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.
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Originally Posted by Fynn
He was just following directions!
