Criticize This Game

[Forsaken Lover]

So I used to be a total ass about this game. Full of righteousness I would obnoxiously proclaim how this game was perfect and FFVII was total garbage just because it was more popular.

I want to atone. Mainly because I see people doing exactly what I used to do and it irritates the hell out of me. FFIX does not deserve any slavish love or worship. It is a good game but has many, many flaws.

Let us highlight those flaws.

[Laddy]

No. :colbert:

[Futan]

Amarant is too tall.

[Sephiroth]

Flaw: Kuja is not wearing pants.

The end.

[Hollycat]

Flaw: Kuja is not wearing pants.

The end.

Wrong, the problem isn't that he's wearing too little clothing. the problem is that he has a long john fun stick.

[Formalhaut]

I guess the fact that Amarant appears far, far too late for a main character. Seriously, like what's the deal with that? Tied in with this is the lack of character development on the part of Amarant and somewhat as well Quina. Even Freya arc is slightly boring to be perfectly honest (Come on, Sir Fratley?) and after that she drops out of the story pretty much.

So yeah. It's a great game but it is not without it's faults.

[Futan]

Yeah, character development has always been one of SE's flaws seemingly. :-/ VII is the only one that did it well in my opinion. Not perfect but well.

[Jiro]

It didn't age well graphically. Um. There is probably more but I'm really not feeling it. FFIX was pretty great.

Oh. Trance is a piece of shit that activates at the worst times. It makes sense to work as it does based on the in universe explanation but that doesn't mean it isn't a bitch.

Uh. Maybe later I'll think of something.

[maybee]

Flaws ?

Can't think of any.

Serious. Everything about this game feels great.

[Shauna]

It's such a great game that people often have little to say about it other than "Yeah, it's amazing right?". Makes for uninteresting discussions. :(

[Sephiroth]

Flaw: Kuja is not wearing pants.

The end.

Wrong, the problem isn't that he's wearing too little clothing. the problem is that he has a long john fun stick.

Wrong. He has no pants. That is really a flaw more me. No room for jokes.

[Elly]

on the subject of Trance, why was it even there? i mean every time it activated on me the fight was 1 hit from being over and the person that went into Trance is like the 3rd in line to attack thus Trance got wasted every time, why did it not carry over to the next fight like all Limit Breaks, not once was i able to pull it off, admittidly i didnt get far in the game before all its flaws turned me off from it... Trance and learning skills from equipments that were not permanent but rather you could assign only a couple of the skills that you "learned" at a time, you learn the skill you should be able to use it at all times not have to change out your "learned" skills every time you enter a new area... then theres the character design, i baught the game launchday, a week later the Artbook of FFIX came out and i saw all the awesome character designs that could have been, the original character designs before they deformed them, even Zidane & Steiner looked awesome before the deformation, this game was gonna look so awesome then they 4th graded the art direction... then of course who didnt let out a groan of "really?" when Garnet decided to call herself possibly the most cliched character name that doesnt fit her, "Dagger"...

[Sephiroth]

Amano Artworks always look different if you mean his art - where Steiner really looks different.

[Formalhaut]

IX also slips up from the really cliche SE blunder of having a really obscure final boss. To this day, I have no idea what Necron is or what purpose it gave to the story. That's very lazy writing there.

[Sephiroth]

IX also slips up from the really cliche SE blunder of having a really obscure final boss. To this day, I have no idea what Necron is or what purpose it gave to the story. That's very lazy writing there.

It is the force of nature which is supposed to end all life when the existence crystal is destroyed.

[Forsaken Lover]

Everyone criticizes the PS1 FFs for having slow battle systems due to the 3D but it only really bugged me in IX.

The battles in this game just aren't very fun.

[Sephiroth]

Everyone criticizes the PS1 FFs for having slow battle systems due to the 3D but it only really bugged me in IX.

The battles in this game just aren't very fun.

Seems everyone is not me.

[Freya]

Trance was lame and i agree about armarant coming in too late. Also, yeah the lack of character development

[Futan]

IX also slips up from the really cliche SE blunder of having a really obscure final boss. To this day, I have no idea what Necron is or what purpose it gave to the story. That's very lazy writing there.

It's the spiritual form of the Iifa Tree. :monster:

[maybee]

Isn't the final boss meant to symbolize Kuja's fear of death ? The whole game is really about facing death and facing life. And when you face him it looks like a heaven/ underworld like realm.

And when you defeat him; Kuja is no longer scared of death and Vivi is no longer scared of death and Zidane learns to take life more seriously.

[Clo]

The game is too awesome: it made my eyes bleed!

Oh wait, I have another: it is the best Final Fantasy ever, and nothing will appease me ever again.

:colbert:

[Tigmafuzz]

My main (and probably only) complaint about IX is that it was too short. 4 discs just wasn't enough, man.

[maybee]

4 discs just wasn't enough, man.

Yeah. It needed at least 30.

[Flying Arrow]

The encounter rate is too high and the battle system is far too sluggish (seriously, it felt tired even in 2000). I'm also still not a big fan of the 'equip item and gain AP to learn its abilities' way of doing things, but IX does it better than other, similar systems in the series (mainly because of the variety of exclusivity of equipment).

Not a criticism of mine but used to be:

I used to hate on the party management and how the game determined who would be in your party for about the first half of the game. Now I totally dig it and I'm really into how the game encourages these different ways to play. I just picked up Amarant and only now do I have the option to swap characters. It's made for a really balanced game thus far. Enjoyable, yes.

[DownDiagonalLeftA]

The fact that they forced me to use Quina when the party splits up into 4 groups. Other than that, no complaints.

[Formalhaut]

I now get what Necron is, somewhat. What I didn't like was the complete lack of foreshadowing before his final battle. You go through the entire game not hearing anything about him whatsoever, then suddenly this weird entity turns around and faces you.

It's baffling, to say the least.

[NeoCracker]

The battle speed was to slow. This doesn't feel as bad late game, but early on fights drag on for a long while.

I think characters were well developed. Only Amarant's story really felt lacking. Freya's was good, it was just to abrupt with Fratley showing up out of no where. An altered ending to her ark would have fixed it I think. Still, it was a lame end.

Necron could have been handled a lot better. They should have had some build up on what exactly the crystal was while you went through Terra. Maybe even have gotten your first glimpse (Maybe not physically) of Necron as Kuja fried that planet. Perhaps show him not only ultima-ing the surface, but destroying that plants crystal. Would have prevented Necron's appearance from being so Jarring. :p

[NinjaCoachZ]

Trance is rather poorly implemented. The fact that it activates automatically is its downfall. No way I'm the only one who had a character go into Trance in the middle of a random battle, and then have the next person kill the enemy, making it a total waste.

"Dagger" is probably the worst character name in the whole series. I just called her "Garnet". It really doesn't make things awkward because they ditch the whole "going undercover" thing entirely, and quite early on IIRC.

The disc 4 world map theme is undeniably a nice track, but it's the same problem as VII and VI; the first theme is just better.

And finally... there's way too much missable stuff.

Still a brilliant game in spite of all those nitpicks.

[black orb]

>>> Trance was lame, and the Excalibur II challenge was kind of pointless..:luca:

[Futan]

I now get what Necron is, somewhat. What I didn't like was the complete lack of foreshadowing before his final battle. You go through the entire game not hearing anything about him whatsoever, then suddenly this weird entity turns around and faces you.

It's baffling, to say the least.


Garland: "You saw it with your own eyes. You saw the Iifa Tree and the Mist it emits. The role of the Iifa Tree is that of Soul Divider. The Mist you see comprises the stagnant souls of Gaia..."
Zidane: "Oh yeah? But we stopped the Mist! So much for that!"
Garland: "All you saw was the back of the tree... Even now, the Iifa Tree blocks the flow of Gaia's souls, while it lets those of Terra flow freely. Come and see for yourself. See the true form of this planet. Such is the Iifa Tree's true pupose, its true form. All you saw was its material form. The flow of Gaia's souls cannot be changed simply by stopping the disposal of Mist."

Heavily implying that there is still another part of the Iifa Tree to defeat. Enough of my propaganda though. :monster:

I completely agree about Trance. Pissed me off so much to get it at the end of some meaningless fight just to lose it soon after. :-/

[Madame Adequate]

Oh wow, where to begin? FFIX is probably the worst main FF game (not as bad as Tactics but that's by the by). Here, let me enlighten you all. Fair warning, I'm going to Steve it up right here because there's a lot to say about how bad IX is.

The characters in the game are for the most part tremendous cliches with little interesting about them. Compare characters from any other FF after, maybe, IV to the ones in this game and prepare to be disappointed. Whereas in other games you have characters like Cloud coming to terms with his past and his delusions, or Wakka dealing with the corruption and lies on which Yevon is built, or Terra's growth in VI as she overthrows the shackles of slavery and comes to assert herself, in IX you have almost nothing of that sort. Vivi is really the only main character who undergoes any sort of growth at all; Freya starts down the path but is completely abandoned by the story after Burmercia which is really the only place anything regarding her is dealt with. Garnet does actually have an ongoing plot regarding the trauma she endures so the game isn't completely without merit in this regard, but aside from her and Vivi the only character who undergoes much growth isn't even a party member, but rather General Beatrix (who is the best thing about the game).

As for the main character Zidane the less said the better. He is absolutely the worst main character the series has ever seen. I understand that not having a brooding emo kid like Squall is refreshing but if you want to see that done right you look at Tidus, who is probably the best main character the series has ever had. But even Vaan - actually even Black Belt - is better than Zidane, who comes across as nothing so much as a developmentally disabled individual.

In gameplay terms the game is entirely unimpressive. The battle system is solid enough and aside from being a bit slow has no major faults, but is also uninspired and this is enhanced by the other problems of the system. Whilst other FFs almost universally tried to innovate and to keep the series refreshing and interesting, IX is an example of pure regression and a total lack of aforesaid innovation. The attempts at innovation don't always work, granted - look at the Draw system in VIII or the license system in XII - but at least they make the attempt and they rarely, if ever, fail completely. IX meanwhile has almost no room for customization. All you can choose is which fairly inconsequential skills you go into battle with, and whilst you can go and try to amass as many of these as possible for each character, and whilst they look on paper to be pretty useful and varied, the only ones that actually have much utility are the auto-cast ones like Auto-Float and so on. The others either don't have enough power to matter or are designed for situations you don't encounter often enough to be worth worrying about. Just get some Eye Drops and you need never worry about Bright Eyes, for example. Granted that sort of status effect is generally inconsequential in an FF but the difference is that there are plenty of other customization options which DO have consequence in those games, whereas this is pretty much the only thing on offer in IX.

