9th Fantasy Final

(This post, includes spoilers for Final Fantasy IX, and especially major ones in the story section.
Also, this post is KINDA LONG, you probably have the game’s runtime to blame. There are sections on this one for a reason.
Screenshots with gray message windows are from a longplay, rather than my file.)

I’ve never finished a Final Fantasy game before this.

Unless you count Kingdom Hearts (I don’t) a series in which I have played a good amount of. I’ve even played all the way through The World Ends With You (DS), which is another game from Square and even one of their more obscure titles, and have entries from both at the top of my favorite games lists. Yet, Square’s original claim to fame is a beast I’d never bested.

I’ve tried the original game (GBA version), FFVI since it was included with my SNES Classic, I’ve tried the media darling and cultural phenomenon that is FFVII, I’ve tried FFX of which I have owned for at least 15 years unplayed, I tried the real life demo disc for FFXII packaged with Dragon Quest VIII, I have even tried some version of FFXIII because maybe I’m just a wacko. I've tried FFXV, which exhausted me by being hours of AAA virtual land to travel across.

(I have not however, tried the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.) (Because I fear socialization.)

But this one is different. This one is Final Fantasy IX.

(And what’s also different, is I am going mostly to stop using roman numerals from here on.)

My relationship with FF9 is a somewhat odd one prior to actually playing it, because boy howdy do they do a poor job advertising these to new players who aren't already familiar and fans of the series. It’s very easy to see one mainline (non-MMO) FF game prior to 15 while unacquainted and think they all look nearly the same.

Back in 2016, I got my first decent computer. It was a laptop that couldn’t run anything made after 2011 very well (A benchmark found as I used it to play Sonic Generations), but I wanted to branch out and try other games on Steam. I of course, looked towards the big names that my computer opened up avenues for me to try.

Final Fantasy is a series that has so many titles, and so many fans that you will get people jumping up and down to tell you their favorite is some game like “Final Fantasy Battle Buddies 008 - The King’s Hourglass” for the Wonderduck handheld only released in Mainland China in 2006. So, when it comes to people talking about their favorite mainline, numbered title, you have very little reference point on which to start with since they’ll just start yapping about indecipherable elements relative to the other titles, and with the anthology aspect, starting at #1 isn’t necessary or even recommended either.

I remember, very vividly, looking at the Steam page for FF9 and wondering: “What is it, actually, about?” and “What is the combat like?” as well as “Is this game a good starting point if you haven’t played very many RPGs?”

RPGs are something I have instead learned over the years from dozens upon dozens of RPG experiences, what I like, what I want from them, and finally, how to read their description pages so I can tell what they’re giving me. I can say without a doubt, looking back on these pages, I still have no idea what they wanted me to think.

Steam doesn’t really tell you anything about it, it mostly just hypes up that it’s another game in the series. The Nintendo eShop one isn’t any better, in fact it’s worse because on the store page it almost exclusively only shows images from the game’s FMV scenes??? What am I even buying? A movie?

So of course, this gameplay and story enigma is going to be the first RPG, I play to completion on my PSP (and first PS1 RPG in general).

Spurred on to finally take the plunge on a game I’ve been looking at for 8 years entirely by a friend saying the game can be finished in a bit over 12 hours. (Which I found by hand, is not common in a normal playthrough. My finish time was about 42-43h, and the HowLongToBeat average is 46h. It’s a 4 disc game, you guys.) I am ultimately glad I played it thinking it inherently would be over fast, but wasn’t.

But you’re probably wondering why I kept looking at it in the window anyway: It’s because this one looked so VIBRANT and WELCOMING to me compared to the others.

If there is one thing I can tell you, Square is good at what they do, and that includes making FF7 appear to have an oddly dark, grimy tone like there's something hidden in its underbelly. Which as it turns out, is not immediately appealing to me. Go figure.

