RPGamers Network > Reviews > Game Reviews > Final Fantasy IX
After forty-nine hours and twenty-six minutes of gameplay, I'm wondering how I could talk with my foot so deeply wedged down my throat.
I won't say that the game is perfect; every game has its flaws. But Final Fantasy IX is most certainly awe-inspiring, and proof of what happens when good storytellers forget about the limits of design and are left to do what they do best: tell an amazing story.
While the overall focus of Final Fantasy IX centers around war, both on a national and interplanetary level, the tale is ingeniously told through the development of several key characters in response to the events around them. In my opinion, no other Final Fantasy game has come close to matching this sort of character depth; nearly every character changes over the course of the game, growing from something shallow and one-dimensional to an actual person, as real as pixels can make them. And I'll be hanged if I didn't actually like Garnet/Dagger by the end.
Part of this takes place through the events that occur, and their behavior in response; the dialogue and scripting are excellent, not nearly as stilted and unrealistic as Square's previous attempts at "natural" conversation. Frankly, VII's efforts to script a bastardized form of "Ebonics" into Barret's speech as well as a tendency to use "bro" far too often with many side characters made me feel like I was watching an enactment of one of the discarded scripts of "Shaft". But in IX, the characters talk the way you and I would, in an everyday conversation. There's nothing forced about it when Zidane yells "Dammit, I don't have a choice!", no attempt to appeal to a younger generation by guessing at the appropriate slang--and guessing badly.
But the greatest contribution to the development of character realism is something so small that I doubt most people would notice it. It's not the well-animated FMVs; it's not the exquisitely detailed environments; it's not even the perfectly timed cinematography and well-organized musical score.
So what is it, then?
The playable characters now have facial expressions.
Previously, all low-poly playable models have had the same vapid, mapped-on facial expression, a bitmap laid over the head's poly model(if it was even 3D) that rarely changed, though at least in VII and VIII they began to blink. It made me feel like I was watching a group of self-lobotomized blondes trying to remember their own names. A single expression was chosen to represent the character's overall demeanor, and unless we were watching an FMV, we were stuck with that. That, and the straight-out-of-the-can group of four or five gestures/motions used to emphasize dialogue or reactions.
This is no longer so. While the expressions remain constant during battle, often during low-poly action sequences we are treated to expressions of shock, fear, dismay. Hands move while the characters speak, in accordance to what they're trying to convey. Bodies don't always leap back in the exact same way when startled.
And Vivi falls over a lot.
It lends touches of individuality, and gives RP gamers what they're looking for: immersion in the gameplay. To me, something that small was the most impressive feature of the game; it showed that Square took care to make the gaming experience as in-depth as possible, down to the smallest details.
The gameplay system itself hearkens back to older Final Fantasies, and is rather intuitive, especially to avid FF gamers. The controls are the same as VIII, and the battle system, as usual, simply a variation of the classic FF styles, utilizing turn-based active-time combat. One good point was that MP, which were abandoned in the previous game, were brought back. Not that I didn't enjoy using my GFs as shields and killing them off to keep my characters alive in VIII, but the lack of limitations made the game <i>too</i> easy. I don't think I even knew what the "game over" screen looked like until my second time through, when I tackled some of the side quests and decided to take on some of the insanely psychotic optional bosses.
While weapons are still character-specific, accessories and add-ons have become class-or-gender-specific again, with learned abilities--and it just warmed my lil' ol' heart to see the magic classes returned. Having Quistis use her "Blue Magic" meant nothing without separated white magic and black magic to complement it. In IX, we've got Quina(why is it always the "Qui" names?) gobbling up Blue Magic left and right, the girls playing white mage and keeping everyone alive, and Vivi going just a little pyromaniac to represent the black mage faction and make any FF addict get nostalgic for the old days.
Come on. It's just not fully Final Fantasy without the black mages.
