on.  You also had a first-person mode to try out, as well.

Both demos were rather disappointing, but I now feel the need to rent both these games and review them.  Out of both titles, the one I’d be most likely to enjoy is Phantasy Star Portable – sci-fi setting, the camera isn’t near as wonky and the customization is great.  (Yes, there is customization in MHFU, but they didn’t show me that in the demo!  Plus, I enjoy the anime style visuals in PS better than the realistic style of MH.)