Time for the fans to defend FFIX

[Shin Gouken]

It's been some years since i last played IX, i had a few complaints but mostly i neither loved nor hated it. Unfortunatley my disc would freeze whenever i beat the final boss and i never got an ending, but now it's available to download on PSN i'm contemplating having another go.

But i came across some negative comments on The spoony Experiment forums and i want to hear what people have to say regarding them...

I'm going to divide these into two categories. The small and the big.

The small:

*'Trance' is such a bull. You get it maybe six or seven times throughout the whole game for your most used characters, if you're lucky. It almost invariably happens when you're fighting in a field battle, and its requirements are stupid. When does a boss opponent ever damage you enough to make Trance likely? It's pure chance. It is also not helped by the constant break-up of characters into different plot strands... but I'll be coming to that later.

*The smurfing unending monotony of battle music. There are two types of battle music in the game. Normal battle music and boss battle music. So far, the only breaks in this trend have been when you fight Beatrix in Burmecia and when Zidane is having his pissy little strop in Pandemonium. For God's sake. How hard can it be to add maybe four or five different musical themes for a sequence that happens literally hundreds of times during the course of the game? And the theme doesn't necessarily even have to be different. How about a remix or change of instruments or something?

*The useless and uninteresting Eidelons. They feel tacked on. Whereas FF8 made them a big part of gameplay, in FF9 they revert back to FF7 mode and become what is, essentially, an uninteresting and overly magic spell.

*Redundant characters. Quina doesn't work because he doesn't have a back-story. He also doesn't work because he isn't smurfing funny. There is no wit to him. Constrastingly, Freya has an excellent back-story, but it is explored for all of five seconds. She barely says a word for the rest of the game after Cleyra. Both needn't have been playable characters (why not Beatrix instead?). Freya would have worked as a temporarily playable character. Quina can just die, as far as I'm concerned.

*Lack of FMV sequences. The FMV sequences in FF9 are really quite special at times, but they only seem to be used for major events (the destruction of Burmecia and Cleyra, Brahne's death, Kuja laying waste to Terra). The in-game graphics can be annoyingly vague at the best of times. I don't think I even know what Amarant's face looks like.

The Big:

*Lack of real interest in environments in the final half of the game. The first half of FF9 is absolutely stunning. So many different towns and cities, so many different races and cultures. But once you venture into the forgotten continents, the wonder and fantasy goes rapidly downhill. The Black Mages live in... er... a forest. Eiko lives with moogles (ANNOYING ES) in a canyon made of rock and nothing else. Oelivert and the Desert Palace were just tedious. Boring, boring, boring. Conde Petie was neat, but nothing we haven't seen before. Terra, again, looked stunning but ultimately had nothing to it and was destroyed before the characters ever really had a chance to explore it. The whole final half was a letdown, and even while Memoria was interesting-looking, it felt too much like the castle you had to explore before you fought Ultimecia in FF8.

*CONSTANTLY BREAKING UP THE CHARACTERS UNNECESSARILY. I cannot stress enough how big a problem this was for me. Constantly your characters are broken up, characters you've invested time into, developing a bond with - growing, eventually, to love, and then they're broken up - often not be seen for f**king hours. This is especially annoying when Garnet and Steiner break from the group in Lindblum before you head off to Gizamaluke's Grotto. Zidane isn't re-united with either until the end of the second disc!

*Developing characters' personalities, and then just giving up. Steiner is a great example of this. Oafish and clumsy, but equally valiant and proud. His introspective moments are among the best instances of dialogue in the whole game, equally so are his early arguments with Zidane. Then, after defeating the monsters Kuja has sent to destroy Alexandria, you barely hear an original word from him for the rest of the game. He simply doesn't say anything of note after that. All you get is generic dialogue that could have been said by ANYONE. Similarly with Freya - exposition and then sod-all for the rest of the game. Instead we are treated to excruciatingly tedious, contrived and cliched soundbites from Amarant, who has a hard time figuring out why he's so fecking stroppy all the time.

*An overly simplistic and boring weapon/armour/ability system. The characters' abilities are barely customisable, and the abilities and weapons are largely dull anyway. There isn't a single interesting Trance move, Eidelon animation or magic spell in the entire game. It's distinctly Pokemon-esque. In fact, I reckon eight-year-olds who play Pokemon would probably find the equip system too easy to use.

So are these points fair or exagerated ?