This is compared to FF9, which showed images like this:

Combined with the knowledge most of the games aren’t connected or even share the same defining mechanics, and my general tenacity to give a series several (several) chances, 9 looked like it indeed could be something I do like. But then again, the advertisements absolutely insisted “It’s something!!” with no clear elaboration.

GRAPHICS

Since it’s related, I’d like to take a moment to talk about FF9’s visuals having actually played it now.

As I vaguely mentioned, I’m not the most familiar with the PlayStation 1 and its graphical power compared to the N64 (I only got a PS1 a year ago! Wow!), especially regarding 3D display capabilities, so it is a tad hard for me to compare to the contemporary. But with this from the year 2000 and Square’s next Final Fantasy up in 2001 for the PS2 (of which looks very nice for a PS2 game still), I can only assume this is considered “good” and if I play more titles on the system this will be more apparent to me.

What I can say, is that the scene dressing is fantastic and felt very crisp! When I tried FF7 I found myself constantly fumbling around areas, struggling to see what was where and areas tended to blend together as a whole. 9 kept itself very easy to read, with still exceptionally powerful sights like Burmecia.

Over time I expected to have complaints about the pre-rendered backgrounds, but it ultimately remained more than adequate and a great view. There was only one area I could not properly navigate a few rooms in (Desert Palace).

The models for the characters had a pretty nice level of detail, with really expressive animations despite the lack of facial movement, especially in battle. It was a great treat!

I was very surprised when the overworld had an area without Mist, and revealed the map was actually capable of being displayed without much noticeable draw distance application. Initially, I genuinely took it as a world building excuse to use the ‘ol fog trick, so you can imagine how I felt as the game went on.

Additionally, I was fond of the game’s choice to use 3D renders (or at least they appear to be?) for the party’s menu icons. This is not to say I don’t like Yoshitaka Amano and Tetsuya Nomura’s art, but their work on the party member menu as I saw it in FF6 and FF7/10 (respectively) didn’t quite sit right with me as it felt like a clashing visual to the rest of the game. Matching the in-game FMVs more sells the feeling that the true style of the game, that your mind should be filling in is what’s depicted in said FMVs—a strong tool when your in-game 3D resources are detailed but still limited.

I'm not sure if this is just my PSP as I did not get to check from a PS3, much less a real PS1, but there was a bit of a dithering effect over the screen during battles that was most noticable during the start kind of heavily. It wasn't awful, but I was curious why it hit the display. My current PSP video out cord is pretty poor, and also incapable of handling certain color patterns so I did not get to see if a CRT (as would be expected then) smooths out the appearance of it.

GAMEPLAY

Now to talk about the gameplay.

It… is serviceable.

I really liked the ability system, in the last year I’ve realized I love managing numbers to be efficient, although with minimal math; Things like keeping consumable items for dungeons, keeping track of party member MP, and sorting things like in a deck for card games all are some of my favorite things to do.

Abilities delivered for this, constantly keeping me peeking at my status, moving items around my party to get the most efficient level ups so I would be ready for anything that shows up. I was a tad disappointed in a few of the abilities, like Cover/Protect Girls and Counter due to their seemingly low activation rate, but apparently according to the manual (which I only looked at while in the last dungeon, ha!) I was missing the ability Eye 4 Eye which would increase Counter’s rate. It was relatedly a tad frustrating to see missing abilities, and no clue on where the items that would give me those abilities were.

Unfortunately, abilities’ luster only held up so much of the game, as by around Disc 3, most items I continued to encounter had repeat abilities. Which would be fine if I wasn't mastering nearly every ability I got access to on sight.

Next, the Active Turn Battle system, as present in FF9, doesn’t really make sense to me, actually. It’s functional, I guess? I’m not sure what it’s trying to do. I had it set to “Active” for most of the game, and noticed very little difference from “Wait”, which it defaults to. I also had my battle messages set to Fast.

I only felt pressure to input quicker than usual in the very final battle… But it didn’t really matter anyway, which I realized after absolutely zoning out for a bit fumbling in my inventory for a Remedy once.