The card game has been reincarnated as "Tetra Master", and is even more incomprehensible and frustratingly entertaining, while GFs have now become "Eidolons" and can only be used by specific characters, making party selection a much more critical issue. Most keep their names, though as always the gravity-related summon has twisted in on itself again and taken a new form, now known as Atomos, Hoover's latest housecleaning product gone terribly wrong. I can only assume that Megabot--ah, I mean Ark--was meant to replace the optional GF Knights of the Round, while Madeen is.....Madeen is just a big furry anthro cat with wings that looks like a moogle on steroids. I don't know where he came from, but at least his summon animation looks pretty damn cool.
While the gameplay can drag to tedious levels at times, it's no worse than any other Final Fantasy game, complete with its plethora of mysterious puzzles and traps that make you wonder just how insane our classic white-haired villain is, that he feels the need to go to such ridiculous extremes--and yet at the same time, the puzzles are quite clever, and deciphering them brings a sense of accomplishment. However, I can't say that roving in circles around Fossil Roo left me with anything more than a raging headache and a need to exact a little violence.
Unfortunately, there are some levels of story development that, near the end, begin to lose focus as we center in on the characters; I never could quite figure out the science and logic that guided Garland's plans. Of course, we had a generally stated reason, but the vague talk about the flow of souls, and Gaia's souls becoming Terra's or vice-versa....it left me craving Chinese food to go with the fortune-cookie slips that the villains kept feeding me. The only clear goal that I got was that by the time Garland and Kuja were done, Gaia would be no more. Well, no, it would be, but not as Gaia. It would be Terra. And all the souls would belong to Terra, but they were still the same souls. I think. But Terra's souls were still sleeping, maybe? And that's why there were genomes hanging all over the place being spacy and creepy. But then why couldn't the genomes have souls and then just relocate to Gaia as there's plenty of space, and can't we all just get along?
Yeah, it's a little confusing. The final boss battle didn't help me get my head back on straight, either. The enemies are gone, we're suddenly focused on something we didn't know existed until the game was almost over, and.....whoa, where did that big blue guy come from?!
I'm not joking. The final boss battle has to be the most random thing I've ever seen, and while I won't go into details/spoilers, still doesn't make much sense in the overall storyline. I don't know if Square was feeling a little silly that day, or if they decided that the two final battles were too easy(how many times did we have to kill Sephiroth and in how many forms?), so they needed to throw a third in just to make sure you'd have to start again from your last save point at least once. Maybe it was a test to see just how many random things they could get away with in the last Final Fantasy for the PSX. Either way, I was baffled, and left hanging with very little explanation.
A few other story tidbits were left unresolved as well, such as Vivi's concern over "stopping"--but the half-hour-long ending more than made up for what was lacking. The execution was suspenseful and clever, the final FMV beautifully rendered and proof positive that you don't need vocal dialogue to bring an effective end to a story. In reverting from the futuristic worlds of technology laced with magic and falling back on the classic medieval styles mixing magic with a budding semi-industrial age, Square has created a rich, swashbuckler-esque world filled with characters who are not only attractively textured(if dressed a little funny), but, quite simply, immensely likable. The story of Final Fantasy IX is an exciting and complex saga, and one that makes it worthy of its place in the Final Fantasy line.
And what did I learn from my experience?
Don't judge a character by his tail.