It's a shame because the idea of using equipment to learn skills from them isn't a bad one in itself, and has been done better elsewhere (such as Vandal Hearts II). But in the main FFIX's progression is so rigid, and the skills so broadly useless, that you never have to make choices that are meaningful. You just collect the new equipment, learn the skills from it, and then find something else after that. There's no materia, no junctioning, no anything to make your characters truly yours; in X the Sphere Grid in the NA version was pretty rigid but even there you could deviate if you tried, and once you reach endgame it all opened up massively.

The overarching themes of the game is handled astonishingly poorly. In VIII for instance the bildungsroman of Squall growing to adulthood, opening up to others, and learning about himself and his childhood all works well. It involves a monumentally stupid element in the GF memory business, but that's of secondary importance because the primary thrust of his shift in how he conceives of responsibility (understanding it as "finish the job" evolving into "protect loved ones") is well handled and takes place in a scenario which shows his growth and devotion. X doesn't have as much scope for that growth because Tidus starts off pretty ready to help others and rather than changing he more gains the opportunity to show what qualities he already possesses, but his growth is still a central theme, his coming to love Yuna and willingness to sacrifice himself for her, his guilt over how he acts before he learns what facing Sin means for Yuna, and his struggle with his father's treatment of him and Jecht's new role as Sin is all fundamentally interesting and well handled. VII is a whole other kettle of fish and would need pages of writing to do justice. Even Vaan has more believability and depth, and more to commend him, than Zidane does, and Vaan was an ad-hoc emergency PoV character inserted because some suits didn't think Basch would be a good main character. Again a lot can be learned by these comparisons, because Vaan harbors deep and serious resentments and regrets, and has responsibilities to his fellow war orphans in Rabanastre, but is still an optimistic and upbeat guy most of the time. Much like Tidus, Vaan shows what Zidane should have been and highlights how dramatically they failed in making him like that.

Zidane is fundamentally a failure as a protagonist - he is not particularly engaging to begin with, he does not face struggles which are posed in a believable manner, and as a consequence he never undergoes much in the way of growth. His insecurities about his origins are handled terribly and lack plausibility, and whilst the parallels to Vivi's similar questions should provide a lot of room for interesting storytelling and development, they are instead largely neglected both overtly and implicitly.

The world itself just fails to hang together coherently. Now it should be noted that the individual places in it are almost all cool and well-designed, from Lindblum to Treno to Cleyra and so on. That's not the problem, the problem is how it appears as a collective and how it fails to have any unifying themes or meaningful explanations. Again comparing to other FFs the world falls desperately short. If you look at X the whole world revolves around Sin, settlements live in constant fear of him, the world has been physically shaped by him and by battles with him, and the entire setting is rooted in events a thousand years in the past, but which still resonate in a believable way to the present day. VI is an even better example as the world dramatically changes partway through when Kefka succeeds in his quest and wipes out most of the world; what's left is shattered, ruined, and depressing to travel through. It's both effective and affecting. IX lacks anything of the sort - there's this mysterious mist but how much that matters seems to vary wildly, and most of the world seems to exist only to be occupied by cool places like Treno. The end result is that you wander around and "Oh, it's a city where it's always night. And here's one where it always rains, I guess." and so on and so forth. It very strongly gives the impression that the constituent parts were, in the main, dreamt up first and the rest of the world built around them, which isn't a cardinal sin but does have to be done with a certain degree of finesse that FFIX thoroughly lacks.

Speaking of Kefka let's talk about villains. Pretty much every other FF game has had memorable, meaningful villains with all kinds of awesome stuff going on. Kefka is pretty much just a crazy person but even he's scary and threatening; nevermind something like Sin, a millennia-old eternally regenerating bioweapon, or Sephiroth who, although victim of people who think he's deep'n'edgy, is a character with an immense amount of pain and confusion in his past, and who is pretty damn intimidating whenever you come across him or the remains of his passing. When he slaughters the Shinra HQ or impales the Midgar Zolom or you meet him on the boat to Costa Del Sol, it's some serious trout. Most of the other FF villains are the same way, and even if their motives are unoriginal or lacking they still prove formidable and intimidating. VII is a particularly good example in fact because there's more than one major villain, Sephiroth (Or Jenova possibly) and Shinra, and they're no more friends with each other than you are with them. The constant power plays and shifting loyalties and alliances of necessity as Sephiroth grows even more powerful and summons Meteor is an incredibly engaging and well-told story, and FF7 has a pretty uncommon distinction in that an enemy so vile the opening act of the game was a massive terrorist attack on your part against them becomes an ally you root for all the way when they open fire on Diamond Weapon and the Northern Crater's shield.

Kuja is none of these things and IX has none of these elements. The intent is to portray him as enraged by his mistreatment and Garland's engineering of him, but the reality is that he comes across as nothing so much as an angry teenager faced with his mortality. Now granted a teenager with world-destroying weapons is, in principle, a terrifying thing but Kuja is handled so incredibly ineptly that there's no intimidation, there's nothing to fear or worry about, there's nothing at all except to laugh at his outfit and then stove his face in. Just as Zidane fails as protagonist, Kuja fails as antagonist - though perhaps there's some meta-commentary there given their in-game relationship and shared origins. There's also Necron, who is best summed up by the TV Tropes page titled "Giant Space Flea From Nowhere". It was forgivable when Zeromus was barely explained as Zemus' hatred, it was funny when Ultros hated you for no explained reason and went ballistic to try and destroy you, but by the time of FFIX it doesn't seem too much to ask for that the final boss would have some relation to the plot.

Amano's artwork is absolutely hideous. For all the complaints about Nomura's character design tendencies, at least he can goddamn draw.

Mist has been done better in Legend of Legaia.

There, now you all know why FFIX is a bad game and shouldn't be played.

[Laddy]

You know what, Hux?

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a241/jolantru/Janeway.jpg

[Madame Adequate]

Are you saying you want me to write an essay about Voyager's flaws? :colbert:

[Laddy]

No. I'm stating however unforgivable, howevr wrong, however entirely unacceptable, my love for Voyager is, it will never be as objectively wrong as what you just posted. :colbert:

[Madame Adequate]

Well at least you accept loving Voyager is just plain wrong. Baby steps, baby steps. :)

[Levian]

Battle speed was too slow indeed, and Amarant should've probably been degraded to a recurring mini-villain NPC, Lani style.

Other than that, pretty nifty game.

[blackmage_nuke]

Superficially: Zidane's clothes had too many ruffles, Stieners eyes were wierd, Garnet does that wierd thing where she only ties her hair down the bottom (braided wouldve looked better), Quina in general looks ridiculous.

I also didnt like that Garnet was missing for a huge chunk of the game which meant she was severely underleveled when she came back (I might be confusing this with ffx and yuna). Also not being able to revisit all the towns in the 4th disc was a big disapointment. Necron came out of nowhere.

[NeoCracker]

I negleacted to read Milfs post.

This is because Milf is a Philistine, who doens't know what the fuck he is talking about.

[Laddy]

Reading it will further illustrate that fact.

[NeoCracker]

The fact his post on FF IX was more then a paragraph long told me more then I needed to know.

[Jinx]

MILF decided he wanted to ruin my Christmas. :(

[maybee]

MILF whatever drugs you are taking please stop.

[Forsaken Lover]

He's just fightin' the Establishment. You all are just so indoctrinated that you don't see the truth.

[maybee]

You all are just so indoctrinated that you don't see the truth.

*Laughs loudly *

Thanks, we all needed a good laugh for the stressful xmas season.

[Pike]

I like how MILF provided the most well-thought out, detailed, and on-topic post in a thread called "Criticize this game" and people are getting their panties in a twist over it. :monster: He was just following directions!

[NeoCracker]

I like how MILF provided the most well-thought out, detailed, and on-topic post in a thread called "Criticize this game" and people are getting their panties in a twist over it. :monster: He was just following directions!

I give you detailed and on topic.

Well thought out is where you lost me.

[Madame Adequate]

I dunno, I thought I'd rustle some jimmies and jimmies are indeed rustled so I think my thoughts were well placed.

One thing I neglected to mention though, regardless of anything else, Chocobo Hot and Cold is a goddamn brilliant minigame and damn nearly worth the price of admission by itself.

[NeoCracker]

I dunno, I thought I'd rustle some jimmies and jimmies are indeed rustled so I think my thoughts were well placed.

One thing I neglected to mention though, regardless of anything else, Chocobo Hot and Cold is a goddamn brilliant minigame and damn nearly worth the price of admission by itself.

Pft, my Jimmies are un-rustleable. I just like talk shit. :p

[Jiro]

As much as we'd all like to ignore it, MILF does have some good points in there. I don't agree with everything he said but I do give him that much. Y'all should rep him too.

[Elpizo]

There, now you all know why FFIX is a bad game and shouldn't be played.

I'm sorry, sir, but not only is IX the best FF ever made, it's also one of the greatest RPGs and games of all time. Saying anything else (even in jest) is not only wrong, it's also a hideous, nearly unforgivable crime. Please change your wrong opinion to the right one: IX is awesome. Freedom of opinion? Silly sir, there is no such thing when it comes to Final Fantasy IX. :)

[maybee]

Y'all should rep him too.

..... No




I'm sorry, sir, but not only is IX the best FF ever made, it's also one of the greatest RPGs and games of all time. Saying anything else (even in jest) is not only wrong, it's also a hideous, nearly unforgivable crime. Please change your wrong opinion to the right one: IX is awesome. Freedom of opinion? Silly sir, there is no such thing when it comes to Final Fantasy IX. :)

This however is getting some rep ! :)

[Jiro]

I would prefer we rebut him properly instead of becoming authoritarian and trying to force him to change his views without evidence. Aren't we above that?

[Tigmafuzz]

I would prefer we rebut him properly instead of becoming authoritarian and trying to force him to change his views without evidence. Aren't we above that?

PfffftHAHAHAHA

[Shauna]

I thought that MILF's post would finally generate some awesome debate over this game, but instead y'all let me down by just disregarding his post as the rantings of a crazy man. :(

I would make a huge rebuttal, but I don't care enough tbh. I just like reading debate and stuff. :3

[NeoCracker]

I thought that MILF's post would finally generate some awesome debate over this game, but instead y'all let me down by just disregarding his post as the rantings of a crazy man. :(

I would make a huge rebuttal, but I don't care enough tbh. I just like reading debate and stuff. :3

Well in our defense, he IS a crazy man.

