Criticize This Game

[maybee]

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

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

[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.

THIS. Is unfor-smurfing-giveable. You're dead to me, Hux.

[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

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[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!