Finally, my Ninth Final Fantasy became a reality!

Final Fantasy IX (FF9)
This is probably the longest review I have ever written on anything on Epinions and it’s not even all I wanted to write but Epinions only allows so many words you see… Nevertheless, I’d like to thank all who were willing to spend time reading and rating it. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you!

First, a short background on how I got hooked on FF7
I certainly am no Final Fantasy (FF) expert like some of the seasoned game reviewers on here. But I do know I totally love the game series. I have never played the first FF game I ever played was FF7, the game that got me totally hooked with the Final Fantasy series for the Sony PlayStation 1 (PS1). The FF7 I played was a PC version as in that year, early1998, graphic cards were getting more and more powerful enabling beautiful 3-D graphics and games to be displayed and played on the PC.

However, because the PC version was rather buggy (I had a RIVA 128 then that didn’t quite like FF7), I reverted back to the PlayStation version. However, even with the buggy PC version it was clear the 3-D graphics, especially the battle scenes were much nicer on the PC and I upgraded my video card to a 3Dfx Voodoo card and went back to the PC version and finished it completely on the PC.

Final Fantasy IX is the ninth instalment of the classic Sony PlayStation Final Fantasy series from SquareSoft of Japan. Incidentally, FF9 is also the last of the series made for the PS1 with FF10 being released for the PS2 only, taking advantage of the graphics processing powers of the latter. The game also comes on four discs, which is normal since there are plenty of full motion videos (FMVs) in throughout the game.

FF7 was my favorite and the worst is FF8. The only thing I remember of FF8 was the amazingly detailed, fluid and beautiful FMVs. A huge improvement over FF7. Naturally, this improvement carries over into FF9.

Initially, I couldn't get the game to go pass disc Two, but by some miracle I cannot determine (??) it works again. Even plays smoothly on my PC with an emulator!

The Plot, briefly…
Not unlike a movie, knowing the spoiler to an FF game takes away ALL the fun in playing it as it plays out like a movie itself! The basic plot is the same clichéd stuff, save the world from impending doom! Yes, it’s the same stuff, save the world from impending doom. But each FF story takes us into different worlds and different lives and characters and places. So, very briefly, the story follows our protagonist Zidane on a globetrotting quest to save the world from unknown forces and it all starts with the kidnapping of a princess which starts a whole chain of events and the unveiling of plot twists right and left.

FF9 also takes us back into the medieval settings where steam is only recently found as a source of energy in the world of Gaia. The characters are cartoonish, rather like FF7 with spiky hair. The difference now is that instead of having knobs for hands, the characters at last have fingers! ;) FF8 was more life-like, humans were humans, they didn’t walk around with tails or horns or ears. However, this is by no means any disadvantage on FF9’s part, in fact, the cartoonish look fit in perfectly with the whole plot of the game as well as the medieval settings.

The Eight Main Characters
Here’s a run down on the eight main characters you get to control throughout the game. In FF9, you can control up to four characters this time instead of the usual three.

1. Vivi:
After the opening scenes, we first see Vivi walking a bit lost in the streets of Alexandria. Shy, reserved and quiet, Vivi is easily the most likable character in the game. In search of his own true identity and origins, Vivi is a little black mage “boy” who has amazing powers he has yet to discover.

2. Zidane:
Zidane is the monkey-tailed protagonist of the story. Being a thief by profession, Zidane comes with the STEAL ability which lets you steal from enemies you find on the battle field. The plot of the story revolves mainly around him. I found him rather annoying sometimes. However, towards the end, he grows more mature and likeable with his true inner qualities showing when confronted with situations where he must choose between the good of his friends or himself. Still, I didn’t find him quite as memorable or likeable as Cloud’s character in FF7.

3. Princess Garnet (aka Dagger):
Barbie doll princess turned warrior princess, Princess Garnet later takes on a new identity as Dagger, and joins Zidane’s quest as a summoner and healer in the group during battles. Your typical princess, Garnet even comes with a dainty little walk and run when you get to control her, she is weak in attacking and takes large amounts of damage from enemy attacks. She’ll undergo a minor transformation later in the game however, and becomes more like a true heroine…

4. Steiner:
Steiner is the Captain of the Knights of Pluto in Alexandria Kingdom. Rather annoying at first, this is the second character I like the most in the game, after Vivi. Steiner jumps about a lot in the beginning, like a little child throwing a tantrum and acts very much in a “holier that thou” kind of manner and attitude. However, this changes when he finds his true self and the reason why he exists (not merely to follow orders). He is also very loyal to his Queen and Princess Garnet and will give his life ready to serve and protect. Don’t miss the cute little scenes of him and Beatrix, the general of the Alexandarian army.