| Game Stats | |
|---|---|
| Genre | RPG |
| Platform | PlayStation |
| Format | CD-ROM |
| # of Players | 1 |
| Released Jap | 07.07.2000 |
| Released US | 11.14.2000 |
| Released EU | 02.16.2001 |
| Aprox. Length | 40-50 hrs. |
| Reviewer Rankings | |
| Battle System | 7.0 |
| Gameplay | 8.0 |
| Music | 10.0 |
| Originality | 9.0 |
| Plot | 9.0 |
| Replay Value | 11.0 |
| Sound | 8.0 |
| Visuals | 9.0 |
| Difficulty | Varies |
| Overall | |
| 8.9 | |
Final Fantasy IX
By: SquaresoftReviewed By: Cyanide SeeD
I'll have to be honest. When I originally looked at the packaging for Square's Final Fantasy IX (PSX), I thought, "I'm going to hate this." The characters were a cross between Disney-esque hearts and flowers and Jim Henson's big-headed Muppets, and when I saw a preview pinup in what was once Babbage's, my first sight of Zidane made me wonder if this would be the first Final Fantasy game that centered around a female lead. Even after discovering that he was male, one look said, "He won't measure up. He's not Locke, he's not Cloud, he's not Squall. He's cute and happy and dressed like a pirate, and he's got a <i>tail</i>."After forty-nine hours and twenty-six minutes of gameplay, I'm wondering how I could talk with my foot so deeply wedged down my throat.
I won't say that the game is perfect; every game has its flaws. But Final Fantasy IX is most certainly awe-inspiring, and proof of what happens when good storytellers forget about the limits of design and are left to do what they do best: tell an amazing story.
While the overall focus of Final Fantasy IX centers around war, both on a national and interplanetary level, the tale is ingeniously told through the development of several key characters in response to the events around them. In my opinion, no other Final Fantasy game has come close to matching this sort of character depth; nearly every character changes over the course of the game, growing from something shallow and one-dimensional to an actual person, as real as pixels can make them. And I'll be hanged if I didn't actually like Garnet/Dagger by the end.
Part of this takes place through the events that occur, and their behavior in response; the dialogue and scripting are excellent, not nearly as stilted and unrealistic as Square's previous attempts at "natural" conversation. Frankly, VII's efforts to script a bastardized form of "Ebonics" into Barret's speech as well as a tendency to use "bro" far too often with many side characters made me feel like I was watching an enactment of one of the discarded scripts of "Shaft". But in IX, the characters talk the way you and I would, in an everyday conversation. There's nothing forced about it when Zidane yells "Dammit, I don't have a choice!", no attempt to appeal to a younger generation by guessing at the appropriate slang--and guessing badly.
But the greatest contribution to the development of character realism is something so small that I doubt most people would notice it. It's not the well-animated FMVs; it's not the exquisitely detailed environments; it's not even the perfectly timed cinematography and well-organized musical score.
So what is it, then?
The playable characters now have facial expressions.
Previously, all low-poly playable models have had the same vapid, mapped-on facial expression, a bitmap laid over the head's poly model(if it was even 3D) that rarely changed, though at least in VII and VIII they began to blink. It made me feel like I was watching a group of self-lobotomized blondes trying to remember their own names. A single expression was chosen to represent the character's overall demeanor, and unless we were watching an FMV, we were stuck with that. That, and the straight-out-of-the-can group of four or five gestures/motions used to emphasize dialogue or reactions.
This is no longer so. While the expressions remain constant during battle, often during low-poly action sequences we are treated to expressions of shock, fear, dismay. Hands move while the characters speak, in accordance to what they're trying to convey. Bodies don't always leap back in the exact same way when startled.
And Vivi falls over a lot.
It lends touches of individuality, and gives RP gamers what they're looking for: immersion in the gameplay. To me, something that small was the most impressive feature of the game; it showed that Square took care to make the gaming experience as in-depth as possible, down to the smallest details.
The gameplay system itself hearkens back to older Final Fantasies, and is rather intuitive, especially to avid FF gamers. The controls are the same as VIII, and the battle system, as usual, simply a variation of the classic FF styles, utilizing turn-based active-time combat. One good point was that MP, which were abandoned in the previous game, were brought back. Not that I didn't enjoy using my GFs as shields and killing them off to keep my characters alive in VIII, but the lack of limitations made the game <i>too</i> easy. I don't think I even knew what the "game over" screen looked like until my second time through, when I tackled some of the side quests and decided to take on some of the insanely psychotic optional bosses.