Was I supposed to leave it on Wait? Perhaps I’m stuck on a misnomer, of sorts? It feels less “active”, and more “proactive” at best. I found myself mostly trying to line up the timing of Life/Phoenix Down → Cure/Hi-Potion more than anything. Since there’s no way to know what the opponent is going to do, you can’t do anything in particular to act in response to them. But after seeing something happen, ATB has little bearing on your response beyond making you click a tad bit faster; If my party member dies, I was going choose whether to heal them either way and putting a timer on my actions has little bearing on that.

If you put in an input, like Freya’s Jump, hoping to avoid an attack, it’s very possible it won’t really matter. Extremely frequently I noticed enemies with moves like Death would interrupt it, or would inflict statuses I was deliberately trying to avoid preemptively like Virus, even though I input it quite a while ago, sometimes as my first input in the entire battle.

This is unlike Earthbound’s rolling HP system, which is “reactive”, and creates a very large panic for the player to respond to something. Due to the nature of the system, in the most tense battles of the game, the player can have multiple things to respond to and have to make twitch decisions, based on the game speed, to see if they can get in before a party member is knocked out. While just an illusion, as by being turn based it inherently can’t really be as “active” as an Action RPG such as Square’s own Kingdom Hearts, I feel the activeness of Earthbound is more prominent than the ATB at any moment.

Heck, the ATB ultimately feels like it made the game easier and less strategic: Near the end I was rocking 4 Auto-Regens and 3 Auto-Potions. Done generically just to increase my effective HP a bit, it magically was a drastic increase with the following sequence:

Auto-Regen heals every party member independently every something seconds → Get hit → Auto-Potion starts the potion use animation → Auto-Regen heals everyone during potion animation → The potion user is healed by actually using the potion.

As cool as this is, I also started to feel like there was kind of no better or more worthwhile risk/reward option than coating everything in Regen, whether it was with Reis’s Wind or Auto-Regen. Unless I had my Potion count run out, I also never had Hi-Potion set to be used by Auto-Potion either. ATB also slowed the game down, as really simple enemies that were easily taken out with little planning had a delay in the time for default attacks to actually come out.

Maybe I just think fast or press buttons faster than I think I do? Slower?? If you ask me, the ATB should be a timer that shows when the character will next be able to actually move, rather than when you’ll next get to use their menu. It would track Slow and Haste better too. This combined with both the player and opponent being able to move simultaneously (in most scenarios) would make it truly active.

Unrelated to the ATB, I overall enjoyed the party members and their diverse actions. I did find that late game, neglecting certain party members (particularly Amarant for me) made it hard for them to catch up naturally, constantly taking fatal damage.

I liked using Quina, but it was actually very annoying to whittle down a new enemy’s HP just to see “Taste bad!” again because they don’t tell you whether or not the enemy s/he eats will give you anything. Near the beginning I was getting incredibly diverse moves like Mighty Guard and 1,000 Needles and was excited to build this continuously to the end-game, but with the lack of tells, I eventually shelved Quina entirely.

Despite being in the party by force for most of the game, Zidane’s Steal command was also very lacking, and frankly just annoying to bother with. Don’t get me wrong, the IDEA of stealing items from enemies is great. But with some abysmal rates, having to spend a turn on Detect (although I am glad it exists), and the fact it really slows down the fight to make you sit around like an idiot while Zidane pickpockets Bullmaster, Lord of the Flame Dungeon, I have to say they did very little to make it feel more dynamic. It was not fitting for a main character to have such a dull ability.

True to my experience with Square’s other titles, this game is filled to the brim with obscure and easily passed up items that can be beyond useful. Instead of going on a tirade about that in particular, I leave you with this Awkward Zombie comic about the mental effect of playing these. I play without guides to walk out of these rooms in ignorant bliss, time saved from my already 40 hour playthrough, because it devolves very quickly.

Unfortunately very late game, I started actively stealing items from the Chaos bosses after checking what they held with Detect, and I really regretted digging the idea up to begin with: Each one holds an item with 0.3% chance to obtain, and I was now stuck in the gambling hole I had dug.

