A game that truly shows what the Final Fantasy series used to be about Final Fantasy IX gets 8.5 Oglop Regents out of 10
User Rating: 8.5 | Final Fantasy IX PS
After three consecutive games with technology based settings, Square decided to return to a more magical world in Final Fantasy IX. The setting, however, is just the beginning of the connections between this game and past Final Fantasys. This game was built around nostalgia and was tailored form the ground up to make Final Fantasy fans feel at home, but even if you have no past Final Fantasy experience this game stands as a great indication of what Final Fantasy is supposed to be about. It is hard to rate the graphical presentation of Final Fantasy IX. It's impossible to deny that Square, once again, put a huge amount of effort into the designs of the characters and the world, but Final Fantasy IX adopted a new art style that is far more cartoon-y than it is realistic. It's really a matter of taste. The graphics are technically better than those of past installments and they fit the world extremely well, but a lot of people just won't be able to get past the cuteness of it all. The games soundtrack is impressive, containing over 150 tracks it is easily one of Uematsu's biggest projects. The music is well composed and fits every location and every character extremely well, but personally I felt that the tunes were slightly less memorable than those of past games in the series. The soundtrack also follows in the footsteps of FFVIII, by incorporating a theme song with vocals named 'Melodies of Life'. I found this song to be extremely fitting to the games overarching themes, and though 'Eyes on Me' was beautifully composed, it was nice to hear a song where the English translation was actually done well. I must continue this review by saying that the world of Gaia in Final Fantasy IX is easily the most immersive world thus far in the series. Not necessarily immersive when it comes to characters or the main plot, but the locations are all amazingly well done and all feel 'real' within the context of the game. There's a huge span of races and different types of characters to meet along your journey, and the attention to detail given to each NPC really makes Gaia a fun world to explore. I can't think of a single time where the character sprites were repeated (without good reason) and it just made exploration that much more enjoyable. Each area is extremely different and it's fun to catch all the little details the designers threw in to reference older games in the series. Another interesting thing about the game is all the references to past Final Fantasy games. The game tries to create nostalgia and for the most part is extremely successful. Many of the monsters you fight and locations you visit will remind you of past games. In my opinion it didn't really hurt or help the game, it's just a fun bonus to those of us who have followed the series for a long time. The charm that the game creates goes further than the graphics and the sound. Final Fantasy IX is the most genuinely funny game in the entire series. There were several comedic moments where I actually ended up laughing out loud. Even more luckily, the humor never seemed forced (like it so often did in Final Fantasy V, where the only time I laughed was when I was wondering what the hell the scriptwriters were thinking). Don't let the charm fool you however, the plot begins to take a dark turn towards the middle of the game. The game balances it all surprisingly well, the trials the characters go through truly make you sympathize, but the humor and charming atmosphere keep the tale light hearted enough so that you never really feel depressed as you play. The plot itself is simultaneously extremely deep and extremely simplistic. What starts as a simple kidnapping turns into an adventure to save the world in true RPG fashion, but the character motives and connections are far deeper than the art style would lead you to believe. One of the things that weakens the plot is the constant change in main antagonists (you go through three that I can think of) and the fact that the final boss LITERALLY comes out of nowhere. You may consider this a reference to past Final Fantasy games (such as FFIII) where this happened, but to me it just seemed lazy. The plot plays on all your emotions offering Humor, Drama, and even a bit of romance that all comes together to create a story that is enjoyable overall as long as you can get past the few slower moments the game provides. The main characters in the game are surprisingly deep and contain more characterization than most of the protagonists throughout the Final Fantasy series. Zidane, the lively, womanizing and adventurous hero gives you many reasons to root for him, as do Princess Garnet, Black Mage Vivi, and the Pluto Knight Steiner. The cast is weakened, however. by the inclusion of Quina and Amarant, two characters whom add close to nothing to the plot and are really only there to give you a couple more characters to fight with. The game also suffers from one of the least threatening antagonists in the series. (This refers to Kuja, the MAIN antagonist of the three antagonists the game pushes onto you). Even though some of the characters are weak, they're still useful enough as a plot device to keep you pushing forward on your journey to save the world. The gameplay remains pretty much unchanged in this installment of the series, but it does a few things to mix up the formula. The standard four character party is back, allowing for much more strategic battles. With the four characters however came a drawback. A problem I found with the game is the speed at which the battles progress. Even at the fast setting the battles move at a snails pace with the ATB bar inching along. Because there are four characters in your party at a time the enemies were changed to compensate, which is fine, but I found that even with Haste on all my characters, the enemy would get twice as many attacks as me, making healing in times of desperation extremely difficult when I already had more than two attacks lined up. It's a minor gripe that was easily remedied by skipping turns, but I still found it frustrating that the developers didn't think about this. Another huge change to the gameplay is the ability system. In Final Fantasy IX you gain abilities by equipping different pieces of equipment. Because the game went back to the old equipment style, you can have up to five pieces of equipment at a time all teaching you different abilities. You learn both active and passive abilities, the active ones taking the form of spells or attacks that you can use in battle. The passive abilities contain effects such as antibody, which prevents poison, and auto-haste, which allows you to start the battle with the haste status. The game limits your use of the passive abilities by giving you a limited number of equip 'crystals'. Each ability takes a certain number of crystals to equip, and once you run out of crystals you can't use any more of the abilities. It's a great system that allows you more freedom to customize your party to each situation as you see fit. The whole system helps to make the game balanced but not overly easy like FFVIII's Junction system. Overall Final Fantasy IX is one of the most well balanced and most fun to play games in the entire series. The only weak points are the few weak characters, the pathetic antagonist, and the sheer fact that the game didn't really bring anything new to the table. The game did however, accomplish what it set out to do by giving fans a game that truly represents what Final Fantasy is supposed to be about. I give Final Fantasy IX 8.5 Oglop Regents out of 10.
