A game that truly deserves the title of Final Fantasy.
Unlike the two past entries in the series, the game takes place in a medieval/Victorian setting, with flying ships, and steam powered machines. The main character is Zidane, a thief who for some reason has a monkey tail. Akira Toryiama anyone? Jokes aside, he is part of this theater group/band of thieves called Tantalus, who have been hired to kidnap Princess Garnet through performing a play in the kingdom of Alexandria, and kidnapping her while no one is looking. Through a series of events, Zidane ends up traveling with the Princess, a young black mage named Vivi, and the queen's captain, Steiner. Thus starting an adventure that leads to a evil plot involving the queen and a mysterious man attempting to take over Alexandria and the neighboring kingdoms.
I digress, what's an RPG without a good gameplay system? Like past Final Fantasy's, the battles are set in ATB (Active Time Battle) in which there is a time bar for each character. When it is full, the character may take an action. Whether it be attacking, using magic, an item, or a special ability. Once they performed the action, the character must wait until his/her bar is filled up again. Meanwhile, the enemies can attack as well when their invisible bars are filled up. Each character has their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities. For example, Vivi has the ability to cast destructive magic to damage his opponents, however, he has low physical attack power and defense, so he'll need to stay in the back row during fights. Meanwhile, Steiner has high attack power and defense power with little to no magic abilites. Other characters can serve as healers or perform special tasks, (such as Zidane bieng able to steal items from enemies.) So as you get more party members, it'll be important to form your party so that each character's strengths make up for another's weaknesses. Which is quite a welcome change from FFVII's fully customizable system in which anyone can practically fill any role depending on the magic you equip on them.
Another unique thing about FF9's gameplay is the being able to learn abilities through wearing certain equipment. Each piece of equipment can give your character certain abilities, such as attack boosts to certain enemy types or immunities to certain status ailments. If you remove it however, you won't be able to use that ability. However, if you get enough AP (Ability Points) through winning several battles while wearing that piece of equipment, you can permanently learn it. This system has players think about whether they should immediately go for the next best piece of equipment, or keep the ones they have on at the moment so they can learn an ability that can benefit them later.
Next we have the graphics. Even though this game was a PS1 game, it's graphics are surprisingly good. The character models are very detailed, and the areas themselves look fantastic. While some people may complain about the cartoonish character designs, I'm actually quite fond of them. Several games nowadays try too hard to look as realistic as possible. It's nice to see a game that hasn't tried to go down that path and settle for something that actually looks like something from a fantasy game.
Then, there is the game's music. Nobuo Uematsu was well received for his fantastic soundtracks in the games he was involved with. This game however, is a notable example of his talent. There is a wide variety of tracks in the game, each setting the tone of a certain scene or place just right. Especially the final area of the game. When you get there, you'll get shivers down your spine from how it's both so calm and eery at the same time.
Unfortunately, the game is not free of problems. However, as stated in the beginning, this game was not something that had flaws that truly held it back. Still, these are worth noting.During battle, there is this thing called "Trance mode". It's similar to Limit Breaks from past Final Fantasy games except it is not controlled manually. When the trance gauge is filled up through sustaining enough damage over a period of time, a character enters a trance mode and is able to perform special abilities they could not normally do. The problem is that they activate automatically. Therefore if a very weak enemy happens to strike a character, causing him/her to enter trance mode, and then die in the next action, than that trance is wasted. It can get annoying, especially when you are about to face a tough boss.
Despite this flaw, Final Fantasy IX is a fantastic game. The story is well written, the characters are well realized, the gameplay is nearly flawless, (aside from it being rather slow, and the trance system), it's graphics is quite nice, and the music is phenomenal. By the time it was over, I felt a immense sense of satisfaction. Something few games have ever accomplished.