After stealing every item on the first boss after a very long, exhausting fight (Read: Boring and me mashing the same input on Zidane for an hour), I tried it again on the second one which lead to me being there for what felt like another hour, and eventually me just giving up on it and trying to end the fight. Of course, the game froze when Freya’s Trance Jump attack threw spears at the guy, and I had to start the boss over.

Amusingly, the only thing to get me out of the hole was looking the steal rate up online, one of the only things I checked AT ALL, because I was getting extremely suspicious that it could have been bugged.

From that point onward, I kind of just fought every remaining Chaos boss with 3 characters + Bandit equipped Zidane mashing Steal, in hopes he’d pull something. It was dumb, and also emphasized how much I did not really need much thought to win the fights since I essentially was down a man. I did not steal equips from any remaining bosses, because I kept thinking there wouldn’t be any points to actually equip the items (there were, twice). Although I did steal from the final boss out of fear, to get an Elixir since I thought I would need it. (I did not.) (I didn’t use any Elixirs all game.)

Speaking of not using Elixirs, unlike the age-old “But you can’t buy Ether!” (which I experienced mildly in a literal form for a time), I genuinely just did not feel like anything actually needed or wanted an Elixir. Like, ever. It was kind of weird.

Trance was nice, but felt uninteresting, not enough to write about here even. I welcomed it readily, but didn’t find it very exciting.

The Help system, found by pressing Select in menus which puts a funny little Moogle on screen (Mogster?) to tell you info about selected things was very helpful overall. Every game (especially RPGs) should have a Help Moogle. Within FF9 specifically, in battle it's a tad annoying to use since it covers the party member status, but it was a fair compromise to display info during battles despite the limited space and need to show active attacks. Although occasionally I found the game’s Help system lacking, mostly when referring to characters’ more complicated abilities, such as Freya’s Six Dragons and Zidane’s Jackpot attacks, but nothing debilitating.

This all resulted in the battles not feeling not very impressive, but with most of the awkward parts optional, not bad either. I got maybe 4 or 5 game overs (one of which from thinking a fight was scripted for a loss). The most trouble in general I had was battling the ship in Oeilvert, until I realized Spinning Around In A Circle is the indicator for confusion and not a weird unique status, and then I just turned on Clear Headed on every one of my party members. It would be nice if they gave you a Kingdom Hearts-like battle report for your game overs (and other statistics of course), but I guess that would require it not to send you to the title screen.

All of the dungeons in FF9 are fairly easy to navigate, but I was not opposed to this. “A good dungeon is good, but a bad dungeon is forever” – Shigeru Miyamoto (Source: trust me). Last year I played Mega Man Battle Network 1, and this year Phantasy Star II. They both have really bad dungeons, clearly made to inflate the time and just cause general malaise. An RPG without this experience is so unbelievably relieving.

On the other hand, I also played Phantasy Star IV this year and Battle Network 2 the year before, and I found the dungeons in both to ultimately elevate the game experience.

Really though, I think FF9 doesn’t have the chops in battle mechanics and inventory management to make a more complicated dungeon click. Desert Palace and Mount Gulug are good enough for the job. By the time of the third disc, I had the ability to just buy 99 Potions and 99 Hi-Potions on a thoughtless whim, even with Auto-Potion draining my stock most of the game. At the beginning of the game, I was also a tad off put by the loading time for battles to start (but I adapted by the first boss), so I would also imagine the developers wanted to cut down on the amount of times you’d see a fight and simpler dungeons would be part of that. Perhaps the game's superbosses are holed up in dungeons with horrors beyond my comprehension, but being on the wayside is different than a mandatory trek into a torture chamber just to see a game's plot.

Synthesis was a neat idea, but it became bland as the game progressed. I was sad the majority of synthesis weapons were for Zidane, and unlike what the Steam page claims (not that I remembered it when playing), a lot of items you get DO go to waste. I also would have liked to have had a reason to stay with older weapons from the synth, but this did not come to fruition.