[sir helix]

ff9 is by far my favorite of the series, mostly sense it was the first one i played so it have a place in my heart for all time...(that sounded cheesy), i hated the trance deal but i made sense of it to my self, the trance gauge i seen it like a stress guage sorta, a person can only take so much stress before the explode into an entrirly diffrent person and their adrinaline rushes and causes their str to raise.

what realy annoyed me was the whole kuja and zidane brothers issue, what is it with square and family trifles.

4 theodore and cecil
7 cloud and sphiroth
and so on and so forth then in X the had father issues, its realy annoying.

I never really seen a point in quina, he has no part in the story at all exept for vivi's gramps. Freya was a great charecter but i feel the entire 2nd disc was devoted to her in a way.

but the whole story was wraped around steiner, vivi, dagger and zidane. amarent, eiko, frogger and freya were kind of add ins.

[blackmage_nuke]

*'Trance' is such a bull. You get it maybe six or seven times throughout the whole game for your most used characters, if you're lucky. It almost invariably happens when you're fighting in a field battle, and its requirements are stupid. When does a boss opponent ever damage you enough to make Trance likely? It's pure chance. It is also not helped by the constant break-up of characters into different plot strands... but I'll be coming to that later.

The game isnt so difficult that trance is needed anyway, it's just an exxtra, they couldve just taken out trance all together and it wouldnt have mattered to me anyway.

*The smurfing unending monotony of battle music. There are two types of battle music in the game. Normal battle music and boss battle music. So far, the only breaks in this trend have been when you fight Beatrix in Burmecia and when Zidane is having his pissy little strop in Pandemonium. For God's sake. How hard can it be to add maybe four or five different musical themes for a sequence that happens literally hundreds of times during the course of the game? And the theme doesn't necessarily even have to be different. How about a remix or change of instruments or something?

The same can be said about every final fantasy, but now that i think about it an instrumental remix for every disk wouldnt have cut into memory restrictions.

*The useless and uninteresting Eidelons. They feel tacked on. Whereas FF8 made them a big part of gameplay, in FF9 they revert back to FF7 mode and become what is, essentially, an uninteresting and overly magic spell.

Each final fantasy is different, some put importance on summons and others dont, just because something is important in one final fantasy doesnt mean it has to be important in the rest of them.

*Redundant characters. Quina doesn't work because he doesn't have a back-story. He also doesn't work because he isn't smurfing funny. There is no wit to him. Constrastingly, Freya has an excellent back-story, but it is explored for all of five seconds. She barely says a word for the rest of the game after Cleyra. Both needn't have been playable characters (why not Beatrix instead?). Freya would have worked as a temporarily playable character. Quina can just die, as far as I'm concerned.

Where else would Freya gone besides joining the party? No Burmecia, no Cleyra, all thats left to do is get revenge. Im not a fan of Quina though but like most final fantasys there are characters that dont do anything after their side plot line.

*Lack of FMV sequences. The FMV sequences in FF9 are really quite special at times, but they only seem to be used for major events (the destruction of Burmecia and Cleyra, Brahne's death, Kuja laying waste to Terra). The in-game graphics can be annoyingly vague at the best of times. I don't think I even know what Amarant's face looks like.

Anyone who cant tell whats happening because of the ingame graphics of ffix is blind, or playing the game on a 16cm screen from 5 meters away. Also they couldve added more FMV's if they wanted the game to be 6 disks long.

The Big:

*Lack of real interest in environments in the final half of the game. The first half of FF9 is absolutely stunning. So many different towns and cities, so many different races and cultures. But once you venture into the forgotten continents, the wonder and fantasy goes rapidly downhill. The Black Mages live in... er... a forest. Eiko lives with moogles (ANNOYING ES) in a canyon made of rock and nothing else. Oelivert and the Desert Palace were just tedious. Boring, boring, boring. Conde Petie was neat, but nothing we haven't seen before. Terra, again, looked stunning but ultimately had nothing to it and was destroyed before the characters ever really had a chance to explore it. The whole final half was a letdown, and even while Memoria was interesting-looking, it felt too much like the castle you had to explore before you fought Ultimecia in FF8.

Stop the presses! I thought every town in the world was a sprawling metropolis of different species and races! Is he saying there are SMALL villages WITHOUT hippo-people and rat-people! thats impossible! ANd the Hidden village of Blackmages is in a forrest!? NO ****ing way!