[Elpizo]

That, and you could probably replace "IX" by the number of your least favourite Final Fantasy and most of his arguments would still stand.

Also, I generally find such "debates" to be useless as they go nowhere. The pro-side won't change their mind and neither will the anti-side, both sides have already heard the same old arguments of the other side again and again, so why debate? There's so much more fun things they could be doing instead, like buying Symphony of the Night from the Playstation Store and playing the hell out of it.

[Formalhaut]

I like how MILF provided the most well-thought out, detailed, and on-topic post in a thread called "Criticize this game" and people are getting their panties in a twist over it. :monster: He was just following directions!

I actually agree with most of what MILF said. I think everyone is being brainwashed by all the IX fanboys :p

It's a decent, even a good game, but is it my favourite? No. For me, it's middling. I found the world to be disconnected from each other. While in X, each location blends perfectly with each other, and even in the "world map" games, VIII did a wonderful job with each location linking in quite well. For me, IX's locations just seem disconnected. Individually, they are very interesting and great, but collectively on Gaia, they don't blend well.

[Forsaken Lover]

Tetra Master is absolute garbage and anybody who says otherwise is just factually wrong. The minigame is bad mechanically so there really nos no denying how awful it is.

So yes, having to play the card tournament was just as unforgivable as having to play the blitzball game against the Goers. Hell, it's worse because the card tournament is a total waste of time and comes out of nowhere. It's entirely pointless.

[Madame Adequate]

Yeah after Triple Triad I was shocked at how mediocre Tetra Master was. Was really looking forward to an improved version of it in IX but nope. And they never picked it up again after that. :sigh:

Admittedly I am a crazy person but on the other hand I have tasted the Pike so I can't be THAT crazy :smug:

[NeoCracker]

Yeah after Triple Triad I was shocked at how mediocre Tetra Master was. Was really looking forward to an improved version of it in IX but nope. And they never picked it up again after that. :sigh:

Admittedly I am a crazy person but on the other hand I have tasted the Pike so I can't be THAT crazy :smug:

I don't think you are helping your case very well.

But not only was triple Triad horrid, but Tetra master was pretty crap too. Of course I enjoy it more if only out of spite for FF VIII.

[maybee]

I actually agree with most of what MILF said. I think everyone is being brainwashed by all the IX fanboys :p


There is no blind fanboyism. There is only love for FF9. :cool:

[Chris]

Criticize this game? I'll criticize your FACE! It's visible!

Okay. One of my all-time favorite games, but the Trance system was completely wasted. Pointless and useless.

[Jiro]

I'm going to second the points about a disconnected set of locations. Individually, like MILF said, they were supremely cool, but there's a lot of just "oh this is cool let's add it in." Daguerreo for instance; cool little town, but why is it even there?

[Forsaken Lover]

You didn't have the Hilda Garde #3 long enough.

This game's flaws just keep piling up.

[NeoCracker]

You didn't have the Hilda Garde #3 long enough.

This game's flaws just keep piling up.

Just so you know, I have an AWESOME, yet potentially offensive Your mom joke, that were I not iffy on it's legalities here, I would post it.

[Pumpkin]

I think the battle system was a bit slow and the trance was a bummer but this is my all time favorite game and I forgive.

I agree about the towns being disconnected but I don't have a problem with it. What was Daguerreo there for? Because its a planet and it has different places in it. Is everywhere in Canada connected and linked? No. Why? Because its an entire country and they don't need to be linked. I think the same of the game. This is their entire planet. There are different places. Different people live in these different places. Different people visit these different places. It doesn't center around the heros and their journeys and I actually like that. It's like "Heeeeeeeeeey, there's a place in this mountain here (btw Daguerreo is awesome and I would live there everyday of the week) let's go check it out. Oh this is a neat place. Cool lets get going." It's like if you go on a road trip and stop by in a town to use the bathroom in the McDonalds. The town has no meaning to you but its there. And it means something to someone. These places are the homes of the random NPCs and I like that element of the game. To me it makes it more realistic.

I also like all of the Final Fantasy IX characters. All of them. Vivi being my favorite video game character of all time ever. And do you know who my second favorite FFIX character is? Quina. Yes, Quina. I think s/he is a sweetheart and when I built him up he was useful to me. More so than Eiko and Garnet for example. I got to a point in the game where I barely even needed healing anymore, especially with the use of auto-potion and the rest is just kinda meh. Why do I have two white mages anyways? And yes I didn't love all of the characters but I did like them all, and there aren't many Final Fantasy games I can say that about. Who did I like in VII? Cait Sith and Red XIII. Who did I like in VIII? Squall and Selphie and Zell. Who did I like in X? Kimahri. Who did I like in XII? Balthier and Fran. and so on. I could go on but you get my idea.

I usually like more customizable games (like tactics or Final Fantasy XII. I don't even play those games for the stories, I just want to customize some characters) but despite not being able to really do that with this game, I still enjoyed it. I enjoyed how every character had their own abilities and strengths and weaknesses. This is what I do when I customize my own characters. I don't like the jack of all trades thing. I like them to have clear defined roles.

I really liked the story. I always wanted to see more and see what would happen. I like how they separated the characters so you had to use all of them. I like how a lot of the characters interacted with each other. Like Steiner and Vivi and their friendship. How everyone had respect for the little guy despite him being shy and quiet, because they could tell he was good and they put their faith in him and watched him grow into his own. Freya and Amarant being friends in their own special way. Eiko being assertive towards Amarant despite his tough exterior because she was a little girl who spoke her mind. I could go on but you get the point.

I understand why some people don't like it but it has been my favorite game since the first day I played it (I didn't get much sleep that first week) and it will always have a special place in my heart.

[Formalhaut]

Wait hang on, you actually LIKED Amarant! You barely get him for the last half of the game.

[Forsaken Lover]

You literally get Eiko like, only a couple hours before Amarant.

So...yeah. Why the hell does Amarant always get criticized for being a late addition? Eiko is arguably one of the most important party members too.

[Rantz]

And finally... there's way too much missable stuff.

This probably just comes down to different styles of playing, but I find the "missable" label silly. It's optional and that's what makes it exciting to discover - not everybody does which adds to the reward of finding it.

I agree with the criticism about Trance and the battle speed, and to some degree about Necron. He wasn't as "out of the blue" as many people suggest, and he was incorporeally present throughout much of the game, but it's a bit too subtle to pick up on when you're playing it for the first time.

[sir helix]

I hated trance and quina but everything else is awesome about it. It's still my favorite of the series I a liked the ap equip skills randomly gaining abilities after leveling just seems to straight forward

[Wolf Kanno]

Milf lost me when he said FFTactics was a bad FF game and said FFX was a great one. I'm going to stick to the rules of the FFXII thread though not bother with commenting on other people's comments.

Flaws:

I'll echo the battle system is too slow, while I prefer more manageable ATB systems and don't believe in the "Faster is better" philosophy that most RPG fans believe in today, I will say that IX's system with it's long ass battle intro animations really chug the game down in the early sections. It's fine when you get used to it, but the first disk can feel annoying.

I don't like that Dagger gets all of her summons about 3/4ths of the way into the game, I felt it wrecked her balance as a characters and she kind of becomes the most useless party member since she's inept for most of the game. On this note, I feel Zidane is too overpowered and useful. Despite being a thief who equips knives and light armor, he can hit and take damage better than your heavy armored characters and whereas every other characters Trance has some tactical advantage, Zidane's is just a pure crutch element that allows you to blast past most of the game's bosses. It's because Zidane is in your party 90% of the game that I don't mind Trance being unreliable because if it was salvable the game would be even more easy than it already is.

I don't feel the game does a good job tying up the characters stories. Vivi has a really good and touching story but I kind of feel it never gets a satisfactory end, I am not asking for an answer but at least a confirmation that Vivi realizes the gravity of his questions and live on to pursue his own answer would have been satisfactory, instead he just sits down with the other Black Mages... Freya had a really interesting story going on but it gets shot down as soon as Clerya is gone and I feel the game sort of just didn't bother after that until the game's ending. Amarant's story is also poorly paced, poorly told, and I don't feel you should give a non-talking loner character some 11th hour character development cause he's not actually done or said enough to make him endearing up until now, course you didn't listen and did it again with Kimarhi in FFX so obviously Square doesn't really know about their writing flaws very well.

My main beef with the plot is that it's kind of an idiot ball plot in the first half. I mean so much of the game's opening plot revolves around Garnet being stupid that it just kind of bothers me, especially since this is kind of my pet peeve in RPG writing. Once again, FFX will echo this with Yuna not being any better and even getting Tidus involved...

I never liked Zidane's past, I felt it could have worked had it not been so similar to Vivi's and I kind of blame this for why Vivi sort of drops out of the limelight for the rest of the game during and after Terra.

I hate Tetra Master, I feel it may be the worst mini-game in the series next to blitzball and some of VII's throwaway minigames. It requires no strategy, no skill, it's mostly dumb luck and you can win 9 out of 10 times as long as you have the last turn. This is especially infuriating cause Triple Triad was so good, and the rest of IX's minigames were actually enjoyable.

[ShinGundam]

Hmm, FF9 is is one of my favorites but some parts of the game could be little better.

Things i didn't like:
- The battle speed: The game takes long time to even start the battle mode, i think the game "pauses" for too long during major animation attacks, occasionally causing a little disconnect between commands and what happens onscreen and combinations of 4 party, little longer animation and commands takes longer time makes it slower than it should.

- Not a fan of the ability system because of:
1- Large set of new abilities are auto-cast abilities.
2- The fact that summons cost a lot of MPs.
3- To learn every ability you need to buy or wear or make a lot of useless equipments, some of these abilities require some serious Level grinding and de-equip means you want be able to use a non-master ability. Also I don't like the fact that characters got a very little variety in building choice due to class system.

- The towns are very few after finishing the first disk and due to loads of mountains it might be hard or take a long time to go back to a town. Also, several cities or areas will be blocked or even destroyed even before end-game and final dungeon.

- Sidequests: I like mini games in general but jumping rope and catching frogs aren't my thing. I think the game should have more optional bosses early in the game or in general.

- Beatrix isn't part of my party.