The Card Game

The included card game, Tetra Master is, a game. Normally I’m really psyched to play card games (and I was to start with), but not telling the player what the cards do and say is a big misstep. The most important part of card games, whether collectable or with a static playing card deck is to know every effect as soon as it becomes relevant to you; either through becoming public knowledge or getting it in your possession. It’s like playing Poker without knowing what the Ace does, or Yu-Gi-Oh! by attacking without reading the attack and defense numbers on the cards.

It feels like a weird attempt to inflate the amount of content in the game, when the base run time is already 40+ hours without touching most of the other sidequests it has to offer besides an imperfect run of Mognet. It also isn’t multiplayer, which while not very big for me given I have NO ONE TO PLAY WITH, is a bit of a shame. It would be a great motivator to share and compete for information on the cards in an organic fashion rather than looking up a guide.

Make no mistake, I quite liked the idea of the very simple arrow pointing mechanic, that chooses how the cards will interact. As a game that you can play as the game progresses, card power going up is also a good idea. Heck, the forced ante to give your opponent a card if they win is pretty interesting. ...But you wouldn't bet on a game you don't know the rules of, would you?

Although released literally 20 years later, ultimately I would rather just play Joustus from Shovel Knight: King of Cards, if I wanted a similar card/board game that involves arrows on a grid. It gives you all you need to play, and tells you all the details of each card too. Perhaps it is based on it though (quite likely), so I won’t talk it up too hard.

---

Many of these sound like things that are heavy complaints, but it's a lot more I had to stare at them either up close or from afar for over 40 hours so I have a billion Opinions. It's the kind of thing where I would say "Boy, I'm excited for FF10, I hope they add these things!". But 10 actually threw out most of 9's mechanics (particularly ATB) very intentionally, so I guess not :V.

But something has to be said about holding up that long! I think it's not talked about enough that a game's flaws become more apparent over time, and a long campaign will force them upon all players in an inescapable way. It's not easy keeping up with the scrutiny of millions of players for that long.

MUSIC

(Most songs linked to Spotify, please forgive the need to login for the full song. "/" names are due to differing OST names online.)

I quite liked the music! Most of the numbered FF games before a certain date were composed by the same guy, Nobuo Uematsu, but FF9 particularly stuck with me even after turning off the game. My favorite song is definitely “Run!”. There’s also the part of the game in Disc 1 where “Hunter’s Chance”/"Festival of the Hunt" plays, and it absolutely sold me on how I would feel about the rest of the game.

It all kept me energized across the entire game, and early on I was absolutely addicted to turning the game on for the battle theme. Even as this mellowed out, I almost always looked forward to another battle starting even if just for the music. I think this is a really important trait for an RPG to have! I experienced this with several games over the years and really they make up the repertoire of games that I finished partially because the music was such a reward (Phantasy Star series, Shining Force), and ones that I’m kind of eager to play to completion just for the songs (Megami Tensei series, FFX).

Often when I’m talking with friends about game music, I say things like “Oh I can’t listen to that, I haven’t played the game yet.” and FF9 is a perfect example of why. There is an unmatched joy for me in the delight of power-packed songs for the first time when aligned with the moments they were precisely assigned, and FF9 was absolutely full of them. Games are perhaps the fullest culmination of multimedia content, and nothing beats getting a rush of every element of it fresh out the oven.

Listening back to songs from the soundtrack of games is always connected to the events of the game itself for me, and I cherish that experience as well.

On that note, unlike Phantasy Star II, which I (keep mentioning and) quite liked the OST of*, even the most played songs are still a wonder for me to hear after playing the game which is pretty impressive. In particular, Kuja’s Theme, which is played for a whole dungeon that I was accidentally in for way, way too long (several hours + a game over without saving because I missed a Moogle, both because I am a fool) is actually still one of my favorites.