5. Quina:
This is a weird looking creature, and no one exactly knows whether it’s a he or a she, I bet not even the game designers themselves hehe. Quina is an eating machine and is totally optional, his/her/its only useful contribution to the fighting abilities of the team, is that it can learn enemy spells and abilities by eating them after they have grown very weak in battle. Other than that Quina’s pretty expendable as the damage done by he/she/it is random (low to high). The guys in the game refer to Quina as a s/he most of the time :) (SPOILER) but at one point, you actually get to marry Quina to Vivi!

6. Freya:
Freya is a female dragon knight from Burmecia who is in search of her long-lost love, Sir Fratley, another dragon knight. She joins Zidane’s party quite early in the game but then goes out of action for a while. She has the “jump” ability which removes herself from the battle screen for one round then returns, causing great damage to opponents when she lands on them with her spear. I keep her in my team most times as she has some very special abilities as well such as the highly damaging Dragon’s Crest (the more dragon type monsters you kill, the more damaging the ability is).

7. Amarant:
Amarant was one of the two bounty hunters hired by Queen Brahne to retrieve the falcon claw from Princess Garnet. After losing to Zidane’s team, he joins them. He looks a bit like a hedgehog on two legs, has very high hit points and is able to use the THROW command where he throws whatever items or weapons you have in your inventory at enemies to cause extra damage.

8. Eiko:
Eiko’s a bit like Vivi, small and vulnerable but her powers are more akin to Princess Garnet’s. She is the last of the summoner tribe from Madain Sari (or is she?...). She is able to call upon guardian forces or eidolons to help her in battle and to heal party-members. Eiko likes Zidane, but Zidane has his mind set on Garnet…

Special Abilities
The characters can now all used special abilities much more conveniently than FF7 or FF8 (actually FF7 was easy too but FF9 is better, while FF8 was the worst). In FF8, you had to draw magic from Guardian Forces or enemies in order to be able to use hat particular spell. That was just plain retarded. In FF9, however, everyone has the ability to use special spells unique only to them. Zidane for example, is able to use Thievery; Steiner, Shock; Vivi, Black Magic; Eiko, White Magic and so on and so forth.

Each item you equip also allows you to learn new spells and abilities such as Auto-Life and Auto-Haste etc. You need to memorize these abilities by earning ability points through battle before you permanently acquire them. Otherwise, the ability is lost when you equip a new weapon or item.

Gameplay
Gameplay, I feel, hasn’t changed much from previous FF games. Most of the time, what you do is simply place your thumb on the X button on the gamepad and press it to allow for the dialogue between characters to move along. The only other interaction is when you move the characters or help them get to different places. I found the random battles rather annoying sometimes, especially when you are in a certain area and trying to look for a lever or switch but the random battles constantly distract you. So it can get a bit frustrating.

I feel that the fighting system is also much improved in FF9. For one thing, there that abilities advantage and also you now get to control four characters instead of three. You can also use either Eiko or Garnet to summon creatures to help you in battle. These creatures are called Eidolons (Guardian Forces in FF8).

Summoning can be a chore in previous FF games, as you had to sit through the same old summoning sequence and spell each time you activated it. Given that some spells were very elaborate and lasted a good 2 or 3 minutes (remember Knights of the Round Table in FF7?) to complete, summoning quickly became a bore. In FF9, thankfully, you no longer have to wait that long. The full sequence only plays the first time you summon a creature. The following instances, only the shorter ending part plays. Whew, what a relief!

Side-quests a-plenty!
Like all other FF games, there is a huge variety of side-quests and mini-games for you to indulge yourself in, in FF9. Among these are the Chocobo Hot and Cold mini-game which lets you dig for treasure and upgrade you weapons and items. Racing with Hippaul game, Mognet side-quest, Enemy Skill quest for Quina, Zodiac star side-quest and the famous and popular min-card game Tetra Master. I have not completed all of them, there’s just too many. Some you need to complete before moving on to a new area or the particular item you need to get is lost to you forever (such as the Rare Coffee quests for Mr. Morrid). My favorite is of course, the Chocobo game as you can ultimately get a flying Chocobo!