[Quindiana Jones]

I liked MILF's joke post. It was comfy and easy to wear. It also raised some very valid points, some of which I couldn't disagree with at all. Most of the characters are massively underdeveloped, for example, and I can see how someone might feel that the world is just a selection of set-pieces separated by mountains. I, however, think this adds to the world's immersive-ness. Sometimes people inhabit the most unusual of places. Having said all that, this;


Yeah after Triple Triad I was shocked at how mediocre Tetra Master was. Was really looking forward to an improved version of it in IX but nope. And they never picked it up again after that. :sigh:

THIS. Is unfor-fucking-giveable. You're dead to me, Hux. :colbert:

[Cuchulainn]

I can no longer have anty respect for huxtable ever again for 2 reasons


1. Disliking the best game of the whole series, FFIX
2. Thinking Tidus was the best character created.


Holy good smurf

38910

[Rostum]

I've loved FFIX ever since it first came out, but I'll agree it has some flaws that could easily be fixed with a re-release. Mainly the battle speed, the issues with trance, and the let down of tetra master. Otherwise, I think it's a fantastic game! :)

[Quindiana Jones]

You are also dead to me, Rostum.

[Goldenboko]

This game is too fun. Done.

[Quindiana Jones]

Zidane is too much of a pimp.

[Madame Adequate]

I can no longer have anty respect for huxtable ever again for 2 reasons


1. Disliking the best game of the whole series, FFIX
2. Thinking Tidus was the best character created.


Holy good smurf

38910

I had hoped a comrade from the homeland would understand and agree, but I see our division runs a lot deeper than merely which side of the peace walls we were on :(

[Clo]

I have a legitimate criticism of this game:

It's very easy. I just finished it, and thinking back, it did not take much effort on my part. I would have liked more of a challenge.

[Elly]

omg Tetra Master was so stupid, whats the point of having numbers on the sides of the cards if the games gonna disregard them anyway? its insipidly stupid that it doesnt matter if your number is higher or not cause the whole random thing is gonna screw you in the end most of the time anyway...

[Quindiana Jones]

Alright, the random number generator was stupid. But everything else was pure brilliance.

[Skyblade]

Alright, the random number generator was stupid. But everything else was pure brilliance.

It's, um, kind of the basis of the entire game. You cannot play Tetra Master, at all without running into the RNG. It's everywhere, and it screws you nearly every time.

Also, randomly assigning arrows to cards was also a stupid idea.

[Quindiana Jones]

You're WRONG and I HATE you! :crying:

[NeoCracker]

I pretty much agree that the game would be really fun if they fixed the damn RNG.

I don't mind it being there, but it seriously needs to shrink the intervals. I mean, under no circumstance should a 1 beat a 9, none the less a letter.

[Mirage]

The game's biggest flaw is that it tries to do on a PS1 what you'd need half of a PS2 to accomplish. The game is slow, and the low resolution turns all the fantastic graphical details into some gray mush.

The gameplay is to me unbearably slow and the loading times make it even worse. Other than that, it's a great game.

[Quindiana Jones]

I pretty much agree that the game would be really fun if they fixed the damn RNG.

I don't mind it being there, but it seriously needs to shrink the intervals. I mean, under no circumstance should a 1 beat a 9, none the less a letter.

1s can't beat 9s! :mad:

[Aulayna]

It's funny after reading Hux's post I feel toward Tidus what he feels toward Zidane. If there was a ever a sterile, unimaginative, cliche of a character it would be Tidus all over for me.

[Clo]

I hate Tidus the MOST. He is a superlative of infantile sloppy fecal matter, his character design is awful, his interactions with others are just so over the top that he poisons the entirety of the game.

I hate his tan skin and his blonde hair. I get even more annoyed, thinking about how it's a Japanese game and here comes Tidus all Surfin' USA.

I was glad when he disappeared at the end.

[Forsaken Lover]

Personally, I think it's pretty neat that Tidus probably dyes his hair.

[Skyblade]

The game's biggest flaw is that it tries to do on a PS1 what you'd need half of a PS2 to accomplish. The game is slow, and the low resolution turns all the fantastic graphical details into some gray mush.

The gameplay is to me unbearably slow and the loading times make it even worse. Other than that, it's a great game.

Agreed. Given that its development was announced alongside X and XI, I really don't get why they stuck this one on the PSX. It really did a lot to cripple the game. Not being put on the PS2 was the single biggest problem with the entire game.

[Madame Adequate]

I don't even begin to understand the hate for Tidus. All he wants to do is play Blitzba- oh wait I see now.

[maybee]

I don't even begin to understand the hate for Tidus.

Because he's whiny, stupid, annoying, obnoxious, nails on the chalkboard sounding, acts like a retard and does some really idiotic things.

I don't completely hate Tidus, but that's why most people do hate him.

I don't understand your hate for Zidane. A friendly, refreshing young man that is selfless and has a desire to help others in need. Some of the people he ends up helping have been right assholes to him. example Amarant.

How does a selfless teen be worse than a obnoxious young teen ?

[Skyblade]

Because a character centered around a single personality trait is dull? Sure, he's selfless. So what? Go check out the "nice guy" thread in EoEE to see just what people think about someone who is "nice" and nothing else.

Zidane is boring. He has little depth and less growth. He's there, he's nice, but, frankly, so what?

Tidus was whiny, sure, but he had a reason to be, and he grew out of it. He had an interesting character arc, accepting the loss of everything he knew, coming to terms with his father, accepting the burden that the world put upon him. He was at least a person. Everything about him, including his complaints, felt real and made sense.

Zidane was just positive and happy-go-lucky. And...that's about it. No reason for it, no substance to it. He just was.

[Forsaken Lover]

It's interesting that, superficially, Tidus more closely resembles Zidane. Both are smiley, energetic types. Yet Tidus has much more in common with Squall as they're both very introspective. Well, I guess it's more like retrospective in Tidus' case but it really does amount to the same thing as far as storytelling goes.

Tidus was a whiny, obnoxious piece of work to be sure but he's also a spoiled sports star who has his first real fight a day or two before he starts off on his world-saving journey. It be a bit strange if he wasn't a bit off.
That's not even counting the massive chip on his shoulder due to both his parents being rather terrible.

Bad parents is something people can relate to or at least understand. Being from another planet is a bit harder to wrap our heads around and empathize with.

[Wolf Kanno]

Tidus was whiny, sure, but he had a reason to be, and he grew out of it. He had an interesting character arc, accepting the loss of everything he knew, coming to terms with his father, accepting the burden that the world put upon him. He was at least a person. Everything about him, including his complaints, felt real and made sense.


That is utter bullshit, Tidus grudgingly accepts his father but it never change the fact he was being a total whiny bitch about the whole thing, maybe if Jecht had been physically abusive or if they bothered to play up the mother's death from a broken heart angle but it does neither, instead focusing on Tidus whining about Jecht's "tough love" parenting style. He comes to grips with being in Spira fairly quickly once he meets the main party, only occasionally talking about wanting to go home and its usually told to you by his older "I already know I can't go home" self instead of the one you are watching in the cutscenes who doesn't seem to care one way or the other; and he even takes being a fucking hologram like it was nothing, at least when Zidane discovered he was an artificial construct, he took it like a person would, you know actually questioning his existence and being an emo bitch, Tidus? "Oh, that sucks but whatevah Yuna's got sideboobs, I will die for these boobs", and he didn't even hesitate about knowing he was going to vanish with Sin. The guy took to being in Spira much worse than learning he isn't real and that defeating Sin will end his existence as well. I'm not even going into the fact that Tidus is unbelievably oblivious to the story's anything but subtle hints about the Pilgrimage, which makes the whole revelation scene feel totally stupid why you just smack your head into the floor at how stupid he is but sucks away any kind of sympathy or respect you may have had for him. What character development are we talking about cause obviously we played different games here. Tidus is a poorly written sod whose greatest amount of endearing emotional depth comes from his older narrative self who is telling you the player that he's a fucking idiot.

[Forsaken Lover]

A father making fun of his six-year-old son and saying derisively "you'll never be as good as I am" would probably cause a lot of problems. There's also the alcoholism.

All of this was exacerbated by Jecht disappearing. Tidus was literally left with only bad memories of his father and he outright acknowledges why he clings to those bad memories:

"Even ten years after he left...just thinking about my old man got me angry. But maybe that was just my way of keeping him... Nah."

This is one of my favorite voice-overs from Tidus because it's a perfectly human response that shows how well-written he was. Sometimes resentment and bitterness is better than nothing at all and Tidus is clinging to that because, in the end, he doesn't want to lose his father.

Also Tidus' lack of reaction about finding out he isn't real might have something to do with the pressing issue of Yuna dying any moment now. In short, he had other shit on his mind.

As for why he never talks about it...who would he talk about it to? Zidane could scream and whine at Garland but only the Fayth really know about Tidus and he can't just talk to them any time he pleases.

[Freya]

Guysssss thats' X talk not IX talk....

[maybee]

Zidane is boring. He has little depth and less growth. He's there, he's nice, but, frankly, so what?

Tidus was whiny, sure, but he had a reason to be, and he grew out of it. He had an interesting character arc, accepting the loss of everything he knew, coming to terms with his father, accepting the burden that the world put upon him. He was at least a person. Everything about him, including his complaints, felt real and made sense.

Zidane was just positive and happy-go-lucky. And...that's about it. No reason for it, no substance to it. He just was.

You're joking right ? Zidane starts out as a flirty, horny teenager that goes around just thinking about the opposite sex. He then slowly begins to change and realize that helping others is more important. How is that "no growth ".

Tidus didn't really have a reason to be whiny, if he can deal with not existing at all. He can deal with being transported into Spira. And no he doesn't change or improve, he still acts loud, selfish and childish and gets on shouting " This is MY story " to everybody.

No Tidus didn't feel real at all. He makes a big whiny deal about not being in Zanakand anymore and when something worse occurs to him, he doesn't even flinch. Zidane wasn't " just nice ", he learnt to realize to aid in others, the more worse things happened to them, the more pain Zidane witnessed the more his desire to help grew.

Tidus didn't grow at all. He was just as loud and childish as he was at the game's beginning.

[Wolf Kanno]

A father making fun of his six-year-old son and saying derisively "you'll never be as good as I am" would probably cause a lot of problems. There's also the alcoholism.

All of this was exacerbated by Jecht disappearing. Tidus was literally left with only bad memories of his father and he outright acknowledges why he clings to those bad memories:

"Even ten years after he left...just thinking about my old man got me angry. But maybe that was just my way of keeping him... Nah."

This is one of my favorite voice-overs from Tidus because it's a perfectly human response that shows how well-written he was. Sometimes resentment and bitterness is better than nothing at all and Tidus is clinging to that because, in the end, he doesn't want to lose his father.

