Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Fynn View Post
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?

You're providing a vital service
Funny. I could say the same thing about you, but I try to be a nice guy


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.