*CONSTANTLY BREAKING UP THE CHARACTERS UNNECESSARILY. I cannot stress enough how big a problem this was for me. Constantly your characters are broken up, characters you've invested time into, developing a bond with - growing, eventually, to love, and then they're broken up - often not be seen for f**king hours. This is especially annoying when Garnet and Steiner break from the group in Lindblum before you head off to Gizamaluke's Grotto. Zidane isn't re-united with either until the end of the second disc!

Using different characters brings diversity to the game

*Developing characters' personalities, and then just giving up. Steiner is a great example of this. Oafish and clumsy, but equally valiant and proud. His introspective moments are among the best instances of dialogue in the whole game, equally so are his early arguments with Zidane. Then, after defeating the monsters Kuja has sent to destroy Alexandria, you barely hear an original word from him for the rest of the game. He simply doesn't say anything of note after that. All you get is generic dialogue that could have been said by ANYONE. Similarly with Freya - exposition and then sod-all for the rest of the game. Instead we are treated to excruciatingly tedious, contrived and cliched soundbites from Amarant, who has a hard time figuring out why he's so fecking stroppy all the time.

Most final fantasys are like this but i agree a few extra lines of dialogue wouldnt have hurt i guess.

*An overly simplistic and boring weapon/armour/ability system. The characters' abilities are barely customisable, and the abilities and weapons are largely dull anyway. There isn't a single interesting Trance move, Eidelon animation or magic spell in the entire game. It's distinctly Pokemon-esque. In fact, I reckon eight-year-olds who play Pokemon would probably find the equip system too easy to use.

This game was meant to be a throwback to the traditional RPG. The weapon system was simple but it worked and it was fun.

[Vivisteiner]

Pretty poor arguments tbh.

*'Trance' is such a bull. You get it maybe six or seven times throughout the whole game for your most used characters, if you're lucky. It almost invariably happens when you're fighting in a field battle, and its requirements are stupid. When does a boss opponent ever damage you enough to make Trance likely? It's pure chance. It is also not helped by the constant break-up of characters into different plot strands... but I'll be coming to that later.

This is a minor point at best. Sure, trance isn't that great a system but it's more of an extra than anything. The gameplay is solid enough without it. I have also used trance strategically before - carefully built it up before the boss battle so that it would be unleashed during the big fight. At least it's not crazily abusable like FFX's overdrives.

*The smurfing unending monotony of battle music. There are two types of battle music in the game. Normal battle music and boss battle music. So far, the only breaks in this trend have been when you fight Beatrix in Burmecia and when Zidane is having his pissy little strop in Pandemonium. For God's sake. How hard can it be to add maybe four or five different musical themes for a sequence that happens literally hundreds of times during the course of the game? And the theme doesn't necessarily even have to be different. How about a remix or change of instruments or something?

blackmage_nuke covered this: it's the same for every FF and there were memory restrictions. I do think both tracks were solid though, so it didn't bother me much.

*The useless and uninteresting Eidelons. They feel tacked on. Whereas FF8 made them a big part of gameplay, in FF9 they revert back to FF7 mode and become what is, essentially, an uninteresting and overly magic spell.

lmao

Is this guy serious? He's comparing them to FF8's summon system, arguably the worst in the series?!

At least with FFIX summons had short animations most of the time and so on. Sure, they weren't a major gameplay element but at least there wasn't a scenario where we had to wait for the goddamn lengthy animation to finish whilst repeatedly button mashing one button.

*Redundant characters. Quina doesn't work because he doesn't have a back-story. He also doesn't work because he isn't smurfing funny. There is no wit to him. Constrastingly, Freya has an excellent back-story, but it is explored for all of five seconds. She barely says a word for the rest of the game after Cleyra. Both needn't have been playable characters (why not Beatrix instead?). Freya would have worked as a temporarily playable character. Quina can just die, as far as I'm concerned.

Quina is more of an add on character. And personally I find him/her quite funny. Very funny on occasion.

I would have liked to have seen more exploration of Freya but again he's being very picky indeed. It seems he's clutching straws in his attempt to show that the game is weak. Anyone can pick minor holes in any game - but he hasn't addressed any serious flaws.

*Lack of FMV sequences. The FMV sequences in FF9 are really quite special at times, but they only seem to be used for major events (the destruction of Burmecia and Cleyra, Brahne's death, Kuja laying waste to Terra). The in-game graphics can be annoyingly vague at the best of times. I don't think I even know what Amarant's face looks like.

There are quite a few FMVs and all of them are breathtaking. The in game graphics are very clear most of the time, unless you have eye problems. Again he's bringing up really really minor qualms.

