Can you smell it? Dissidia, a mere two weeks away! Christmas couldn't be merrier, if only I lived in Japan and actually knew how to read the language. Argh. Look what surfaced though: thanks to tipster jack_gllghr, we found pics/scans of Square Enix's Dissidia: Final Fantasy Ultimania (alpha) book care of one keiya_taiko.

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the Ultimania series of guidebooks. Resourceful like hell if you want to squeeze as much as you can from Square Enix's games.

The Ultimania guide for Dissidia has your typical line of details: character info, moves, abilities, the lot of them. Of course, gameplay elements are also explained. Take for example that shot with Firion (second pic below).

Judging from the text and screens (and some info from jack_gllghr), this page talks of how to assign skills and attributes (?) to your character. Note  the upper-left pic showing six slots, divided to two sections (Land and Air), each getting three attacks (button combos included).

And then there's that pic that's chock full of FF icons from the past (first pic below). Selphie, Boko, Lulu, is that Gilgamesh to the right?, and... the Judges from FFXII. It's the quiz part of the guide: what better way to test an FF geek's knowledge on the series and its many characters! (Woot, I see Namingway from FFIV DS!)

 
  

Ah. And I think it's still too early to say "Ooh, I see Vaan, he'll be FFXII's playable!" Nah, they also showed tons of other characters and icons too, and we don't see all of them being playable. It looks like this guide only looks at already revealed characters up to Shantotto.

Keiya's photobucket album is linked below. You can check it out at your own leisure. It's got pics of the characters and their EX modes - nothing really astoundingly new there. Keiya says he'll be adding more pics soon enough, as well as some translations. We'll be keeping tabs too, just in case something interesting pops up. We'll point them out as soon as we get word.

Our deepest gratitude goes to jack_gllghr for the heads up! Yep, here's looking at you jack! (this article would have gone up sooner, but... as you can see, I couldn't resist geekgasming over here.)

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