While weapons are still character-specific, accessories and add-ons have become class-or-gender-specific again, with learned abilities--and it just warmed my lil' ol' heart to see the magic classes returned. Having Quistis use her "Blue Magic" meant nothing without separated white magic and black magic to complement it. In IX, we've got Quina(why is it always the "Qui" names?) gobbling up Blue Magic left and right, the girls playing white mage and keeping everyone alive, and Vivi going just a little pyromaniac to represent the black mage faction and make any FF addict get nostalgic for the old days.
Come on. It's just not fully Final Fantasy without the black mages.
The card game has been reincarnated as "Tetra Master", and is even more incomprehensible and frustratingly entertaining, while GFs have now become "Eidolons" and can only be used by specific characters, making party selection a much more critical issue. Most keep their names, though as always the gravity-related summon has twisted in on itself again and taken a new form, now known as Atomos, Hoover's latest housecleaning product gone terribly wrong. I can only assume that Megabot--ah, I mean Ark--was meant to replace the optional GF Knights of the Round, while Madeen is.....Madeen is just a big furry anthro cat with wings that looks like a moogle on steroids. I don't know where he came from, but at least his summon animation looks pretty damn cool.
While the gameplay can drag to tedious levels at times, it's no worse than any other Final Fantasy game, complete with its plethora of mysterious puzzles and traps that make you wonder just how insane our classic white-haired villain is, that he feels the need to go to such ridiculous extremes--and yet at the same time, the puzzles are quite clever, and deciphering them brings a sense of accomplishment. However, I can't say that roving in circles around Fossil Roo left me with anything more than a raging headache and a need to exact a little violence.
Unfortunately, there are some levels of story development that, near the end, begin to lose focus as we center in on the characters; I never could quite figure out the science and logic that guided Garland's plans. Of course, we had a generally stated reason, but the vague talk about the flow of souls, and Gaia's souls becoming Terra's or vice-versa....it left me craving Chinese food to go with the fortune-cookie slips that the villains kept feeding me. The only clear goal that I got was that by the time Garland and Kuja were done, Gaia would be no more. Well, no, it would be, but not as Gaia. It would be Terra. And all the souls would belong to Terra, but they were still the same souls. I think. But Terra's souls were still sleeping, maybe? And that's why there were genomes hanging all over the place being spacy and creepy. But then why couldn't the genomes have souls and then just relocate to Gaia as there's plenty of space, and can't we all just get along?
Yeah, it's a little confusing. The final boss battle didn't help me get my head back on straight, either. The enemies are gone, we're suddenly focused on something we didn't know existed until the game was almost over, and.....whoa, where did that big blue guy come from?!
I'm not joking. The final boss battle has to be the most random thing I've ever seen, and while I won't go into details/spoilers, still doesn't make much sense in the overall storyline. I don't know if Square was feeling a little silly that day, or if they decided that the two final battles were too easy(how many times did we have to kill Sephiroth and in how many forms?), so they needed to throw a third in just to make sure you'd have to start again from your last save point at least once. Maybe it was a test to see just how many random things they could get away with in the last Final Fantasy for the PSX. Either way, I was baffled, and left hanging with very little explanation.
A few other story tidbits were left unresolved as well, such as Vivi's concern over "stopping"--but the half-hour-long ending more than made up for what was lacking. The execution was suspenseful and clever, the final FMV beautifully rendered and proof positive that you don't need vocal dialogue to bring an effective end to a story. In reverting from the futuristic worlds of technology laced with magic and falling back on the classic medieval styles mixing magic with a budding semi-industrial age, Square has created a rich, swashbuckler-esque world filled with characters who are not only attractively textured(if dressed a little funny), but, quite simply, immensely likable. The story of Final Fantasy IX is an exciting and complex saga, and one that makes it worthy of its place in the Final Fantasy line.
And what did I learn from my experience?
Don't judge a character by his tail.
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