The alcoholism seemed to cause more issues with Auron and Yuna's dad than for Tidus who simply mentioned it off hand without much context. Once again, had the game implied he was actually physically abusive with it, I can see it being more of a dramatic character building issue, but it's not, Jecht comes across more as a party frat boy when drunk than some kind of evil being.

The issue I have with Tidus' daddy issues, is that I find his anger to be more like a child's than an adult. It's disproportionate from what happened to him. Maybe if the game had painted Jecht as an actual abusive alcoholic asshole but instead he's a fairly charming, "tough love" type of guy with a few flaws that are more subdued cause he's a genuinely good guy, he's closer to a sitcom father whose faults and gruff snarky attitude come across more funny than actual abusive.. Jecht's portrayal pretty much undermines the sympathy you have for Tidus and Tidus comes across more as an overly sensitive man-child who is holding a grudge cause Jecht cause didn't hug him enough, and yet treats Jecht like he was Hitler.

Had Tidus not been so over the top with his anger everytime Jecht gets mentioned, it may have come off better but I sort of feel the game makes it more melodramatic than the faqs lead us to believe.


Also Tidus' lack of reaction about finding out he isn't real might have something to do with the pressing issue of Yuna dying any moment now. In short, he had other trout on his mind.

As for why he never talks about it...who would he talk about it to? Zidane could scream and whine at Garland but only the Fayth really know about Tidus and he can't just talk to them any time he pleases.

Come now FL, you and I both know that's a "handwaving excuse" if we ever saw one. How the hell do you not react to learning that you don't exist, your whole life and world is a lie, and you are the central cog in a giant plan to end your own existence by freeing the "gods" that made you, despite the revelation of such power kind of undermining the whole plot? I mean damn, Yuna dying was made into a bigger deal than Tidus' Existential Crisis, and people like Terra and Cloud went far more ape-shit over smaller scale personal revelations than Tidus, despite Tidus having the granddaddy of all personal revelations, let's face it, the writer didn't care, and the whole point of this plot twist was to reverse the tragedy of the story in the most ass backwards way. It didn't make Tidus really grow as a character, and who wouldn't he tell? I can see him wanting to keep it from Yuna cause she wears her heart on her sleeves but what is telling Wakka and Lulu, who were willing to watch their favorite "kid sister" go march to her own death going to care about a kid they met a few weeks ago? Hell Auron is easily the most connected and Tidus doesn't really tell him anything until he's made privy to his own secret. The whole plot twist is a sham, and a stupid way to squeeze some drama out of a dead horse.

[Ouch!]

I do think that everyone should probably try to keep some perspective that a decade-old RPG is probably not going to be the pinnacle of literary virtue. Games have done a lot of maturing over the past decade, and there are notable exceptions with truly good writing, but Final Fantasy has never been among them. Most titles in the series have followed numerous tropes of the genre--many of which are patently absurd. That I happen to think that FFIX is the best in the series in this regard does not mean I can't take a step back and realize that it--like all the other games in the series--does not stand to critical scrutiny when it comes to story or writing.

[Forsaken Lover]

The issue I have with Tidus' daddy issues, is that I find his anger to be more like a child's than an adult. It's disproportionate from what happened to him. Maybe if the game had painted Jecht as an actual abusive alcoholic asshole but instead he's a fairly charming, "tough love" type of guy with a few flaws that are more subdued cause he's a genuinely good guy, he's closer to a sitcom father whose faults and gruff snarky attitude come across more funny than actual abusive..

SIX-YEARS-OLD TIDUS: Daddy, stop drinking!

Jecth: no. I'm gonna keep being an alcoholic.

SIX YEARS OLD TIDUS: *runs away crying because his father will continue poisoning his liver and acting like an asshole*

Jecht: haha, look at that little wuss! Go ahead and cry you little bitch.


That is more or less exactly how a flashback of Tidus and his father goes. Now, this might strike you as family fun happy time but a father mocking his prepubescent son for something like that is rather disgusting to me.



Come now FL, you and I both know that's a "handwaving excuse" if we ever saw one. How the hell do you not react to learning that you don't exist, your whole life and world is a lie, and you are the central cog in a giant plan to end your own existence by freeing the "gods" that made you, despite the revelation of such power kind of undermining the whole plot? I mean damn, Yuna dying was made into a bigger deal than Tidus' Existential Crisis, and people like Terra and Cloud went far more ape-trout over smaller scale personal revelations than Tidus, despite Tidus having the granddaddy of all personal revelations, let's face it, the writer didn't care, and the whole point of this plot twist was to reverse the tragedy of the story in the most ass backwards way. It didn't make Tidus really grow as a character, and who wouldn't he tell? I can see him wanting to keep it from Yuna cause she wears her heart on her sleeves but what is telling Wakka and Lulu, who were willing to watch their favorite "kid sister" go march to her own death going to care about a kid they met a few weeks ago? Hell Auron is easily the most connected and Tidus doesn't really tell him anything until he's made privy to his own secret. The whole plot twist is a sham, and a stupid way to squeeze some drama out of a dead horse.
[/quote]

I'll agree that the twist wasn't handled as well as it could have been. Tidus' lack of reaction is a major flaw in his character.

[Pumpkin]

SIX-YEARS-OLD TIDUS: Daddy, stop drinking!

Jecth: no. I'm gonna keep being an alcoholic.

SIX YEARS OLD TIDUS: *runs away crying because his father will continue poisoning his liver and acting like an asshole*

Jecht: haha, look at that little wuss! Go ahead and cry you little bitch.


That is more or less exactly how a flashback of Tidus and his father goes. Now, this might strike you as family fun happy time but a father mocking his prepubescent son for something like that is rather disgusting to me.



This is almost exactly how my interaction with some family/people I've lived with has gone. I still consider Tidus to be a whiner. Yes I think it should be brought up at certain points in the game. Yes, it does affect me at certain points in my life. It isn't every time those people are brought up. And yes to be fair, I myself can be a whiner. I just think it's way overdone. Theres a difference between when he's discussing his past and his father for him to feel anger towards him. That is understandable. It just seems like too much to me when it feels like every time someone says Jecht, he almost takes a fit. Or at least gets upset. There are people who have actually abused me in more ways than one and I react better to their name being mentioned than he does to his father.

Anyways, I guess one of the reasons I don't like him as a hero is because to me, the hero is supposed to be someone strong, but still human. I got that from Zidane. I didn't get that from Tidus. I think a lot of the other characters would have made a better hero than he did. I didn't get a real sense of strength from him. Now you can argue me in to the ground on that one, but it's a matter of opinion, and to me, he didn't feel like a hero. To a lot of people he may have, and to that i say to each their own. I'm glad he did, and hopefully it made the gaming experience much more pleasant for you because of it.

Now I fully understand that he got transported into a new world and that's hard. Very hard, and I would expect him to have a hard time. But for me, again this is personal opinion, i don't think he handled it in a way that made me sympathize with him. Like when he goes rushing into the temple in Besaid to save Yuna, and the priest says "No, the teachings" and he says "Like I care." To me, that was just blatant disrespect for someone else's culture. You can say he did it for the right reasons, but the way he did it to me was just rude and made me dislike him.

Anyways, that's just me saying why i dislike him. As I said, it's a matter of personal opinion and the reasons I dislike him may be some of the reasons that others do like him.

[Bolivar]

Well it seems you all are well and truly at it, and I can't even remember if I posted in this thread, but the only thing I really dislike about FFIX is the slow combat. The PS Final Fantasy games all had bad framerates in battle, but this one made a lot of battle animations needlessly slow. FFVII's battle speed is one of the very few reasons I have left to describe why I prefer it to FFIX.

The only other minorly disappointing thing is that this game overall played it very safe. There's nothing as risk-taking as the Junction system and the setting and art design just isn't as fresh as FFVII was.

[Clo]

The only other minorly disappointing thing is that this game overall played it very safe. There's nothing as risk-taking as the Junction system and the setting and art design just isn't as fresh as FFVII was.

Quoted for truth. I also felt like the game was very safe.

[Wolf Kanno]

SIX-YEARS-OLD TIDUS: Daddy, stop drinking!

Jecth: no. I'm gonna keep being an alcoholic.

SIX YEARS OLD TIDUS: *runs away crying because his father will continue poisoning his liver and acting like an asshole*

Jecht: haha, look at that little wuss! Go ahead and cry you little bitch.


That is more or less exactly how a flashback of Tidus and his father goes. Now, this might strike you as family fun happy time but a father mocking his prepubescent son for something like that is rather disgusting to me.

You and I remember this scene very differently:

Young Tidus: Oh, the drunk is back...

Jecht: Hey *hic* I'mama Blitzball!!! *hic*

Young Tidus: You disgust me...

Jecht, Oh yeah... well you're a whiny bitch!

Young Tidus: I hate you

Don't give me this bleeding heart interpretaion of Tidus doing the "Oh Dad, stop hurting yourself cause it hurts me too, We're a family and I wuv you!!!" cause When young Tidus wasn't crying, he was being a smoldering pile of absolute anger. My issue here is that from Jecht's perspective, he was actually helping his sone by picking on him. He's that old fashioned stereotypical pillar of manliness that some people speak of fondly and ultimately his father style was largely a "Boy Named Sue" scenario where Jecht was mean in order to make Tidus more into a man by making Tidus want to overtake him. He may have gone too far, and Jecht does recognize this in his own wonderful character development, but I still feel that Tidus' own interpretation of his past and his reactions are a bit too extreme for a guy who mocked him when he starting crying cause he didn't get his way. I mean how the hell did Tidus survive school if he can't take hazing? I just can't sympathize with him.

[Jinx]

To be fair, in agreeance with WK, after Tidus tells Jecht he hates him, Jecht goes, "Huh?" and scratches his head. Sort of makes you think he wasn't being a dick just to be abusive.

[Forsaken Lover]

That was Tidus' dream. He never actually told his father how he felt about him which was a big part of the emotional impact of their meeting.

Tidus' tearful "I hate you" at the end really hammers home what I said earlier and what Tidus alluded to himself and that is he clung to all that resentment and all those memories because they kept his father alive in his heart.

Tidus loved Jecht in spite of everything.

[chionos]

Enough Tidus talk! That's FFX. It was fine when you were comparing Zidane and Tidus, but now you're just arguing over whether or not Tidus was a whiny bitch, which he was.

If it weren't for the painful loading times, which severely reduce the game's replay value, FFIX would probably be my favorite FF.

There are aspects of the game that aren't perfect, certainly, but nothing that leads me to complain.

[PoolHandMan]

FFIX is really worth playing. It has an unique story, characters and most of all: the music. The music from this game I consider to be the best in the whole series.

