An almost perfect game.
Story: 10
Square Soft were just full of amazing stories at this time, and Final Fantasy 9 is no exception. The primary plot revolves around Zidane, a sky pirate/thief, who kidnaps the princess on a mission. Predictably, perhaps, he comes to love her. But here the romance isn't the main point of the story. It branches out into something much bigger, moved on by one of my favorite villains of all time, Kuja. Other characters are also involved, each who have a great background (with the possible exception of Quina)
Gameplay: 8
FF9's gameplay is much more class limited then FF7 and 8's. In ff7 you were free to change your characters to any role you pleased, but in FF9 each character is bound to a specific class. Zidane's the thief, Vivi the mage, Garnet the healer/summoner and etc. However, you can have 4 characters, meaning there is still some strategy involved in battle. Outside it, there is far less customization options then 7. You learn abilities by equipping something then accumulating AP to learn the ability in that equipment. You can then equip the ability, but you are limited to the amount of abilities. Overall the gameplay is fair, without being complex enough to satisfy everyones tastes.
Graphics: 8
Is it just me, or does FF8 look better then this? Either way, I never really cared much for graphics. Still, FF9 doesn't look bad, considering it IS on PSX.
Value: 10
The game will take around 40 hours to complete, but by the time your done with sidequests it'll have been 70 odd hours, and theres lots of replayability here.
Tilt: 10
It's a Final Fantasy, what else can I say. The music is stunning, possibly the third best FF soundtrack after 7 and 10. The game stays with you for a long time, something that I can't say about most games nowadays.
If you haven't played this game yet, your lucky. Go back to the golden age of RP gaming. The rest of us wish we had a chance to wipe this from memory and play it again.