*(I think PSII is 100% full of great songs, especially for such an early game on the system, but also I am not joking when I say the song "Violation" gave me a headache to hear the first few months after due to the agony and length of the associated areas.)

Playing a song often over a 40+ hour campaign is more of a risk than it might seem, but FF9 passed for me just fine.

Some of my other favorite unmentioned songs include (I stopped so I wouldn't be saying like, the entire thing):
• Freya’s Theme
• Over the Hill/Crossing those Hills
• The Wavering Blade/The Sword of Doubt
• Tantalus's Theme
• Globglogabgalab
• Esto Gaza (This one sounds like a PMD song??)
• Bran Bal, the Soulless Village
• Not Alone/You’re Not Alone!
• The Darkness of Eternity/Dark Messenger
• The Final Battle(Love how this plays in-game!)
• Melodies of Life [English] [Japanese] (Song so strong and good I want to cry literally every time???)

This is one of those games that really made me wish there were more battle themes throughout, I absolutely loved the ones we got so more would have been a great treat.

I feel like I want to say more? But music is like describing a picture, the item is already capable of speaking for itself. If you're reading this and haven't/don't intend to play the game to hear these tracks, I have decent confidence these tracks will bring the desired vibe still.

(Side note: I wrote the majority of this post listening to the OST of FF9. :3)

STORY

Can we talk about the story? I’ve been dying to talk about the story. I have no idea if it is just that I am also a writer (or at least I try to be), but goodness I love this game’s writing.

9 gives a story about life, and I absolutely love how it goes about doing that.

The characters in FF9 all represent different life views, and I absolutely adore the cast and their interactions. I put this part at the bottom, because I am going to TALK YOUR DANG EAR OFF ABOUT THESE CHARACTERS for just a bit.

To put it one way; I feel like every character in FF9 is a foil to someone or something, and boy is it efficient. Even Amarant, who comes in late in Disc 2 to the point it feels like he might as well have arrived in 3 is rife with energy.

I think a lot of RPGs are really big on talking your ear off to tell their story and message; not keen on the “Show Don’t Tell” rule. And I don’t blame them. If your game—your storytelling medium—is mostly text, then shouldn’t you use it and reflect that ratio? But, “It’s how you play the game” too, isn’t it?

A lot of people also seem to think “efficient” writing also entails “short”, “flavorless”, and subsequently, “empty” writing. In my very, very personal opinion? It’s the opposite. Bake something too long and it will burn. Too little and it’ll be nothing but nearly raw material, likely a food poisoning hazard besides. What matters is what you’re making, and that you do what it requires! Short stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart” are considered classics for how much they say in a confined range, and the same can be applied to longer ones.

9 opts to use as many moments as it can, however fleeting they may be, to keep pace in the game but tell as much as they can. My favorite thing about 9, is that when ever it chooses, as sudden as life itself, it stops and while still using the foil-wrapped characters, to take the time to deliver a strong yet still sudden feeling blow.

This game sits proudly as one of the few games to nearly make me cry. Three times.
...and a half. My eyes are so watery you guys.

(That’s more than anything else, which includes previous record holder Phantasy Star II, which landed one and a half!)

Let's start with Amarant, he doesn’t talk much, but he says so much with his silence. It’s so good it makes me want to explode. By not talking in a group of very chatty characters, some very strong and opinionated, some who just want to speak their mind, and some who are just antsy, it really amps up the flavor of each. All by just placing a guy with his arms crossed in a room! Just a guy in a room!! Wow!!! You can even put a spin on it, by having people speak to him directly, forcing a rare response.

There’s an (Active Time Event) ATE scene that has Eiko make quick claims and assertions about Amarant, but due to the way he interacts he doesn’t respond before she leaves, which is also a trait of her. This is unbelievably efficient in talking about both characters. It is hard to say if it was my mind or not, that really said “this is the moment something in Amarant changed, and turned a gear”.