There are some flaws but, I think it is better than ffX for example.

[Aulayna]

Well it seems you all are well and truly at it, and I can't even remember if I posted in this thread, but the only thing I really dislike about FFIX is the slow combat. The PS Final Fantasy games all had bad framerates in battle, but this one made a lot of battle animations needlessly slow. FFVII's battle speed is one of the very few reasons I have left to describe why I prefer it to FFIX.

The only other minorly disappointing thing is that this game overall played it very safe. There's nothing as risk-taking as the Junction system and the setting and art design just isn't as fresh as FFVII was.

I can agree about the Battle speed.

The not taking risks thing is something that personally didn't bother me though - IX was what I'd been dreaming of since VII was released. A typical FF set in a traditional FF world with a traditional art style but combined it with the visuals and FMVs and other things VII and VIII had introduced us too - it ticked all those boxes and really played on my nostalgia. It wasn't as dramatic as VI, as ambitious as VII nor was it as daring as VIII - but for me it made up with it in tradition, charm and humor by the bucket. Though I can see why that would've been disappointing when it came on the tail of 3 very different, but very progressive, instalments in the franchise.

[Quindiana Jones]

I don't need risk-taking in a game, I need a good game.

[Ouch!]

I find it amusing that risk-taking is a slight against this game when it's also usually one of the biggest complaints whenever a new title in the series does something different.

[Skyblade]

I find it amusing that risk-taking is a slight against this game when it's also usually one of the biggest complaints whenever a new title in the series does something different.

Noo, the big complaints come in when something gets screwed up, not when something gets changed.

It just so happens that (especially lately) those two things coincide a lot.

[Wolf Kanno]

Technically IX doesn't take too many risks cause it wasn't intented to be a a numbered entry, so it does technically have an excuse on that part. I also feel IX's refinement of so many of the ideas brought up from previous games is pretty cool.

I also find it amusing that despite not being "original" its customization system has been utilized in other games, moreso than the more daring and popular games like VI, VII, VIII, X, and XII...

[Polnareff]

FFIX has one flaw. That it didn't come out sooner than it did. :colbert:

[Skyblade]

Technically IX doesn't take too many risks cause it wasn't intented to be a a numbered entry, so it does technically have an excuse on that part. I also feel IX's refinement of so many of the ideas brought up from previous games is pretty cool.

I also find it amusing that despite not being "original" its customization system has been utilized in other games, moreso than the more daring and popular games like VI, VII, VIII, X, and XII...

Well, its stat growth system was ripped from VI, IIRC (what you equip determines stat growth), which is a system I HATE with a fiery passion.

But, yeah, it's ability system was stolen and used for FFTA and FFTA2 and rocked.

[Wolf Kanno]

I don't think espers raising one stat and your equipment giving you a fraction of a point towards your stats as being quite the same. At least in VI its kind of pointed out to you whereas in IX, I get the feeling it was a bug the developers left in and hoped no one would notice.

[Quindiana Jones]

Never knew equipment raised stats. Hot damn.

[Skyblade]

Yep, it does. Which I hate because it forces low level runs for min/maxing (until you can get the best equipment), which I do not appreciate.

[Quindiana Jones]

It's not like it makes any considerable difference, though.

[Ouch!]

I never understood the purpose of stat-maxing when every boss in the game can be completed--thoroughly trounced, even!--without going to the trouble. This isn't like the international version of FFX where the secret bosses required that you max the sphere grid.

[Quindiana Jones]

I could understand trying to stat-min if you're avoid power-levelling, as it might make the game more challenging. Of course, if you do this, you are a right wally.

[Rantz]

I've kind of done the stat maxing thing, although I tried not to be a nutter about it (ie. I accepted the odd level up without being perfectly equipped unless I'd saved very recently). It was a pretty fun and challenging playthrough, but I wouldn't do it again. I do still take stat increases into account when choosing what equipment to wear, but I don't give it very much priority.

[Aulayna]

This isn't like the international version of FFX where the secret bosses required that you max the sphere grid.

You mean paying Yojimbo enough money to cheese one shot everything :cool:

(well apart from Dark Yojimbo that I had to do the legit way because Yojimbo was an arse and wouldn't comply with my demands to Zanmato his Dark counterpart in each encounter)

[Wolf Kanno]

It's not really much of a factor since you literally have to go out of your way to make the most of it, but the real isue here is why bother when you're going to be spending the end game spamming Thievery/Dragon's Crescent/Shock/Frog Drop which all have either grossly overpowered damage algorithms that can easily be exploited without min/max. Just play the the game and have fun without sweating all the minor details.

[Skyblade]

It's not really much of a factor since you literally have to go out of your way to make the most of it, but the real isue here is why bother when you're going to be spending the end game spamming Thievery/Dragon's Crescent/Shock/Frog Drop which all have either grossly overpowered damage algorithms that can easily be exploited without min/max. Just play the the game and have fun without sweating all the minor details.

*Sigh* If only my brain let me do that. It doesn't. I've wound up building spreadsheets to calculate ideal stat growth setups in games before. Even though they don't really matter. Just because my brain rankles at imperfection in my save files.

Honestly it hurts my enjoyment of the games. But I can't stop doing it. And its part of why I hate so many stat growth systems in the FF games. I far prefer ones which let you manipulate or grind, rather than those that rely on randomness, or ones like this that use a stilted growth pattern. It's why I actually liked the Sphere Grid and Crystarium. I actually enjoyed maxing the sphere grid and going back to figure out which nodes to wipe, in which order, in order to most efficiently max out all stats. Or XIII-2, where I had to calculate which jobs to level in which order to get the best stats.

[Quindiana Jones]

In that case, I blame your brain for your lack of enjoyment and not the game. ;)

[Wolf Kanno]

Ditto, I used to be like that Skyblade, but I honestly came to the revelation that it utterly ruined my ability to enjoy the games. While I still like to take an active role in min/max for my characters, I no longer let it dominate how I play games and I just try to enjoy them in more of natural state now.

[Spooniest]

Ok, first a caveat: I played through this game beginning-to-end only once. That should tell you what my opinion of the game is right there.

In a 9-page thread, there isn't a lot I can do not to repeat what others have said, but I'll give it a college try.

I remember being excited at the idea of the game when I read about it in the gaming magazines (hehehe...no internet for me back then). Ok, so you're going to do a Neoclassical Final Fantasy? Sounds tasty, thought I. So I thought I'd give it a college try.

The most common criticism in this thread is quite rightly said: this game moves too molasses-in-January (in Chicago, IL!) SLOW!! Oh, good FuSoYa Almighty, it is SLOW! And it's not just the battles! The plot progression is mired in all kinds of ridiculous crap about Alexandria and Kuja and Garland and the Black Mage Army and...

Remember back in Final Fantasy 1? Yeah, on the NES. The game that this game, IX, is supposed to be a tribute to, first and foremost. That game told you what was going on RIGHT AWAY. Like, at the TITLE SCREEN. "World's smurfed, you gotta fix it, bucko." IX seems like it's trying to build suspense for plot points that, in the endgame, turn out to be underwhelming, stereotypical, and sometimes just plain confusing! It just seems so hard to care what's happening when there's no ultimate goal in sight! You might say that "of course the ultimate goal is to save the world. It always is." But you'd fail to understand that you can't tell a story and have forgone conclusions like that. Someone who has never played Final Fantasy before might play this game and not know that; they'd be lost in endless scenes of Steiner moronically bitching out Zidane; of Zidane being the DUMBEST smurfING ladies man in the history of lotharios (what is the guy, 5'5"?). Of Garnet being the STOOPIDEST Princess in a series known for having princesses being kidnappable by GRABBING THEIR ARM. Vivi is a clever character, that I'll grant, and he never seems to get on my nerves. He's a bright spot. But everyone else just smurfing pisses me off, all the time.

The music is passably composed, but there's something about the PSX synth that makes me want to wretch. Gone (if you'll pardon the pun) are the crystal-clear digital delays of the SNES era. It's all muddy reverb and gimmicky modulation. As a side note here, I should mention that the main battle theme serves as a symbol of the game's glacial pace...how long is it supposed to take to kick up the tempo? I get it, you're building tension! Just get ON WITH IT!

The framerate is awful during battles. Gotta save those processor cycles for pushing those polygons, yessir! Have you ever seen Cyan and Sabin's limit breaks from Final Fantasy VI? Oh my God! They just smurfing JUMP forward and WRECK trout, and then it's over in a split second. It's...it's just a kick in the teeth to the enemy! It's almost violent! Final Fantasy IX gives me big swirly colory explosions. Woo hoo. And when Steiner jumps to attack, he goes from being in the air for one frame to having sliced through the enemy with the next. That just screams cheapo cheapo to me. It looks ridiculous!

Then they split your characters into 4 parties, and at that point in the game, I was almost ready to like it. But they don't get to DO anything as 4 parties! You don't switch between them like in Final Fantasy VI, in Kefka's Tower! No puzzles, no deciding which way one party goes over another! That's just a blatant cocktease. Square ran out of money to make this game before it was done.

The wrap-up in the story is meandering, tacked-on, and unsatisfactory. I've stopped caring about the story at that point, and I just want the game to be over so I could say I finished it. So he gets the girl. Ok, thank God I can stop playing.

Give me Final Fantasy VI any day.

Critical enough for ya?! :mad:

EDIT: tl;dr version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1YmS_VDvMY

[Mirage]

I agree with all the technical issues you brought up! Also, now that you mention it, the music does kind of get its face bashed in by the PS1 synth.

[Quindiana Jones]

yer dum :colbert:

[Cuchulainn]

I've played though IX more than any other Final Fantasy. Anyone who doesn't like it has clearly been affected by many of the issues raised in this topic

http://home.eyesonff.com/eyes-each-other/147851-mentally-ill-dating.html

[Ouch!]

First I find out that people hate Final Fantasy IX. Some of whom I genuinely respect and usually agree with. I find this difficult news to swallow, but I manage. "It's not the end of the world, Ouch!," I tell myself. "Different people have different tastes." Life will move on, and I shall let it pass. But then... But then.


The music is passably composed...
Some of Nobuo Uematsu's greatest work is passably composed? Criticisms of the console's limitations and how the music is adversely affected, I can understand. But that the music from this game is only passable in composition? What manner of herb are you smoking, and where the smurf can I get some, because that trout must be strong.

[Forsaken Lover]

FFIX is overrated as hell.

But I will not criticize the soundtrack whatsoever. I love every piece on it and it has around 5 or 10 of the best tracks in the entire series.

