Fynn logic:
"Ugh, FFX, what a dissapointment" > keeps playing it
"I love FFIX!" > plays it once
Fynn logic:
"Ugh, FFX, what a dissapointment" > keeps playing it
"I love FFIX!" > plays it once
Also guys, let's face it - you aren't here just to hear me praise the games you love. You enjoy it when I talk trout too
Yeah, trash-talking is one of the best bits of LPs.Originally Posted by Fynn
Also guys, let's face it - you aren't here just to hear me praise the games you love. You enjoy it when I talk trout too
True enough. I mean, if everyone agreed with me all the time, who would be left to feel smugly superior over?Also guys, let's face it - you aren't here just to hear me praise the games you love. You enjoy it when I talk trout too
You're providing a vital service
Final Fantasy Stockholm Syndrome.
Funny. I could say the same thing about you, but I try to be a nice guyTrue enough. I mean, if everyone agreed with me all the time, who would be left to feel smugly superior over?Also guys, let's face it - you aren't here just to hear me praise the games you love. You enjoy it when I talk trout too
You're providing a vital service
Okay, time for the promised update!
- Got all the way to disk 3 in the week or so that I've been playing. And I think I know now why I've only played this once compared to other FFs - I-VI are much less dense in dialogue and event scenes than VII-X, so that makes them easier to beat. And IX has been consistently inaccessible for me for the longest time, since I had emulators and the handhelds for I-VI, had VII and VIII on PC, and then the PS2 for FFX. So I basically had all these FFs to pick up for all the free time I had until high school, which is when I got a PSP and bought FFIX. At that point I was much better at games and once was enough for me to beat it (up until that point it always took me at least two tries to beat a game), and once I beat it, I moved on to other games since I didn't really have enough time to replay older ones. So there we go. I liked IX better than X, but simply had far fewer opportunities to beat it.
- The story flow is very balanced so far and I enjoy that the overall feel of this game is like a combination of FFIV and FFVI, with a small taste of what FFXII will be like. You can definitely feel this is a Hiroyuki Ito game and by God, this man needs to make more FFs, for all of our sakes.
- Most of the music is amazing. There are of course the ever popular choices of Vamo Alla Flamenco, Vivi's theme, and all of Beatrix's themes, but I'm actually much more impressed by the more subtle, Medieval/Renaissance-inspired tracks, thanks to all those Music History classes I had back in music school. I love the title screen, the South Gate theme, the Cleyra settlement theme for how authentic they feel in their modal arrangements and limited woodwind instrumentations. And then there's the Gizamaluke's Grotto theme that sounds very early-baroque and it made that dungeon so much more enjoyable. On the other hand, we have a lot of weird tracks that really bring the soundtrack down. While I enjoy the fact that it's an homage to old FF battle themes, I thinkg the main battle theme sadly fails in being nice to listen to otherwise. It's mostly just too slow, which just further emphasizes how slow the battles are. And then there's tracks like the Black Mage Village theme that just cause me physical pain. I do like the Tetra Master theme much more thatn Triple Triad's, though, due to how soft it sounds, and I also think the boss theme is criminally underrated. We haven't had such a tense-sounding boss theme since FFV, and that one's also one of my favorites!
- Speaking of, I really adore Tetra Master. Yes, it has a big random element to it, but that's the fun part, really, since you can't really exploit the system easily because there's always risk involved. The game is also much more clear with its rules with no weird and terrible rules accidentally spreading because you played someone different, and the game board being bigger as well as the added arrow mechanic really make this game so much more fun to me than TT. I am a bit sad, however, that it no longer influences the rest of the game in any way. Then again, maybe it's for the best that it's self-contained?
- The battles are slow but I've gotten used to them and that doesn't bother me anymore. I like that stuff like regen actually benefits from it since the long wait times for the animations don't actually stop the regeneration process.
