Fog
Yay! Final Fantasy IX is finished!Took a little bit longer than I expected, but then I actually bothered to complete most of the subquests, which can take some time.
Sooooooooooooooooooo. FF9. Yeah.
Back in the day, this game was announced to be a 'return to origin' for the series, so no more modern Westernised characters (FF8) and no Anime-esque design either (FF7), and basically, no cool villain, no brilliant story, and no Big High-Tech City shaped like a Pizza (all also FF7).
Kuja isn't really a very interesting bad guy. He's too gay, for one thing, and I know that Japanese have this misled belief that guys with long silver hair are cool, but NO. Except for Sephiroth of course.
The story is kinda decent though, it's not that clever, but it's got that whole phylosophical and existential twist going on, and of course some babbling about souls and life energy and shit, courtesy of good ole' Hironobu Sakaguchi.
Put simply, the characters aren't that interesting.
Zidane is too cocky.
Eiko is too annoying.
Dagger is too boring.
Freya might as well not even be there.
Quina is initially funny, but her whole 'relate everything to food' bit becomes annoying really fast. I mean, some relativation is good, but keep it limited.
The only characters I enjoyed were Vivi and Steiner, out of which Vivi is actually the only one who gets a decent background. And you have to like him. Hating Vivi is like Hating a very small fluffy duckling. I tell ya though, sometimes when I say those little yellow balls of shit floating on the water, I just wanna.........
But I Digress.
Steiner is actually pretty much a two-dimensional character as well, but I only liked him because he was a hard-ass on EVERYONE who's not a princess, except for Vivi. And he was the obvious comic relief character. He does get the girl with the Huge Breasts at the end of the game though. Gotta respect that.
As for the game itself, well, it's pretty standard. Like they said, it's a return to origin, so you're basically getting the kind of battle you already got 3 times on the SuperNES. Boss battles are a very simple matter of just using the same attacks over and over and over until they die, which is kinda boring. FF8 suffered from the same thing, only FF7 offered a more balanced battle system, where at least the use of summons was restricted.
And typically, like in the old games, you will meet some really annoying 'counter EVERYTHING' monsters and cheap 'instant death' bosses, which is what made the old games so damn FRUSTRATING sometimes.
I really like the subgames here though. Ever since FF7 it seems to be common to have one major subgame that leads to all kinds of cool and rare shit. In FF7 it was Chocobo breeding, in FF8 it was the Card game, and here it is the Chocobo Digging Game. There IS a card game in FF9, but it is totally useless. You don't get ANYTHING for playing it. It's only fun if you're a completist or an avid collector, which, unfortunately, I am. I found 94 of the 100 cards, but I think I have save game somewhere, where I have all of them. Pretty Sick, even for me.
Thing is though, the game will often reward skillful treasure-hunting with a card, which is kinda stupid, considering there is no USE to these cards AT ALL. And that is one of my major problems with this game. All too often it rewards you with rare, but totally useless items. Like Equipment for characters that are only in your party for one short section in the game, and you get said equipment, like, 3 Discs later.
The digging subgame I found to be really fun though, although it's probably not for everyone. It's very rewarding at least, and most of the really strong equipment can be gathered through this game.
Oh, and I really dislike the Trance System. Every Final Fantasy game, since FF7, has had some kind of 'limit' attack, and it's invariably been better than Trance. For, you see, by receiving damage, the Trance gauge increases, and when it's full, you become stronger, and sometimes earn some temporary new skills. The problem is though. It only works during the battle when your gauge is filled, and you can't take it with you too other battles. Unlike FF7, where a filled limit gauge could only be used when you wanted too, or FF8, where you could use limit skills as long as your HP was low enough. So all too often you'll get Tranced during a stupid fight with weak enemies, which seems like a total waste. Even more often you will be tranced shortly before the fight ends, which just makes you feel annoyed.
In all, the key for this game is "charming". It's very good, but not great, it doesn't really have any memorable moments, despite many of the spectacular CG movies, I was just like 'meh' most of the time.
But this IS a Square game, after all, and they know how to make a fun, varied and rewarding RPG, better than almost everyone else.
This game is definitely more sensical and better worked out than FF8, but it lacks the elements to become a real classic: 9.3.
Almost at the end of the F, now!
posted by Ingen! @ 11:40 AM
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