Dissidia

[Josiah]

Josiah strongly agrees that Squall is awesome. He's Josiah's main Dissidia character, in fact, despite his lack of combo attacks.

[SuzuTitor]

CollyChan's main character is Bartz. CollyChan absolutely loves the mix of attacks they gave, especially the mix of close and short ranged.
After that would come Kuja. CollyChan loves Kuja for pretty much the same reasons.

[Josiah]

Josiah spent the first half of Final Fantasy IX thinking Kuja was a girl. Kuja really needs to get a less girly outfit...

[NabMaster]

When Nab was getting Kuja to 100 he almost didn't want to win the battles to avoid seeing him in that speedo-ish outfit However, Nab does think his "range-free" abilities are pretty awesome! Nab's first character was Firion, but he fails hard in the air. Squall is nice, and Beat Fang is good for life.

[SuzuTitor]

Josiah spent the first half of Final Fantasy IX thinking Kuja was a girl. Kuja really needs to get a less girly outfit...

That is why CollyChan has learned to think of every FF character is a guy until they're 100% confirmed as girls. Especially when that character is a villain.

CollyChan wanted to use Firion at first, but hated aerial combat with him.

CollyChan is also considering ExDeath at the moment once CollyChan perfects timing the blocks.

[Silver]

Silver pretty much loses to CollyChan no matter which characters they're using, so it doesn't really matter, but...

Silver was determined to main as Onion Knight when he started hearing everyone complain about how bad Onion Knight was. Before ever playing, Silver knew he would like Onion Knight. So then when Silver got Dissidia, he... didn't like Onion Knight. Stupid Comet, being a pain to hit with... but Silver really, really liked Cecil! So Silver considered Cecil to be his main.

Still, Silver wanted to try using Onion Knight. So Silver leveled him up a bit, got more of his attacks... and all the extensions of his attacks. Once Silver could turn Multi-Hit and Turbo-Hit into HP damaging attacks, well... Onion Knight became a lot more useful. So now Silver uses Onion Knight, yay!

The Emperor is also fun to play around with. Especially in Pandemonium.

[NabMaster]

Nab is currently leveling Golbez and will follow up with Cecil (skipping Zidane for now because Nab really doesn't like the jerky feel to his movements).

[Josiah]

I went into Dissidia planning to make Squall my mine since he's my favorite Final Fantasy hero for a variety of reasons including his realistic character development in FFVIII and the fact that gunblades are awesome, since they're like a gun and a sword at the same time. Fortunately, I determined that I also liked the way Squall handled in Dissidia, since he's a very balanced character with lots of strong attacks like Beat Fang. Even though the lack of combos can make it occasionally hard to land HP attacks.

I also found that I liked Zidane and Tidus, since I'm a very big fan of fast characters and they're easily the fastest ones in the game. Oddly enough, I also really enjoy playing Terra, which is odd since I'm generally not a big fan of long range fighters. I pretty much mastered every ability with Squall, to make him as versatile as possible, and when then able to pick what I considered the most important Extra and Support abilities to focus on with my other favorite characters. At this point, Squall and Tidus are done (though still need level 100 equipment, currently stuck with the 92 stuff), Zidane and Terra still have a lot of AP farming to go, and Cloud, who I randomly decided to main because he just happened to master nearly every important ability during my playthroughs of his Destiny Odyssey, only has one ability to go.

I think people whine too much about Onion Knight. He's extremely fast, fast enough to usually avoid and counter Squall's good old Beat Fang into Fated Circle series of moves, and he can combo off of nearly anything, making him very dangerous. His main weakness is that he tends to stumble or hang a bit if his attacks are dodged, leaving him open for a counter.

[Metalheadz]

This game looks amazing! Thought I don't have a PSP.

From the stuff I've seen on the internet, it looks like Squall is the most BA of all the Cosmos characters. I mean, he can attack like 10 times at once with the gunblade. Unlike Terra, she looks kind of hard to use. Seeing as though I haven't really seen her melee attack and she specializes in throwing energy blasts. No offense to you, Josiah. Zidane, meh, if I ever play this game I don't know if I'll use him. Tidus is awesome, and the game made his blitzace amazing.

But my main will still always be Cloud. FFVII fanboy am I. :D

[Josiah]

Each character has their strengths and weaknesses in Dissidia. Squall has a very good balance of speed and power and some excellent bravery attacks, but he doesn't have any combos which can make it pretty difficult to land a HP attack against skilled opponents. Cloud is powerful and has some good combos, but he's a bit on the slow side and his ranged attacks aren't anything special. Terra has one fairly good melee combo but the rest of her attacks are ranged, which has it's pluses and minuses. Sure you can see a lot of long range attacks coming, but Terra's HP attacks are nearly impossible to escape if you can catch someone off guard. Zidane is extremely fast and one of the best characters when in the air. He can combo off of just about everything and has the fastest hitting HP attack in the game. On the down side, he doesn't have much range and all those combos don't leave him with a lot of points for support abilities. Tidus is really fast and has a lot of combos as well (which are nice but still leave him without a lot of extra points for support abilities). Most of his best attacks though, come out of a dodge of some sort. On the plus side, that can be used to evade attacks and catch opponents off guard. On the down side, it takes longer for those attacks to hit and kinda telegraphs your move to your opponent.

So yeah, there's really no best character. It's a pretty balanced game and really comes down to your play style and favorite characters.

[NabMaster]

Yeah, everybody just has to play as everyone and basically just figure out which one feels right. For me, I started with Firion (Rope Knife is just evil, I swear it can break through blocks) but I'm loving Bartz as well! In comparison, I have real troubles leveling up the casters like Emperor Mateus and Kefka because I'm the sort of player who gets right in his enemies face.