[Spooniest]

The music is passably composed...
Some of Nobuo Uematsu's greatest work is passably composed?

Hey, it just doesn't do it for me. What can I say? I guess it's not a fair criticism when it's a matter of personal taste. But it is well-composed music, I'm trying to say. Just not as good as earlier entries, in my opinion.

[Madame Adequate]

I don't even begin to understand the hate for Tidus.

Because he's whiny, stupid, annoying, obnoxious, nails on the chalkboard sounding, acts like a retard and does some really idiotic things.

I don't completely hate Tidus, but that's why most people do hate him.

I don't understand your hate for Zidane. A friendly, refreshing young man that is selfless and has a desire to help others in need. Some of the people he ends up helping have been right assholes to him. example Amarant.

How does a selfless teen be worse than a obnoxious young teen ?

Because this is the exact opposite of reality. Tidus is a friendly, refreshing young man who is selfless, happy to help others, and throws himself with devotion into helping Yuna on her quest and Spira more generally. Zidane is a moron whose primary defining character moment is 'accidentally' grabbing Dagger's butt. He doesn't help people with any conviction, he just has this vague notion that it's a good thing. If he got it into his head that flaying people was the right idea he'd approach it with the same aplomb and total lack of depth or reflection.

I'm sorry to take this thread back to FFX territory but I just cannot wrap my head around this attitude towards Tidus. People act like he's Squall turned up to 11 when in actuality his issues with his dad are well-handled and don't come up with nearly the lack of prompting that people seem to think. Aside from being slow on the uptake at times, which is largely a device to ensure everything can be explained to the player anyway, not one of the things people list about him is actually true.


Tidus grudgingly accepts his father but it never change the fact he was being a total whiny bitch about the whole thing, maybe if Jecht had been physically abusive or if they bothered to play up the mother's death from a broken heart angle but it does neither, instead focusing on Tidus whining about Jecht's "tough love" parenting style.

Do smurf off.

[Wolf Kanno]

Tidus is one of the worst main protagonist in the series, just deal with it. :love:

[Madame Adequate]

Grading parental abuse and how people react to it is legit a shitty thing to do!

[Spooniest]

Grading parental abuse and how people react to it is legit a troutty thing to do!

It would be if Tidus were a real person, but he's not; he's a character in a videogame.

I get the character of Tidus, what he is meant to represent, why he feels the way he does.

The thing that turns everyone off about Tidus is the voice actor. He just sucks donkey balls, Milf.

Donkey.

Balls.

EDIT: FWIW, I thought 10 was just kind of repetitive. Go to town. See Story. Clear Temple. Go to next town. Rinse & Repeat. Just kind of wore on me.

[Wolf Kanno]

Grading parental abuse and how people react to it is legit a troutty thing to do!

Jeez Milf, let's not get personal here. My issue here, if I may get a bit more personal and intimate, is that I honestly had a parent like Jecht, you know the type that punished you for getting Bs instead of As and verbally reprimended me for being lazy or wimpy, yet I honestly don't have some deep seated hatred for said parental figure. Of anything, I understand now (and Tidus does too in FFX) that my parents had my best interest at heart and simply parented me how they saw fit. I don't see it as abuse and I feel Jecht did more damage by disappearing than whatever he said to Tidus. The game makes it blatantly obvious that he loves Tidus, I mean he's recording his Jecht Spheres for Tidus, not his girlfried/baby-mama or his own collection, he's doing it for Tidus. So I find it unfathomable that Jecht's treatment of Tidus is pure malicious abuse, rather than a misguided father trying to make his son into a man the only way he knows how. Having lived it, I don't consider it abuse and I feel that Tidus' reaction is more him being overly melodramatic than actually being devastated by it.

As for Zidane... Zidane does tell you why he's nice and caring to people. As an orphan with no identity, he was taken in by the jkind Baku but rebelled and left to find his own place, only to come to realize that his true home is with the people who care about him cause that's the "true family". Zidane understand what it is liked to be alone and feel abandoned, so he does what he can to help people so they don't feel the way he used to. He pretty much tells you all this when he tells Garnet about his past. So no, I don't agree with your assessment that he's lacking in conviction, not like say Yuna, who spends the entire game going off to die cause people tell her she should follow after her father's footsteps. She spends most of the game trying to convince herself that she's doing this of her own choice, cause nothing like peer pressure to make you do life changing choices.

[Skyblade]

Grading parental abuse and how people react to it is legit a troutty thing to do!

Jeez Milf, let's not get personal here. My issue here, if I may get a bit more personal and intimate, is that I honestly had a parent like Jecht, you know the type that punished you for getting Bs instead of As and verbally reprimended me for being lazy or wimpy, yet I honestly don't have some deep seated hatred for said parental figure. Of anything, I understand now (and Tidus does too in FFX) that my parents had my best interest at heart and simply parented me how they saw fit. I don't see it as abuse and I feel Jecht did more damage by disappearing than whatever he said to Tidus. The game makes it blatantly obvious that he loves Tidus, I mean he's recording his Jecht Spheres for Tidus, not his girlfried/baby-mama or his own collection, he's doing it for Tidus. So I find it unfathomable that Jecht's treatment of Tidus is pure malicious abuse, rather than a misguided father trying to make his son into a man the only way he knows how. Having lived it, I don't consider it abuse and I feel that Tidus' reaction is more him being overly melodramatic than actually being devastated by it.

Except that Jecht's disappearance did scar Tidus, and the game plays that up too. His feelings that Jecht's disappearance killed his mother. His "life" in Zanarkand with no parents. An orphan who grows up constantly in the public eye, always compared to the looming shadow of his father.

A kid of seven or eight, whose father pushed, chastised, and drove him with such strength as Jecht possessed. And then his father vanishes, his mother follows shortly thereafter. At that age he's too young to really understand his father's intentions or expressions, he only sees the rough exterior. And then he's cast adrift in the world with no parents, nothing to shape his upbringing. And then he has the public. His father is the greatest blitzball player the city knows, and he suddenly vanished. Everyone looks to him, pressuring him, shaping him, chiding his mistakes, marking his successes up to being "Jecht's son".

Ten years of that would drive anyone to hate their father. Hate them for their treatment, hate them for what they had to endure because he left. And, most of all, what drives it from the beginning, and what the story brings it around to at the end, hatred for leaving. At the end, Tidus hates his dad, yet is happy to see him. Why? Because most of all, he hated being abandoned, he hated the loss. And they're together again.

I thought his feelings were powerful, well written, beautifully realistic, and led to some brilliant scenes, especially the tearful "I hate you" at the end.

[Wolf Kanno]

I agree that being abandoned was really what set Tidus off, but it primarily focuses on the verbal abuse more than him leaving, especially since it was the closest thing to a legitimate abuse Jecht pulled off on him and disappearing wasn't even his fault. My issues with Tidus is that his trauma and how he turned out never matches up from what psychology has shown us.Most children with abandonment issues struggle with trust and interpersonal communication and Tidus is the exact opposite. He focuses on his bully of a father but somehow brushes off that his mother was a pretty rotten parent who cared more about Jecht than him. I feel FS has a better argument about Tidus' obsession with Jecht than trying to legitimize Tidus' personal trauma as being genuine angst instead of Tidus holding onto the memory of his father in his own misguided way. It still never helps that the scenes of Tidus thinking back on his father are mostly portrayed to me as being silly than empathizing. I never liked the "I hate you" moment it was just too cliche and it missed its impact for me, but I can say that about most of FFX's plot and cast.

[chionos]

You're doing it again you rat bastards. This is a FFIX thread. lol

Tidus is obviously a polarizing character. He's probably a "better" character, but I like Zidane more.

[Madame Adequate]

Ah shit, I was over the line dude, I'm really sorry. I was having a kind of rough day and had a massive headache when I said that but that's no excuse. I do disagree about Tidus of course, but it wasn't on for me to snap like that.

MILF - behave yourself - :save:MILF:save:

[Wolf Kanno]

Its cool man. :beer:

Anyway we'll leave FFX talk for some other time, back to why you curs can't appreciate a gem of a game like FFIX!

[Spooniest]

Anyway we'll leave FFX talk for some other time, back to why you curs can't appreciate a gem of a game like FFIX!

I already said why. It's mind-numbingly slow, has dumb characters, PS1-synth music and a shoddily-put-together ending.

And...

This music doesn't make me cry at all. Not one bit. Shut up. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_nFdq12kw) :(

[ShinGundam]

@ Spooniest
Play 8bit JRPGs if you want a straight forward experience, I don't mind slow start but what i played from FFVI was just slow as well.

I agree, FFIX isn't a retro/classic FF, I still don't understand what why people call it a throwback to traditional FF? FFIX has a completely different gameplay and world structure and different ability system. FFIX has so many references to older games but so is most of FF games.

[chionos]

@ Spooniest
Play 8bit JRPGs if you want a straight forward experience, I don't mind slow start but what i played from FFVI was just slow as well.

I agree, FFIX isn't a retro/classic FF, I still don't understand what why people call it a throwback to traditional FF? FFIX has a completely different gameplay and world structure and different ability system. FFIX has so many references to older games but so is most of FF games.

It's a reaction to the previous two games, which took the series in a sci-fi direction, AND it's because that's exactly how SE defined the game, as a daggum throwback.

For old-school FF fans, Final Fantasy means:

castles (Alexander, check),

airships (Blue Narciss, Prima Vista, etc etc etc, check),

spells that come from innate ability (Vivi, Eiko, etc, check),

classes (zidane=thief, vivi=wizard, steiner=knight/warrior, garnet=summoner/cleric, etc. [FFVII and FFVIII utilized characters that were modeled on classes in their stat progressions and fighting styles--cid=dragoon, zell=monk, etc--but the materia and gf systems made the base character stats basically moot, and the weapons/limit breaks are really just flavor]),

dwarves (Rally-ho! bitches),

4 person parties (yep, check),

a princess (Garnet, check),

battle theme based on the first 6 games (and the victory theme, check),

and a bunch of other stuff:
elemental fiends, doga artifact and une's mirror, crystals, namingway, mount gulug, god/goddess statues, garland, pandemonium, ramuh's story, the moons, Madeen, trance, Gilgamesh, and well basically every single detail references the earlier games. To be fair, there are references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFT and other SE games as well, but what it all adds up to is a crazy nostalgia trip.

You take Final Fantasy and you put it in a spoon with a little water, and you let it dissolve, and then you take your isopropyl-rinsed syringe and you suck that mess up into your needle and you jab it in your arm and mash down on the plunger and what you're feeling right now is FFIX.