- This game is also giving me huge Chrono Trigger vibes, in a very good way. The beginning at Alexandria where you have so much to do with Vivi really reminds me of the Leene festival. Much like CT, FFIX really rewards you for exploration and looking over every little nook and cranny. The maps - both dungeon and town - are very robust and there's tons of places and content to get lost in. If you know Xenoblade Chronicles is my favorite game of all time, you will understand why this makes IX so enjoyable for me, and why a certain other beloved installment that lacks this is so low on my personal list >.>
- Not wild about the party splits that happened throughout the first two discs, to be honest. Sure, they did a great job with helping flesh out the characters (one of the best casts in the series, might I add - I even like the controversial Amarant, Eiko, and Quina), but I am pretty miffed that Steiner and Freya are lagging behind. I mean, I couldn't play them at all for almost one full disc. Also, Quina just keeps joining and leaving, doing whatever s/he wants! No, ser, I will not have it!
- Speaking of Quina, s/he's incredibly fun. I never felt like their comic scenes were out of place or anything. It's just so refreshing to essentially have this embodiment of chaos and indulgence following you around and just rolling with everything you do. The wedding scene literally made me cry. And s/he's the best named blue mage in the series, no contest. Not only is eating a monster so much better than counting on the enemy to use one specific move on one specific character, but the selection is amazing and tons of spells are available early on. I only need six more spells to have the complete package. And not only are many of the spells very useful, making Quina a perfect replacement for Dagger, Vivi, or both, s/he's also a good melee fighter! Win-win!
- Not a fan of the world map design. I kind of talked about this with Wolf when I played VII, but I get the feeling that FFVII is really the last FF to have a fully interactive world map that encourages exploration. The map is big and rich with a lot more places to explore than VIII, for example, but you're still kind of limited in where you can go at specific times, making the map way more fragmented than the older games. Also, it's kind of a bummer that literally 1.5 of the four continents have any civilization on them. It's justified in-story, I know, but it still would have been cool to have some more towns to explore.
- Moogles are the best save points ever and I literally can't fathom why they haven't kept this in for every single FF after this one.
- Zidane and Dagger's romance is pretty cute and though I enjoyed Squall and Rinoa a lot as well, you can tell that this love story was written by people who already learned a lot more about this specific motif. It also helps that it doesn't take center stage.
- I don't know if this is because I missed something or anything, but it was just so weird that it wasn't until disc 3 that Dagger got any other summon besides Ramuh. And then suddenly Tot gives her Shiva, Ifrit, Leviathan, and Atomos? Why couldn't I get at least part of the others earlier? That would have been really rad.
- The graphics are still great and the art style is one of my favorite in the series along with XII's and the other Ivalice games. Nowadays it reminds me greatly of Bravely Default, and that's a very good association to have.
I'm enjoying you enjoying IX
Have you played any Chocobo Hot and Cold yet?
Yeah, but I'm not focusing too much on it. It's pretty a'ight
Ok, I kind of hate Oeilvert, especially since I don't know how to pronounce it. I have no idea which way to go in order not to miss anything and suddenly enemies just take much longer to beat???
Not sure what you're fighting in Oeilvert, but if you come up against 'Epitaphs' a soft will insta-kill them.
I also dunno how to pronounce it. I've always said "Ol-ee-vert" but I know that's wrong, it's just how it looks at first glance. According to FF Wiki it is pronounced œjvɛʁ (uh-ii-vehr)
I expect it's supposed to sound French or something. And no, it's mostly the ogres. They're not exactly tough, but they slice away big chunks of my HP and I have to spend s lot of time either using potions or relying on Reis's Wind.
Oeil means eye and vert means green, so it's green eye, I guess. Which would be like what Fox said up dere
I'm more tsun than dere ^^
Only at Cleyra on my playthrough at the moment. One of the few points of the game I'm not particularly keen on (the absolute worst bit though is Fossil Roo). I dunno what is it about Cleyra, all the plot stuff surrounding Beatrix is really good but I just hate it as an environment to explore.
Doing the candle puzzle in Kuja's castle now. It's pretty cool and I've noticed my characters have very little more abilities to master, so that's pretty awesome, I think!
That said, as much as I'm enjoying myself, I kind of can't wait for this marathon to be over so I can play other games. Playing nothing but FF for a while can get a bit tiring. Which is a bit weird when you consider I had no such feeling with Dragon Quest when I played all of those in succession and still yearned for more, especially since those games are far more similar to each other mechanically.
I expect I'll finish IX over the weekend since we have Firday off here, and I hope two weeks is enough for me to beat X since I'll be getting DQVIII on the 20th
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