Speaking of Eiko, I’m really impressed with the depiction of a child in this game. Most material tends to add kids “for the youth” to just make the cast not seem like they’re aging eternally, and skips over getting any real use out of them. Eiko uses what I think is instead, the most valuable part of any actual kid and frankly a stronger sign of youth than the normal fare: Their observational skills.

Kids are great at seeing things from plain, straight, yet to an adult, unusual angles. Think, when a kid asks “Why is the sky blue?”, why do they ask it? Because they haven’t heard the answer yet. They haven’t seen the sky for years and years. Their assumptions are only as broad as their age, but equally their manners are typically linked.

Eiko is a rare example of using this, at all. By giving her a very unique life view mixed with headstrong-ness you get a character still willing to challenge the status of nearly anything in the world. Equally, normally it’s quite a slog to see characters with age differences seeking romances that make them not only out of the league of their crush, but also not grasp the disparity of the matter.

It is a forever doomed thought.

This is used creatively, to actually push the game’s romance between Zidane and Garnet to higher levels. I am so serious when I say everyone is a foil. By having a character so incredibly dead set on their goals, and so straightforward YET not blind or outright stupid, it causes a chain reaction in the others.

While Eiko directly influences Zidane, inadvertently improving the way he talks to Garnet, it also really makes it clear what the state of Garnet’s evolving personality throughout the game is nearly every time they talk together.

To go back a bit, I mentioned aging eternally. And what on Earth, could be more aging than a middle-aged man. That’s right. Steiner.

This guy. This guy right here? Power move. By existing, Steiner comes with the statement that it’s never too late to teach an old dog new tricks, and you’re never too old to learn something new about yourself. But by being so stubborn for most of the game, he really brings out the flavors in the other characters— Put a wedge between any two people, and they’ll move it aside. But what’s interesting is how they move it. Will they push? Pull? Ask nicely? Wait for the other to move it? I love this guy.

I don’t have “comfort characters” as they’re called, but like. You know when people online are talking about their favorite characters, and are like “I love these guys so much. Look at this image of them.” and it's just them bickering?

That’s me with these characters.

I would keep going, but I feel like I would just be stating the obvious more? In my word processor, this is nearly a full page worth already! I have no idea if others read these characters like this, but I can only assume yes based on the fact portions of their worldviews are outlined in their personal quotes? To me, FF9 is a perfect case study if one wants to learn how to write efficient, but dense characters.

I also adore the use of the opening play, ‘I Want To Be Your Canary’. It gives a nice reprieve throughout to think about, while being a fun way to think about the events of the game in perspective to fiction. Er, to fictional fiction? There’s so many elements of its inclusion that make a great additional flavor to the story.

Worldbuilding is a fun thing to observe and I found it really clever and unexpected that Trance was used as an actual aspect of their world. As a gameplay mechanic, it was fairly simple but the concept was easy to understand (and Mogster's explaination covers any needed details), and transferring it to story events was very welcome. At times it feels like many RPGs handwave their mechanics, especially when it would jeopardize a narrative concept. I believe similar is supposed to be going on with Beatrix wiping the party easily in the first two discs, but them being strong enough to actually beat Kuja? The experience points and abilities you've gathered are real, and Steiner is able to actually use Beatrix's attacking abilities. It's really important to me that the "Role-Playing" part of RPG is embraced in some way, even if just a little, so I'm quite glad.

This game also has an incredible sense of humor, and it really kept me going as it progressed. If there is one thing I love, it is humor that is played simultaneously to amuse as well as inform.

Many works are afraid to be goofy, either when deep in tension or even just ever. But with 9’s focus? It belongs especially. Life is absolutely wrapped in moments like this, especially when surrounded by people who are as diverse and lively like the cast of this game.

9 is further notable on a personal level for confirming a really specific thing, but the realization I don’t have a major dislike for any particular “time” for fantasy stories. Medieval, futuristic, or “steampunk” like FF9 has… really doesn’t matter to me as much as the way it’s delivered. I found myself incredibly interested in the world of the game, just as much as other games rooted in other times (although I am definitely partial to urban fantasy). I would imagine with the right swing, you could make me like a freshly post-apocalyptic setting more than air.

