Final Fantasy IX Review - PSX

Final Fantasy IX, yet another installment in the endless Final Fantasy series, and the successor to my favorite Final Fantasy... the eighth. So this game has pretty big shoes to fill... will it impress enough? Or does this one fall ultimately short of expectations?

I'll be honest, this was one of the last games in the series I played. The only game I waited longer to play was Final Fantasy XI. Which is an MMO. It is for that reason I absolutely refuse to play it. I will never play XI, and until they release Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII... this was going to be the last "new" Final Fantasy on my playlist to get to.

Graphics - 7

I'm basing my score on the change from Final Fantasy VIII. The graphics were crisper, and cleaner, but ultimately, way too cartoonish for my tastes. I am a fan of VIII's style, that was gritty and more depressing. I am not a fan of... whatever this is. As a result, I knocked it down, maybe more than it deserved. The character design was... mediocre, I felt. Zidane looked throughly uninteresting, Garnet never really caught my eye unless she was saying something, and many of the characters were eye sores. Also, Freya is probably my least favorite design. I didn't even know what she was supposed to look like until I looked at some fan art. Fail.

Sound - 6

This shocked me. For once, the sound didn't excite me. It didn't blow me away. It didn't even make me feel nostalgic. Some familiar tunes are in there, sure, but the music and surround sound never really felt right. It felt like the sound was developed independently millions of miles away from where the game itself was being made. It felt like the composers were being forbidden from seeing the material they were working with. Ultimately, it was just really bad. The original score is probably the worst in the series. The battle music was even more repetitive than it was in other games. And I spent less time grinding in this game!

Addictiveness - 6

What is addictiveness? I grade it as the desire to play a game to its completion and beyond. A game should compel me to finish it 100%, let alone finish the game. I tried. I really did. But shortly after the end of the first disc, I just stopped caring. I stopped trying to collect cards, I stopped trying to find everything. I stopped going back to towns after plot points passed, I stopped putting in extra effort. By the end of the second disc, I just didn't care. I was on a mission to finish the game so I could write this review. I did NOT enjoy grinding. I did NOT enjoy traveling from place to place. I did NOT enjoy nearly anything about the game.

Depth - 8

Ironically, the best part of the game, and the only part of the game I really enjoyed was the MINI GAME. THE STUPID ASS CARD GAME. As some people will know, I hated VIII's game, Triple Triad. They made this game not suck. Terra Master is played by nearly everybody as well, and many people suck at the game, but that doesn't mean the idea isn't solid. Every card has two important features. The grade (IE - ##X##) and the attack/defense direction. If your card points down right, and you place it, it attacks whatever is down and to the right of your card. If it has an arrow facing you, the grade system takes over. If not, you take the card. Then there are combos, and blocks in the way you can't place cards on... it's a very solid card game that can be fun at times. It can get tedious later on, especially since the opponents never get stronger really. If you can win the first card game, you can win any card game. The only fault is that there are too many damn cards. Bad for collection freaks like me. Aside from this, there are a few other worthwhile side quests of varying difficulty.

Story - 6

Hear me out. What's so good about this story? Essentially, you start the game as a psuedo pirate-thief, who is looking to collect ransom money for a princess. Twist of fate, she wants to come with you, because her mom (the queen) is being weird. And ugly. So you take her, and you crash into a forest where everything tries to kill you. Once your sidekick sacrifices themself to save your ass, you head to her uncle's castle in the nearby kingdom. He's an oglop. Think giant talking zit. That's right. He's a giant talking zit, and he's your only hope for "saving the kingdom" part 983. The story never veers from the stereotypical, and only ever tries to add in silliness over a bland, hopeless story line. If you thought the stories would evolve as we got more advanced, you would be sorely mistaken. The only game with a more stereotypical story, was Final Fantasy X. Or maybe VIII, but VIII did it so well I just didn't care. IX doesn't do it well. I blame this on the WORST CAST OF CHARACTERS IN A FINAL FANTASY GAME EVER. Zidane, the monkey thief who needs to do everything himself. Garnet, the Mary Sue of Final Fantasy. Steiner, the incompetent douchy Knight who redeems himself by being less retarded and not judging based on first impressions. Freya, a rat woman who... that's it. She's just a rat woman. Sure you can argue she has SOMETHING in a back story, but it takes too long to develop, and by the time it does, you are numb from bulls***. You also have three "somewhat" interesting characters. Eiko, who is an 8 year old (or something like that, I honestly forget her age. It's irrelevent, she's well below the age of marriage in Final Fantasy. I think.) girl who has been living "alone" (with moogles) for a while. Vivi, who is sort of the icon of this game I'd like to think. He struggles with whether or not he's really alive, and what will happen to him when he dies. It's almost heartbreaking. It's too bad he's overshadowed by literally every other character, mostly Zidane, who will NOT go away. And finally, probably my favorite character in the game... because he symbolizes what this game is. His/her name is Quina. He/she is a blue frog thing with a chef's hat. He's big. When you go to swamps, all he wants to do is catch frogs. AND YOU CAN LET HIM. You get to control him. You get minor rewards mostly, but it's a nice diversion. All he cares about is frogs and food. He doesn't care about what's going on in the world in the game. Just like me. Because the world in this game sucks. Go Quina. You have the right idea.

Basically, don't expect a story as great as VIII, or hell, as good as VII. You won't find it here.

Difficulty - Can I give a zero? No? Fine. 1.

The only difficult part of any RPG is finding time to play it. Except in this one. Because it was difficult for me to pick up the game after the end of disc 1, just to play the damn game. I have a million other games at my fingertips, so I didn't need to play it. But, because I am a proud person, I perservered, so that people would know to avoid this game. Basically, easy game, no reward.

Overall - 6.66

This game gets the devil's number, because I'm fairly certain he had a hand in developing this game. It was easily the least impressive Final Fantasy of all time. It has nothing to do with the age of the game. As seen in previous reviews, I gave 7 somewhat positive reviews, and that game aged worse than any other game I'm familiar with in the post 16 bit era. No. Final Fantasy IX was just a thoroughly depressing game in every facet of the term. The characters were bland and mary sue-ish. The story was unimportant and I was uninvested in it, and the gameplay was recycled from older games. At least VIII had a junctioning system to make you feel like it could be a challenge. IX ditched it in favor of... nothing. Equipment that gives you skills. Woo. Too bad almost all the skills you need to beat this game are given to you in the story.

Stay away. Far away. Worst Final Fantasy game ever. Yes. Worse than XIII.