Final Fantasy IX

"It's back to the basics... what took them so long?"

By the turn of the millenium, Squaresoft had turned their meager little gaming company into a massive juggernaut that was internationally praised as the ubelievable masterpiece of the gaming industry. They were releasing incredible games one after another. Thanks to the phenomenal success of Final Fantasy VII, most gamers were at least familiar with the name Final Fantasy, and many of them had played it. Final Fantasy went from a niche series to mainstream gaming in both Japan and in the United States.

However, the series had undergone dramatic change. Starting with Final Fantasy VI, the gameplay took a sharp turn. Final Fantasy had originally been a game modeled after tabletop RPGs with a class system where each system had strengths and weaknesses and therefore only a combination of classes would be able to get through all of the challenges. FFVI removed that necessity with the use of espers. Suddenly every character could learn every spell and the only thing that the characters had to separate themselves from one another was a unique skill that was ultimately superfluous in the end-game, anyway.

FFVII didn't improve the matter. With the exception of Aeris, the limits were all identical in the fact that they did damage to multiple enemies better than a normal attack did. Materia further unified all of the characters to the point that there was no advantage to using one character over another. Junctioning made it worse still- you could modify their stats endlessly so that a magic user suddenly became a wickedly powerful physical attacker, completely defeating the purpose of it all. Uniqueness had been all but destroyed, and while the games were still brilliant, they lacked some of the flavor that the original games had.

Squaresoft identified this changing factor and did not idly sit by and watch. Instead, we got Final Fantasy IX, which took us back to the class system. A black mage uses black magic- no one else does. There is very little overlap between the characters and therefore every character has a use of their own. Final Fantasy IX is a return to the roots of what made Final Fantasy popular in almost every way... and it worked.

The class system was brought back to the chagrin of many, but it brought something refreshing back to the table. The characters you chose actually made a difference in the outcome of your game. You could use a team that comprised itself of magical attackers like Vivi, Eiko and Dagger, but when you got to an area of magically resistant enemies you'd be totally screwed over and die quite quickly. On the other hand, ignoring the magical characters in favor of Amarant, Freya and Steiner is equally dangerous because the magical characters are often the backbone of the team and hit the hardest of them all. You have to juggle it and figure out what combination gives you the best balance while hitting for the most.

Of course, oftentimes the game picks for you. Unlike most older FF games you don't have a lot of control over who you get to use. By the end of the game you have total control of who is in your party, but a majority of the time you either have your characters chosen for you or you make the decision once and it effects you for the next several hours of gameplay, which meant you had to choose wisely because trying to restart after several hours could be a pain in the ass.

The game is long enough that you'll definitely have issues backtracking. As with all Final Fantasy games, it's over 20 hours without breaking a sweat. There's a challenge mode that requires you to finish the game in under 12 hours to get a prize, but that is a feat that few ever get and is certainly not something you should shoot for your first time through.

Still, " long " isn't necessarily synonymous with " bad. " This game keeps you interested with the plot and characters. The story starts from the perspective of your main character, Zidane. (I'd crack a joke about Zidane in reference to the World Cup, but I really can't think of one at the moment.) Zidane is a member of a band of thieves, and they're flying to the Kingdom of Alexandria to kidnap princess Garnet. Under the guise of a band of performers, you sneak in and manage to capture the princess, whom you quickly learn actually WANTS to be captured for some bizarre reason. Meanwhile, the elephant queen (the woman is far uglier than anything I can describe... hideously disfigured) is furious and pursues you as you flee.

Through all of this, we're introduced to all of the characters. Vivi is a black mage, but he's only a kid who got caught up in the whole mess by mistake. All he wanted to do was see a show. Steiner is the captain of the guards and will follow Princess Garnet to the end. Garnet herself joins the group as "Dagger" (a name she fashions so as to avoid attention.) And so your motley crew is formed. There are other characters who will join your adventures later on, too. Quina, whose gender is described as "S/he" in the game, is a comic relief character who really doesn't fit into the plot anywhere. I get the feeling that the crew included him/her for pure comic relief, and s/he pulls it off with great success. His/her gimmick? S/he loves to eat and will eat ANYTHING s/he can get his/her hands on.

The story goes through the usual route of plot twists and new enemies. People you think you know are going to turn sides- enemies become friends and friends become enemies. You ultimately wind up with the clichéd "I must save the world!" plot, but does that honestly surprise you? When was the last time you didn't have to save the entire planet in a Final Fantasy? Yeah, my point exactly. They even reintroduce the crystal, something that also disappeared in Final Fanstay VI and beyond. While it's nowhere near as critical as it was in the earlier games where it all revolved around the crystals, it's on the cover of the game, folks- it has to make an appearence.

Now I haven't really touched on the gameplay in this one. Squaresoft is always reinventing itself with new ways to play the game. Now they've done a modification on materia. Rather than learning skills on the materia, which you can then equip, you equip items and those items teach skills to you. You want to learn fire? You have to equip the staff that teaches it first. Once you've gotten enough AP, you can use the skill without having the staff equipped and you're good to go. It's one of those systems that people seem to either love or hate. Some people think it's " too simple. " However, those same people also hate the class system and find it to be too limiting and prevents them from using the characters they want to use owing to the fact that the character they like is useless in the situation at hand.

It's got a plethora of sidequests, too. Chocobos come back in the absolute best minigame yet, Chocobo Hot and Cold. Far better than the pain-in-the-ass breeding system of FFVII, you get to search for buried treasure on the world map, some it as simple as some gold and some potions, but the best items in the game often come from the treasure chests. However, to get to them you'll have to scour high and low over all of the land.

The land is massive in this game. I absolutely loved the world map in this game. It's massive, widely varied, and it just works. The misty view as you traverse the land is rather quaint and is just fitting. The music is also oddly fitting. Hard to put into words- the world map just worked in this game.

As a matter of fact, ALL of the music " Just works " in Final Fantasy IX. Every Final Fantasy game to date has had annoying battle music, and Final Fantasy IX took another return to the roots and highly increased the number of random battles that you'll be dealing with, which meant that the music for the battles would get very old, very quickly. Well, in any other game it would... Final Fantasy IX has a great battle music. They synchronized the starting animations with the music so that I'm always taken aback and it's just... cool. No other word to describe it beyond the fact that it's cooler than the music in any other game. All of the music fits the area perfectly and rarely is their a song that wears on your nerves. Even Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Cross aren't as good at creating atmosphere with their music, although I will admit that both games have far more memorable tracks than IX does.

That being said, I think atmosphere comes as much from the rich landscapes as it does from the music. The graphics were spectacular and the areas were rich in color and design. Most important, though- they all had an " atmosphere " of some kind to help add to the effect. A mixture of stunning graphics with subtleties and a great soundtrack made every area jump out at you. Memoria is one of the final areas in the game, and like the old FF games it takes a hodgepodge of all of the areas that you've visited through your games. Anyway, the music is one of my favorites and I couldn't imagine a better level design for the music or vice versa.

Unforgettable characters, a great gameplay system, a plot that keeps you interested, some good graphics and an amazing soundtrack. Throw in the fact that this game is a neoclassic Final Fantasy (A huge plus for oldschoolers like me), and I can't imagine why you wouldn't pick this one up. It's something that you will keep in your collection forever.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/06