Lack of real interest in environments in the final half of the game. The first half of FF9 is absolutely stunning. So many different towns and cities, so many different races and cultures. But once you venture into the forgotten continents, the wonder and fantasy goes rapidly downhill. The Black Mages live in... er... a forest. Eiko lives with moogles (ANNOYING ES) in a canyon made of rock and nothing else. Oelivert and the Desert Palace were just tedious. Boring, boring, boring. Conde Petie was neat, but nothing we haven't seen before. Terra, again, looked stunning but ultimately had nothing to it and was destroyed before the characters ever really had a chance to explore it. The whole final half was a letdown, and even while Memoria was interesting-looking, it felt too much like the castle you had to explore before you fought Ultimecia in FF8.

Haha, this probably doesn't even warrant a reply. His 'argument' obviously is very petty indeed. He focusses on a few less than stellar environments and then says that it is a big issue. It's obviously not though. I actually thought those environments worked well. Each environment made sense in terms of the plot and most of them were pretty interesting and detailed actually.

*CONSTANTLY BREAKING UP THE CHARACTERS UNNECESSARILY. I cannot stress enough how big a problem this was for me. Constantly your characters are broken up, characters you've invested time into, developing a bond with - growing, eventually, to love, and then they're broken up - often not be seen for f**king hours. This is especially annoying when Garnet and Steiner break from the group in Lindblum before you head off to Gizamaluke's Grotto. Zidane isn't re-united with either until the end of the second disc!

I actually loved this aspect of the game. On the one hand you have a new fresh approach with a new character to control and on the other you're left with suspense wondering what is happening to the other character's you've relinquished control of. I thought the way the different character adventures tied together was excellently done. And when they finally do meet up as a party there's a sense of accomplishment.

*Developing characters' personalities, and then just giving up. Steiner is a great example of this. Oafish and clumsy, but equally valiant and proud. His introspective moments are among the best instances of dialogue in the whole game, equally so are his early arguments with Zidane. Then, after defeating the monsters Kuja has sent to destroy Alexandria, you barely hear an original word from him for the rest of the game. He simply doesn't say anything of note after that. All you get is generic dialogue that could have been said by ANYONE. Similarly with Freya - exposition and then sod-all for the rest of the game. Instead we are treated to excruciatingly tedious, contrived and cliched soundbites from Amarant, who has a hard time figuring out why he's so fecking stroppy all the time.

Was he playing a different game from me? The character development of Steiner was great - it was just fairly subtly done. Unfortunately he seems to have missed it altogether. It's actually little phrases Steiner says in the latter half of the game which reflect a change in his personality.

And in defense of Amarant, everything he did made sense once you get into his character. I know someone like him so I found him easy to relate to - and Amarant actually began to convey a depth of emotion near the end of the game e.g. through cleverly written self-referential dialogue.

*An overly simplistic and boring weapon/armour/ability system. The characters' abilities are barely customisable, and the abilities and weapons are largely dull anyway. There isn't a single interesting Trance move, Eidelon animation or magic spell in the entire game. It's distinctly Pokemon-esque. In fact, I reckon eight-year-olds who play Pokemon would probably find the equip system too easy to use.

...He's obviously playing this from the wrong angle. The game is more about making the most of your party's combination of characters as well as developing each character successfully in his own role. The system is fairly simple but that's not necessarily bad. It works and battles have a fair amount of depth, which makes the whole experience engaging.


His criticisms are mostly unfair, and where they're valid they're minor critiques at best. I was expecting a more impressive attack on the game but actually his arguments were akin to pointing out a typo or two in a brilliant essay and thus saying that the essay is rubbish.

[Depression Moon]

Those points are exaggerated

[Jessweeee♪]

Eh, it was nice. It's not my favorite in the series, but I enjoyed it. I'm excited for the PSN release because it's the only Final Fantasy I enjoyed enough to play twice but didn't.

[champagne supernova]

Just playing through IX. Will agree with some of the points in the small section. But they are exactly that: small. Not ruining my gaming experience.

This is my first time playing it so it's quite interesting going from FFXIII to IX (especially as I still haven't opened God of War 3 which is chilling next to my PS3 - don't ask me why). The level of presentation and polish that the modern FFs is unbelievable compared to the earlier ones. But that's progress.

There is one other complaint: the battles are tediously long. I've even put it on the fastest battle speed, but what I mostly do is wait for the ATB thing to fill up. And when it does fill up, there is absolutely no guarantee that I will actually do my action then. Sometimes the enemy has like 2/3 hits on me. This is irritating me (reminds me of XII in that way actually).