The only character out of place felt to me to be the final boss, as they did not have any real bearing on the other characters. As a literary device, they convey fighting against life and death itself, the shadow of what they’ve been in conflict of the entire time, which fits fine enough, but the setup just isn’t there. They made it up in like 5 seconds to fight a cast of characters it feels like you’ve known a lifetime.

This is contrast to Kuja, who was a such a perfectly suitable character for the role of main villain and final boss (COMPARATIVELY, CULTIVATED OVER THE COURSE OF ALL 4 DISCS) that the ending following the spent like a billion paragraphs talking about how perfect he was for it.

It’s really funny to me rather than a sour spot of the story because the ending text is so long, well done, and focusing on the characters that WERE set up, that it’s more of a weird bump in the road that they fought some sort of god, than anything that actually harms the core narrative.

Also I’m not really sure where to put this, but I wanted to bring up that in addition to focusing on life, FF9 makes a really great set of points about discrimination of others. It said it so well, and pretty directly that reiterating also feels pointless, but I really found it to be one of the best depictions of it in anything I’ve seen. Nothing snips at your conscious and the way you view others than it aiming at the ones you know so well, not constantly, but quick and suddenly without expectation. It just makes you want to reach out and do something.

Put Vivi on an emotional rollercoaster and make the viewer watch.

If I have one complaint, it is the continents. The “Lost” Continent. The “Forgotten” Continent.
Buddy, if this continent is so lost then why are people from the Mist Continent here chillin’ in Esto Gaza.

I feel like there was a lot of room for more settlements like the dwarves in Conde Petie to have their own flair and flavor to bring and make the world of Gaia more diverse feeling and up the feeling that the people of the Mist Continent were extremely isolated from the rest. Ultimately, it’s fine with the amount of the story revolving around the main cast, which could only be offset if more of the cast was from the rest of the planet and that would be quite the hassle to manage.

This part is related but not a complaint: At some point in the game, the focus shifts from the heroes from the Mist and Outer Continent, how their cultures interact, and all of the deep details, towards Stopping Kuja. It is very much a point in which they had to choose and make a decision based on the story’s path. “Can’t have their cake and eat it too” comes into play, but it really makes you wonder how it would have gone if it was more Mist Continent focused.

I'm not sure if this is just me, but I also felt like despite the fact Kingdom Hearts does not have very many FF9 characters in it (on account of Nomura not designing them), it shares most similarities in vibe with it. Perhaps it is just the era of Square it originated, pre-merger and right on that line of game developments started around the PS2 era.

CONCLUSION, OR SOMETHING

FF9 sits extremely weird in placements of games I’ve played, because I found the gameplay so inoffensive, yet kind of middling that I can’t really drive myself put it on my favorite games of all-time grid. I would gladly play through another 40 hour game with similar mechanics if the rest struck my fancy this much, though. But if I’m just judging story? Top 3 of all time, out of all fiction I have experienced in all media. I don’t even know what else would go there, I’m just that especially ready to go to bat for it in my personal mindscape.

Despite being text, with no voiced dialogue beyond the ending theme, it simply isn’t fair to label it as a novel or comic book and have it compared to them either, what with the multimedia thing I said way earlier. (Although I DO feel like I just got out of shotgun reading like 8 novels in a row, especially the final dungeon and ending text.)

While 9 is absolutely not the first Final Fantasy I tried, I am definitely very glad I kept trying long enough to have this be the one I finished. Funny enough, I started playing Crisis Core a few weeks before starting FF9 and quite liked it, so this might not have happened. FF9 ended up winning me over so much that I decided to dedicate all of my RPG related time to it!

I also finished it only on the 10th of this November after starting some time in very late September, but it came out on the 14th of Nov in 2000 (US). What a coincidence!

If I have but one regret, it is that I played this on my PSP first. This will be a very high bar for all available RPGs on the system to pass for me going forward...

Post last updated Nov. 14, 2024