The Final Fantasy series began life mostly being associated with Nintendo consoles. The original game launched on NES (or rather Famicom) in 1987 and was ported to MSX2 a couple of years later. Two more NES games followed. Final Fantasy IV, V and VI were all SNES exclusives. But when Nintendo refused to embrace the CD format, Square Enix jumped ship and Playstation became the premier platform for JRPGs.
The PS1 generation had a pretty fantastic run of Final Fantasy games. I mean, Final Fantasy VII (1997) was pretty much a killer app. And I've talked at great lengths myself about my decades long love/hate relationship with the game, which eventually just became a love/love relationship and is now honestly one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Yes, I'm a cliche. Final Fantasy Tactics followed later in 1997 is still considered one of the landmarks in the tactical RPG genre. I love that game as well. Then there was Final Fantasy VIII (1999), which doubled down on the emo vibes broached in VII. If you thought Cloud was brooding, you hadn't seen anything yet. But Final Fantasy VIII really pushed the limits of the PS1 hardware. The game went for a more realistic look for all the characters and leaned further into the cyberpunk tropes of VII. I won't bother to talk about the myriad Chocobo games because, I mean. The PS1 trilogy closed out in 2000 with the release of Final Fantasy IX. Remember, this was the same year that the PS2 launched. And yet, Square Enix decided to stick it out for one last game before moving onto more powerful hardware. And ironically, the decided to do so by looking backwards. Final Fantasy IX is a fan favorite not because it continued the trajectory of VII and VIII, but because it it pretty much ignored them. Instead, Final Fantasy IX feels like a PS1 game that wonders what a 32-bit sequel to the first game in the series would have felt like. All of the sci-fi elements of previous entries are gone. Instead, we have a throwback to the sort of European fantasy by way of Japan that the original Final Fantasy (and Dragon Quest) was known for. And honestly, it's absolutely refreshing. I say this as a dude who loves sci-fi. But I also cut my teeth as a kid on JRPGs that were basically just doing their own take on Ultima and Wizardry. So I definitely have a soft spot for such a throwback. Which is not to say that the presentation is at all retro. No. This is a PS1 Final Fantasy game, and it looks like one. But rather than keep the realistic proportions of characters in VIII, it's got more of the chibi style of VII. Or parts of VII anyway. The game also uses some very impressive CGI cut scenes to tell its story. The whole opening of the game is immensely epic and moves at a brisk pace. The plot involves a group of pirates or something who are planning to kidnap a princess by pretending to put on a play to distract the royalty. But the way all of this unwinds is by having you play little pieces of the story as the various characters who will eventually team up and become your party. The whole scenario is well done and presented in an interesting way. It's also quite the spectacle. One thing I love is that once you're party is assembled, you've effectively got a very classic lineup of the four heroes of light from the original Final Fantasy. ZIDANE - The Thief. Our main protagonist is quite different from Cloud or Squall. He's basically a bad guy turned good. And he's got a monkey tail and thinks he's a ladies man. It's weird stuff. He's far less iconic than Cloud for sure. VIVI - The Black Mage. Vivi is super cool. Like probably the reason I ever wanted to play this game back in the day. As a kid, I thought the black mage was the coolest class in the original Final Fantasy. I loved that they brought this iconic look back. Vivi has some extremely strong attack magic, and is totally unsure of himself. Great character. STEINER - The Knight. Steiner is huge and looks like he'd fit in a later Dragon Quest game. He's noble and loyal and hits hard. His whole reason for existing in the party is to protect Garnet. He's a total tank. And he's sort of uptight. But he's awesome. GARNET - The White Mage. She's awesome. Again, she's totally overshadowed by characters like Tifa and Aerith, but Garnet is really cool. She's a princess but wanted out of that castle. Her white mage robe is such a throwback to the original game. She's a great healer and protector. She's the damsel in distress and yet totally not. The weird thing is that of the main cast, I think Zidane is fine but he's also the weakest character. Like, I don't dislike him. But I don't like him. He's no Cloud. He's just not iconic. But he's alright. But outside of that, this is a strong cast of likable characters that should be just as fondly remembered as any of the series best casts (meaning, everyone you know and love in Final Fantasy VII). There are other characters you meet and can recruit later in the game, but this starting party is awesome overall. The battle system is basically the Active Time Battle system from Final Fantasy VII. Which is fine. People love it. I like it. I honestly prefer old school classic turn based battles in my RPGs but what can you do? Times change even if I don't want them to. This is still preferred to modern day (2024) insistence on every RPG just having straight up action battles. So fine. The Materia system has been replaced by Abilities, which work kind of the same way. You equip them and you have limited slots and they level up and all that. There's also the Trance system, which basically works like the more hits you take, a gauge builds up and then you hit much harder and your abilities overload. Think of it like Limit Breaks only it lasts for several turns. One big plus is that the world of Final Fantasy IX opens up much sooner than in VII. There's no super long Midgar-like area. You'll find yourself exploring the overworld map an hour or two into the game. Which is nice. Me personally, I made a stupid mistake during this current playthrough. I kept all my saves in one slot. And eventually I hit a boss fight that I had to do solo and the save was right before the boss and I couldn't heal myself up quick enough. After five reloads and watching the same cut scene play out I started to get annoyed. If I put enough retries in, I could probably cheese my way through it, but honestly I just started to get frustrated at such a rookie move. That said, Final Fantasy IX is a pretty fantastic entry in the series. Even over two decades later, it's an impressive game. Not much is as good as Final Fantasy VII. But because of the throwback style, it has probably a more lasting appeal than Final Fantasy VIII anyway. I think this one's a cult classic. But either way, I completely approve. For whatever that's worth.
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