Story - well I read the script so kind of know what happens (this is before I knew FFs were going to be released on PSN so thought I better know something about the game). But it was a while ago, so a little bit hazy. Seems quite cool. Definitely a throwback to older FFs. Vivi is already my favourite character in the game. Zidane on the other hand is a bit of an idiot. Poor man's Balthier in my opinion. But maybe he will grow on me. Garnet is decent and so is Steiner. Even if he is a bit irritating and archaic, it is good fun. Only about 10 hours in and now need to grind a bit so I can beat the boss and head to Burmecia (bleh), but I've been enjoying it. Quite nice having a more open world after XIII.

[Levian]

That list is mostly just nitpicking. It feels like the author had a few issues with FFIX and later decided to sit down and search for more things he could dislike.

Some points aren't something I consider flaws (Ability system, Trance not happening all the time), other points are definitely not exclusive to Final Fantasy IX but instead consistent with many of the other games (monotone battle music, useless eidolons, redundant characters), and some points are just completely false. (FFVII only has 6 more FMV's than FFIX, Quina not being funny )

[Greatermaximus]

Too hard to justify and maybe inconclusive. Briefly it wasn't the most outstanding game in the world, but it told a story. Work went into it and you liked it or didn't.

That's why there are 'elements' outside the game like demos that let you try it out before buying it. I don't see what the problem is.

[f f freak]

There are one or two things that I agree with on that list, but one thing I simply cannot agree with is the Eidolon comment.

*The useless and uninteresting Eidelons. They feel tacked on. Whereas FF8 made them a big part of gameplay, in FF9 they revert back to FF7 mode and become what is, essentially, an uninteresting and overly magic spell

They most certainly do not feel tacked on. While FF8 may have made them a big part of the gameplay, (which it didn't. They were useless and the easily abused Junction system made them useless far quicker than FFIX's Eidolons became useless) FFIX's Eidolons were made the main focus of the story for quite some time. The majority of Disc 2 is about Eidolons, extracting the Eidolons, Odin destroying Cleyra, Atomos destroying Lindblum, Garnet recieving Ramuh, Bahamut at the Iifa Tree, etc. Sorry for the rant, but this comment just annoyed me the most out of all of them.

[Quindiana Jones]

This is WRONG and LAME and YOU'RE GAY and TETRA MASTER.

I believe I've made myself clear.

[Mirage]

The loading times are horrible even on the PSN version that I'm playing off of my PS3 HDD. That coupled with the slow pace in battle are my only two real complaints.

Seriously, FF8 loads faster when played from the CDs than FF9 does from a HDD.

[Forsaken Lover]

I just want to point out that, in the couple of years I've been on Spoony's forums, I've mostly seen FFIX given high priases.

There are a couple haters but they are very few and far between.

[Clo]

Yeah, I was gonna say, FFIX can really stand on its own. It doesn't really need its fans to defend it, because it's a good, cute and endearing game that is widely recognized as being good.

And a lot of the hate seems to be old. FFIX grows more golden with time. But sometimes I wonder if FFIX is thought so highly of because it was a good game that flew under the radar for the most part, and did not receive much conversation (unlike FFVII, which people have talked about to no end since 1997). Even FFIV and X seemed to have been given considerable attention over the years, so when people look over IX, I got the impression people go "Aw, it's so good and people don't really talk about it. How sad. Let's talk about it!"

Though I really don't it's popularity and conversations will ever reach the amount of VII or whatever - but that will just keep it a classic.

All that aside, the game is good. Nitpickers gonna nitpick.

[Shin Gouken]

There is one other complaint: the battles are tediously long. I've even put it on the fastest battle speed, but what I mostly do is wait for the ATB thing to fill up. And when it does fill up, there is absolutely no guarantee that I will actually do my action then. Sometimes the enemy has like 2/3 hits on me. This is irritating me (reminds me of XII in that way actually).

The loading times are horrible even on the PSN version that I'm playing off of my PS3 HDD. That coupled with the slow pace in battle are my only two real complaints.

I bit the bullet and downloaded it. I'm only one hour in so i'm not going to give any thoughts on it just yet. But the load times are ridiculous. I got out my stop watch to time it - 17.5 seconds from the time an enemy is encountered until you have control, and that's not including waiting for the ATB which takes an eternity to fill. Like supernova said, you just stand around doing nothing while you wait for it to fill, and even after you've entered your command, you're still queued behind everyone ales attack animation and have to wait for them to finish.