Throughout the world of Gaia as well, are many different hidden places that you need a special Chocobo to access and these places contain many different treasures worth your while. As you travel throughout the plains and fields and forests too, you will encounter different monsters and sometimes, friendly characters that will grant you special rare items or even money (called Gil in the FF world) when you do a specific task.

Ultimate in-game monster
Just like previous FF games, there’s always a hidden monster somewhere. In FF7, there were two in the US version of the game, Ruby Weapon (quite easy if you know the trick) and Emerald Weapon, the toughest in there. I can’t remember what was in FF8 since I didn’t really like that one…so, FF8 being insignificant in my mind, I don’t even remember what who were the characters!

The ultimate monster in FF9 is Ozma! A round bouncy ball you will not find and cannot physically hit unless you complete the flying Chocobo side-quest. Ozma doesn’t seem very harmful at first, but if you say that when you first encounter him, you would have opened your mouth far too soon as in a split second, you’re probably annihilated. My friends say that this is the toughest monster they have ever fought with on any FF game but I managed to beat it on my first try! Pure luck I guess, because when I tried again the next few times, I got KO-ed in just a few rounds! Yipes… how to beat this monster is not for me to write here…but just so you know, there is one big S-O-A-G lurking in FF9!


Final Fantasy IX on the PC
This is part focuses on playing the FF9 with a PlayStation emulator program on a normal PC for some amazing spell effects and 3-D graphics (provided you have an above average system with a powerful graphics card).

Is it stable with emulator program?
I must say FF9 looks so much better on the PC given a good video card and stable system. If you have a powerful card like the GeForce3 Titanium cards, and a powerful stable system, try FF9 on your PC! I am sure you’re going to love it as much as I did! However, my system is average only so I had to choose lower settings for the graphics to allow for smoother play. When I set the settings to high quality in the emulator program, I would get very low frames per second (FPS) during complex spell castings such as summoning eidolons etc. but everything looked amazingly beautiful, even the pre-rendered backgrounds looked so much cleaner and colorful than on the PSX console.

At high quality too, when walking around normally, I would get very high frame rates of around 100+ and the game would play too fast so with the emulator program I used, I was able to limit the FPS to around 65 which helped a lot.

Graphics and sound
As mentioned above, graphics is awesome, so much better than on the PSX console. Spells were beautiful and the summons were brilliant, the polygons and textures were all very beautifully rendered and filled-in. There was little or unnoticeable jaggedness either since I turned on anti-aliasing which, as a drawback, slowed down game play somewhat. The pre-rendered backgrounds were beautiful too. For those familiar with ePSXe, or PSMU Pro and other PSX emulator programs I used Pete’s Direct3D video plug-in.

Sound is MIDI quality however, as is normal with the previous two FF games converted for the PC such as FF7 and FF8. So the quality of the sound depends highly on your soundcard.

Where to get PSX emulator program for your PC
You can download free or shareware PSX emulator programs off the internet. Just make a search for them. However, I highly recommend ePSXe 1.5.1 which is the PSX emulator program for the PC and is totally free. Just go to any search engine and type in the name and follow the resulting hits. Or you can visit www.epsxe.com but you need to download the plug-ins for the sound and video to make the whole program work. You can find more info at the ePSXe webpage.

Here are my recommended specifications of a PC for those interested in trying FF9 on one:
CPU
Intel Pentium III 900 and above or AMD Athlon 900 and above. The Celeron and Duron versions of the CPUs will work too but the game will be jerky when entering into graphics and special effects intensive battle scenes.

Graphics card
At the very least, an NVidia GeForce2 32MB (or equivalent).

Amount of RAM
Doesn’t matter what kind I guess but on a good system, you should have at least 256 MB of SDRAM or better.

Sound-card
Any sound-card with good quality MIDI music playback will do. I recommend a SoundBlaster Live!

Operating system
I tried FF9 on the emulator program ePSXe version 1.5.1 with Windows XP and Windows ME and it worked better in Windows XP and never once crashed through all four discs. It crashed once or twice in Windows ME.


So there you have it! Enjoy the game! And if you have played it on the PSX 1, give it a try on your PC (if you PC is up to it!). I guarantee you’ll like it more than on the PSX 1, I did!