Game:

Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy (2011)

Duration: 3:40

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Well, I don't think this subseries name will get much use, because they waited until a good 80-90% of the way through the game to introduce a new kind of enemy piece to the board...a piece that explicitly subjects you and your party to a series of matches consisting entirely of fights against yourselves.

These party matches are conduced under Round Robin rules, which is actually rather contrary to what its name suggests. An actual round robin tournament is a series of iterations in which each contestant competes against every other contestant exactly once. In Duodecim, a "Round Robin" party battle means that each player will take a numbered slot from 1 to 5, and they will fight only the character that shares their number. The winning party is decided as soon as one party wins a majority of the matches. So if you win three in a five-person Round Robin party battle, any remaining matches will be canceled and you are declared the winner.

Since the enemy party copies your party exactly, you'll fight a series of mirror matches for each of your party members.

And these are EXACT copies of your party members, equipping the same exact abilities and equipment along with every last little customized detail. So dedicated are these copies that they'll actually copy your current HP levels. So, with a sufficient understanding of how it behaves, you could conceivably set up your characters such that the AI isn't able to think laterally enough to utilize its available options...I would suspect that it'd probably still be an annoying fight for both man and machine, though.

These can be a bit tedious if you've got a full party, but you can make them into a much shorter affair if you bring a party consisting of only one member. There's really only one place where I can see this being a particularly worthwhile tactic, as it has more of these pieces than anywhere else...and only then if you've got the specific goal of rushing through the place as quickly as possible to claim some treasure chests that only generate there.

That said, after I finished the extra storyline scenario, I actually did wander around with the one character I suddenly had at Level 1 afterwards, only setting out with one of my Level 100 characters for one dungeon to get some experience to work with, and then I set him loose upon the world to gain some experience.

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Gabranth vs. Gabranth
Sky Fortress Bahamut
("Boss Battle," Final Fantasy XII)

So, based entirely upon the things he says within the confines of the Dissidia series, I can apparently infer that Gabranth has some serious self-esteem issues...even talking to himself externalized about how it's only fair that he hate himself. I've deliberately abstained from reading through any summarization of his character, because unlike Final Fantasy XI, I do intend to play this one sometime...although when, I can't rightly say.

Anyway, this has got to be one of the most drawn-out mirror matches you can possibly have, because of the very nature of Gabranth's style of doing battle. I do believe his EX Charge has been sped up quite a bit from the previous game in response to just how (relatively) useless he is outside of EX Mode.

It's also one battle guaranteed to be riddled with EX Bursts, because if he's in EX Mode, he might as well try to squeeze as much damage as he can out of it before he's required to reenter it after another complete charge.

I'm actually not sure if I've uploaded a replay in which I'm the one subjected to an EX Burst before, so just in case, I'll explain how it works. You can see that the defending player has a gauge with numbers written on it. You press the O button to push the arrow up the gauge just a little bit, whereupon it will start to fall back down. The numbers refer to defense multipliers (or something of the sort, as numerically I have no way of knowing what they're supposed to be, really), and the way the meter is laid you, you want to press it rapidly...but not so much so that you'll end up going to the negative at the very top.

Frankly, the thing is finicky enough as it is, and I swear that the rate at which it decreases will change even during the same EX Burst, so if I can spare the extra points to cover its cost, I might as well equip an Auto EX Defense skill so as not to have to worry about it.

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