Hironobu Sakafuckingguchi called it the closest FF to his ideal of what FF should be (double smackdown to the face, check).

[Quindiana Jones]

Honestly can't tell if that's an argument in favour of FFIX or against it.

[chionos]

Well, not necessarily either, since its value is relative. Personally, I see it as a favorable list of attributes, because those are things about the series that I like, and I'm a sucker for nostalgia, but yeah, others will see these things as points against the game. Totally understandable.

[ShinGundam]

@Chionos
But FFIX has it fair share of Sci-Fi elements such as spaceships, transformable robot,Terra and clones that play an important part latter in the game and the world has quite a bit of steampunk feel than a classic fantasy.

[chionos]

Perhaps, but I don't think those things take away from the root element of the world, which is medieval fantasy, sword & sworcery, knights and princesses.

[Laddy]

There are complaints I have with FFIX. Minor ones, but complaints nonetheless. Hux can still go smurf Janeway, though.

-The ending is sweet, but rushed.
-The entire cast is very well-developed, but because of this some character's are noticeably underdeveloped, relatively speaking.
-It's too easy.
-I feel like the character advancement system is better suited for a somewhat longer game.
-I honestly think FFIX could've been brilliant with voice acting, and some of the better moments could have really been improved if there was more than text there.
-The locations do lack a bit of unity, but they are indivudally impressive.
-About 10 more hours in Terra would have made me more invested in its destruction.
-Kuja is a great villain with a surprsingly strong motivation, but I think he needed a bit more development. He just needed that little push to make him truly great.
-Necron is fine being alluded to prior to his appearance, but FFIX was...too subtle.
-Really, the setting and all the races and cultures were smurfing fantastic. It's a shame they didn't delve into the lore somemore, particularly with Burmecia and Lindblum.

[Mirage]

@ Spooniest
Play 8bit JRPGs if you want a straight forward experience, I don't mind slow start but what i played from FFVI was just slow as well.

I agree, FFIX isn't a retro/classic FF, I still don't understand what why people call it a throwback to traditional FF? FFIX has a completely different gameplay and world structure and different ability system. FFIX has so many references to older games but so is most of FF games.

It's a reaction to the previous two games, which took the series in a sci-fi direction, AND it's because that's exactly how SE defined the game, as a daggum throwback.

For old-school FF fans, Final Fantasy means:

castles (Alexander, check),

airships (Blue Narciss, Prima Vista, etc etc etc, check),

spells that come from innate ability (Vivi, Eiko, etc, check),

classes (zidane=thief, vivi=wizard, steiner=knight/warrior, garnet=summoner/cleric, etc. [FFVII and FFVIII utilized characters that were modeled on classes in their stat progressions and fighting styles--cid=dragoon, zell=monk, etc--but the materia and gf systems made the base character stats basically moot, and the weapons/limit breaks are really just flavor]),

dwarves (Rally-ho! bitches),

4 person parties (yep, check),

a princess (Garnet, check),

battle theme based on the first 6 games (and the victory theme, check),

and a bunch of other stuff:
elemental fiends, doga artifact and une's mirror, crystals, namingway, mount gulug, god/goddess statues, garland, pandemonium, ramuh's story, the moons, Madeen, trance, Gilgamesh, and well basically every single detail references the earlier games. To be fair, there are references to FFVII, FFVIII, FFT and other SE games as well, but what it all adds up to is a crazy nostalgia trip.

You take Final Fantasy and you put it in a spoon with a little water, and you let it dissolve, and then you take your isopropyl-rinsed syringe and you suck that mess up into your needle and you jab it in your arm and mash down on the plunger and what you're feeling right now is FFIX.

Hironobu Sakafuckingguchi called it the closest FF to his ideal of what FF should be (double smackdown to the face, check).
I am an old school FF fan and this is not what Final Fantasy means to me.

[chionos]

You're also a misanthropist and nothing you say matters.

[Elly]

ill admit the High Fantasy tone might have quite a bit to do with my distaste of this game...
i started JRPG gaming with Phantasy Star, im a Sci-Fi fan, ive seen every Star Wars and most of the Star Trek movies in theaters due to my dad being a huge Sci-Fi fan, he'd take us kids to the theater with him to see the movies, thus i grew up on Science Fiction and not much High Fantasy, anyway back to games...
when i first tried FF i was initialy turned off by it, i was used to Phantasy Star I-IV at that point and to me FF seemed silly with their standing on opposite sides of the screen waving their weapons at each other, never actualy fighting, i didnt give FF another chance till FF6 after i played Chrono Trigger and thaught "ok SquareSoft is an amazing company, guess ill give FF another try"... this time with FF6 the characters no longer did that weapon wave thing from across the screen all the time they finaly got into the fight mostly, sadly i never finished FF6 though, damn ADHD, anyway years later i played FF7 and was blown away its become my 2nd most replayed game ever, Chrono Trigger being my most replayed, ive seen every ending in every possible way, anyway later we get FF8 and i loved it FF was finaly going in a direction i liked leaving behind the High Fantasy silliness for Sci-Fi, Steampunk, and some hints of Cyberpunk...
then comes FF9, at the time i didnt know it wasnt originaly supposed to be a numbered entry, i just knew it was more a tribute than anything as there was a quote from one of the guys from Square in PlayStation Magazine saying so, so being a tribute i was hoping for some referances to 6,7,&8, nope, barely a nod at either of them, it had taken a huge leap backward off a cliff and into the overused over-cliched High Fantasy and to top it all off the art design went all to hell, they superdeformed them, not in any installment has the characters been superdeformed, just mearly shown with forced perspective from a birds eye view, and the release of the artbook showed me what they would have looked like had they not changed art direction, i felt let down, the company i had faith in for moving forward and embracing change had just gone backwards, luckily they didnt continue this route as they got better, X was awesome, XII was ok, and i simply adore XIII & XIII-2, and i dont give a flying flip what the haters say The Spirits Within was an awesome movie...
but, FFIX just doesnt do it for me, despite all the problems i and others have mentioned, i think stepping backwards into High Fantasy is what killed it for me initialy and from there the problems just kept stacking up...

[Rostum]

That's not really a fair criticism of the game, but rather just your distaste for a genre.

[Elly]

lol, ive criticized it a fair bit already, figured id frame it, so it doesnt come across like i criticize it just for the sake of doing so, ya know a little background...

[Mirage]

You're also a misanthropist and nothing you say matters.

I am? Since when?

[chionos]

You're also a misanthropist and nothing you say matters.

I am? Since when?

Just a guess here, but since the moment you first came in contact with another human being? :mock: I wasn't being serious Mirage.

Quick Forum Tip #384:

Breaking large chunks of text into smaller paragraphs and putting space between paragraphs means more people will read your posts.

Elly, there were several references to FFVI, VII, and VIII.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by, "they super deformed them," but if you mean they didn't attempt to make them realist/human-like as in FFVIII, I understand the critique (them being comical, cartoony) even though at that stage, during the PS1 era, hyper-realism was so far from possible, deforming them allows for much prettier characters. FFVIII characters were just ugly.

I enjoyed the FFIX cast, but it's perfectly understandable that others wouldn't equally enjoy them. Especially Zidane with his monkey tail.

I'm genuinely sorry you're not able to enjoy High Fantasy, Elly. Genuinely.

At least you had Phantasy Star, though. PSIV is one of my favorite RPGs from any generation. But I enjoyed both series because of the differences between them. That's not to say I'm better than people who couldn't enjoy them both. I'm fortunate that I could enjoy both. Enjoying more things = more enjoyment.


Another criticism of the game:
It wasn't that I felt cheated or anything when I was playing, but the majority of FFIX's cities fell flat, felt kind of bored and umm, meatless or listless.

[JaymeNoel]

God the graphics are horrible. Started playing this again today... How is it possible its a backset from Final Fantasy VIII? :|

On the other hand, once you get into the game there's so many better things going on with the story and the characters that you really don't give a damn anymore.

[NeoCracker]

I love the graphics in the game. :p

I'm not really bothered by the deformed characters, and the environments are all wonderful. :colbert:

[Mirage]

You're also a misanthropist and nothing you say matters.

I am? Since when?

Just a guess here, but since the moment you first came in contact with another human being? :mock: I wasn't being serious Mirage.


Sure, but it's not really humorous when you just take things entirely out of thin air :p.

[chionos]

You're also a misanthropist and nothing you say matters.

I am? Since when?

Just a guess here, but since the moment you first came in contact with another human being? :mock: I wasn't being serious Mirage.


Sure, but it's not really humorous when you just take things entirely out of thin air :p.

Oh, sorry bruh. When I wrote it, I thought it would be obvious.

@Neo I thought it was a beautiful game too. Definitely under-appreciated in that area.

[Rostum]

I don't understand the criticisms against the visual style and the graphics. I think both aspects are truly beautiful for a PS1 title. :) I also never understood some people's opinions about everything needing to be hyper-realistic and considering something like super-deformation as "childish". Oh well.

[Elly]

its not that i find it childish, i dont mind superdeformed when its done right, hell i love Arc the Lad and theyre sortta deformed to the point that a character breaks the fourth wall and says something about it to the player... no for me the art direction problem with IX was i saw the original character designs where everyone looked awesome, even Steiner, but when i try to play the game the art now comes off as a parody of what could have been if they didnt change it... visualy the artbook ruined it for me, i almost wish they never included illustrations and 3D renders of what the characters were supposed to look like in "The Art of FFIX" cause now when i look at the characters i get the feeling of so much wasted potential by the art department, like their hard work got thrown out cause some moron higher up says, you know what would be cool lets deform everyone...

[JaymeNoel]

My problem doesn't even go into the character illustrations. I love the designs, truly. I also don't find the need for it to be "realistic" like Final Fantasy VIII. I just think everything is too.... "grainy", I suppose? Even for a PS1 title, it's very grainy. I didn't find VIII to be that bad. It was a backset, I think.

[Mirage]

And that's what I'm talking about when I say the game tried to do more than the PS1 was capable of. All the details in textures and character models is just reduced to a grainy mess because the PS1 can't output a resolution high enough to let us see those details. Also, no texture filtering.

FF8 looks better because the game doesn't try to display more details than what the console was capable of making look right.

[ShinGundam]

I don't understand the criticisms against the visual style and the graphics. I think both aspects are truly beautiful for a PS1 title. :) I also never understood some people's opinions about everything needing to be hyper-realistic and considering something like super-deformation as "childish". Oh well.
Basically they don't like funky proportions.