I'm patiently waiting for help in Treno (made a topic above =]), so I thought while I'm waiting I'd just share my opinion about Trance in FFIX (Compared to FF7, FF8)...
Well in short, it's 100% useless =/
The thing is, you never get to use it.
In FF7 you could save Limit Breaks for bosses and harder bad guys just by not attacking. Some people might have thought this might have been over powering sometimes, since you could enter a fight already having 3 characters with their limit break ready, but then again, you only got to use it once then it had to charge again. Sometimes your Limit Break would fully charge twice in a single battle. Very handy indeed.
In FF8 you got to use your Limit Break when you really needed it, when you were low on HP. This was also cool, as long as you stayed on low HP, you had a high chance of getting your limit break (otherwise just switch characters until it gives it to you). It was sometimes risky to enter a battle on low HP in order to use your limit break, because obviously if the bad guy did a good attack on you, you were screwed.
Now onto FF9. It takes FOREVER to get into Trance. 90% of the times I've gotten it, I've been battling random bad guys inorder to get my AP up for my new items, then half an hour later I'm battling a boss and my Trance guage isn't even 1/4 through =/ Hell, I'd say at LEAST 80% of the times I went into Trance, the battle was over in the next move, which had already been scheduled for attack. So I do an extra powerful normal attack on an enemy that only needed to lose 2HP to die. Sometimes I'm not even that lucky. The character will go into Trance and won't even make a single move before the battle is over!
Now am I missing something? I've on the 3rd disc, this is my 1st time through Final Fantasy 9 (I've pretty much 100% 7 and 8) and my characters are on quite high levels, Zidane is level 35 and I've been keeping about 5+ levels above what the guide recommends (I'm not leveling up for exp, it's the AP I'm after, especially with so many different characters which all need it levelled individually :s). I had High Tide equipped on some characters, it's usually unequipped though because I see no point in taking up an AP slot just so I can get Trance during a random battle with a bug with a max HP of 400.
Will Trance help me later in the game? Is there another ability which makes it go even faster? Just kinda curious, as it played quite a significant role in FF7 and 8 (7 you had to earn your Limit Breaks and 8 you had to get the new weapons). 9 it seems they just threw it in there.
I've had one battle where Trance actually helped me (when I didn't start with it thanks to plot line), and that was when I versed Amarant. I'm not joking, that was the 1st battle I had actually USED Zidanes Trance since that battle in Alexandria Castle on Disc 1! To my surprise I had 7 attacks to choose from! I had only ever used the 1st one, so I just used the lower one, and watch it to a crap load of damage =/
And before I post this, that reminds me - Is there a list anywhere that explains Zidanes Trance abilities? Like, I pretty much just saw random names and I have no idea if there's a difference between each one. All I know is that it did a great deal of damage. I looked at a few of the walkthroughs and ability guides on GameFAQ's but I couldn't find anything on Zidanes Trance abilities (maybe no ones ever used them before )