I really don't think that FFIX is oldschool at all. It has more of a fantasy style setting, but other than that I didn't think it really did much in terms of returning to its roots. I'm not trying to be an oldschool elitist here, just my opinion. For example, thieves classically don't get a battle ability besides "steal". Later "steal" expanded to "mug", but it was a very similar command. Somehow Zidane has a whole arsenal of magic attacks. I could go on and list more things (trance, lack of dungeon crawls, etc.) but this is really just an opinion. I view FFIX as a new school FF made to appeal to old school FFers.