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Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy - thoughts and game design analysis
Jul. 14th, 2026 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](/%20https://www.npmjs.com/package/ocr-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chacushaSo... I have a new gacha.
For the past couple of months, I've been playing Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy. I have the tendency to go through periods where I play a single gacha game regularly on my phone, until I either ragequit it OR it gets cancelled, and then I will have a fallow period where I'm not playing any gacha games. I've been in that fallow period ever since Echoes of Mana got discontinued back in... May 2023. Wow, that's a long time ago. RIP.
Anyway, I picked up DDFF back in May and, because of my health issues, it's been nice having something I can play on my phone while lying in bed, and so I've sunk a LOT of hours into this game. But please don't take that to mean this game is good or engaging, because it's actually quite bad. Like, poorly designed to a baffling, this-has-no-long-term-viability degree, to the point where I wanted to do a rant/breakdown about everything that needs to be fixed to make this game not bleed users. So here we go: way too many words spent analyzing the design of a gacha (that is, a predatory, freemium, cashgrab) mobile game. I first give a basic overview of how gacha games generally work / how they are typically designed (introducing a bunch of specialized terminology used in gacha game communities), so that I can then compare it to how DDFF is designed and basically just go "Why???" I then add a couple of personal/fannish thoughts.
( Prologue: How I got into this game )
( Gacha game design explainer )
( The bizarre design of Dissidia Duellem Final Fantasy )
( Some final, more-positive thoughts )
Okay, so there you have it -- 10000 words and over 10 hours spent writing up thoughts on this not-particularly-good gacha game I might very well drop in a couple of months. orz
For the past couple of months, I've been playing Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy. I have the tendency to go through periods where I play a single gacha game regularly on my phone, until I either ragequit it OR it gets cancelled, and then I will have a fallow period where I'm not playing any gacha games. I've been in that fallow period ever since Echoes of Mana got discontinued back in... May 2023. Wow, that's a long time ago. RIP.
Anyway, I picked up DDFF back in May and, because of my health issues, it's been nice having something I can play on my phone while lying in bed, and so I've sunk a LOT of hours into this game. But please don't take that to mean this game is good or engaging, because it's actually quite bad. Like, poorly designed to a baffling, this-has-no-long-term-viability degree, to the point where I wanted to do a rant/breakdown about everything that needs to be fixed to make this game not bleed users. So here we go: way too many words spent analyzing the design of a gacha (that is, a predatory, freemium, cashgrab) mobile game. I first give a basic overview of how gacha games generally work / how they are typically designed (introducing a bunch of specialized terminology used in gacha game communities), so that I can then compare it to how DDFF is designed and basically just go "Why???" I then add a couple of personal/fannish thoughts.
( Prologue: How I got into this game )
( Gacha game design explainer )
( The bizarre design of Dissidia Duellem Final Fantasy )
( Some final, more-positive thoughts )
Okay, so there you have it -- 10000 words and over 10 hours spent writing up thoughts on this not-particularly-good gacha game I might very well drop in a couple of months. orz
