Final Fantasy IX

"One of the best games ever made."

Story – 10/10

You take the role of Zidane, a member of a group of bandits known as Tantalus. From the start of the game your goal is to travel to the city of Alexandria, where the Tantalus band are going to perform a play to the nobles and Queen of Alexandria, Brahne. But they aren't doing it just for fun. Tantalus' aim is to kidnap the daughter of Queen Brahne – Princess Garnet.

As the play goes on, Tantalus end up causing havoc through Alexandria in their attempt to kidnap Garnet. They do manage to escape, though it turns out Garnet wants to be kidnapped. She was trying to escape her mother anyway and seeing as Tantalus tried to get her, Garnet thinks it suitable for her to go along with them. As the band try to make their way back to their home city of Lindblum in their airship, it ends up crashing down in a vast forest due to the heavy beating it took in Alexandria. Zidane splits from Tantalus in order to search for Garnet and some others after they went missing when the ship crashed.

As you venture through the game, you learn that Queen Brahne desperately wants Garnet back, but not because she misses her daughter. Garnet has a special gemstone which has the power to summon a powerful creature known as an Eidolon. Queen Brahne is intent on summoning as many Eidolons as she can so can destroy as many cities and villages as possible. It's up to Zidane and his team to keep Garnet safe and stop Brahne from destroying the world.

However, as you'd expect from a Final Fantasy game, this is just the beginning of the story. You soon learn that it's not just Brahne who's intent on become ruler of the world. I won't spoil anything but there are so many twists and turns in the game, it's crazy. FFIX's plot is honestly one of the best stories I've ever had the honour of playing through. It's definitely at least on par with the plots of FFVII and FFVIII, so that's saying something. You can always count on Squaresoft to bring us a fantastic and gripping storyline, and FFIX is one of the finest they have churned out.

Gameplay – 10/10

Once again, it's the traditional Final Fantasy formula. You venture around the world, travelling to the places you need to go to in order to progress through the story whilst fighting in active time battles to defeat the enemies you encounter. The battle style is very reminiscent of the first FF games where you can have four party members in battle at once rather than the three you could use in FFVII and VIII. You'll also notice that the old job system from the 2D FF's returns. Rather than the Materia or Junction systems that featured in FFVII and FFVIII respectively, each character in your team have specific abilities which only they can use. Garnet and young Eiko are both White Mages meaning they can cast healing magic and summon Eidolons. Zidane and Amarant are Thieves so they are the only ones who can steal from enemies. Older gamers will be right at home with the battle systems of FFIX.

Obviously, as this is the ninth game in the series, many gamers will be familiar with FF so you'll know what to expect with FFIX. But to those who are unsure how you progress, I'll tell you. You travel over the world on the screen known as the World Map. There are four different continents which you must travel over to get through the game – the Mist Continent which is your starting continent, the Outer Continent, the Lost Continent, and the Forgotten Continent. All of them are vast places with many areas to explore. At first, you will only be able to walk over the Mist Continent as you have no other form of travel. You will see certain cities and villages as buildings depending on what that place looks like on the World Map, and once you encounter it you must press the Confirm button to enter that area.

Eventually, you'll gain the ability to use a boat and airship so you can freely travel between the continents with ease. Your journey will take you all over the world and you must go to specific areas depending on your point in the game story. Sometimes you will have to figure out for yourself where certain places are, and going on the sheer size of the World Map, you have your work cut out. Other times you are given simple directions and you'll soon encounter the person you need to speak to in order to push forward. It's all so simple so anyone who hasn't played a role-playing game before will have no problem.

When you're on the World Map you will randomly get caught up into battles with monsters which you can either defeat or run away from. You should always make the most of the random encounters with monsters as it is how your characters get stronger. By defeating enemies, you will gain experience points (EXP), and when a party member gets a certain amount of EXP points, they will level up, giving them more hit points and attack points, as well as other advantageous points. You'll also gain ability points which enable your characters to learn abilities which prove helpful in battle. Running away from battles won't gain you points so it's up to you whether you take the time to fight in them or push straight on with the mission. Sometimes it is best to run as you may need to get somewhere in a certain time or you may want to just get away from weaker foes which you would rather not waste your time with.

You'll often know when you are going to face a certain enemy in battle. In order to progress through the game, you'll need to win battles with the enemies who approach you that are related to the story. For example, you cannot escape from enemies who are Queen Brahne's soldiers – you must defeat them before you can move on again. At any time should all of your party members die in battle, your game will be over.

Each of your characters uses a different weapon and you can buy these at shops, steal them from enemies, or find them in treasure chests or on the floor. You are able to equip many different things to your characters. Firstly is your weapon, which could be a dagger or staff. Then there's your armour, arm gear, head gear, and accessory. Your armour, arm gear and head gear all increase your defence, whilst sometimes adding increased defence against a certain element such as fire or thunder. Your accessory can be helpful in a number of ways. There are many of them, some of which increase your defence, and others which can protect you from status effects.

That's another thing I can talk about. During battles, your enemies will sometimes inflict status effects on you which can hinder your abilities. These include: Poison, which gradually decreases your hit points; Sleep, which means your character won't be able to do anything until he or she wakes up; and Slow, which means your Active Time Battle (ATB) bar will move slower than normal. Each character has an ATB bar which automatically fills up during battle. Once full, you are able to input your command for that character. At the end of the command, the bar empties and fills up again. So an effect like Slow can mean trouble if you are waiting longer to input commands. You must use items in your inventory to remove these effects. Likewise, you are able to inflict these effects onto your foes providing they aren't immune to the effect you are trying to inflict.

You'll find that this is one of the biggest games you'll ever play. The game is so huge that it's crammed onto a whopping four discs. You can spend literally hundreds of hours on this game trying to find everything, levelling your characters up to the max, and completing all the side quests. The side quests are basically things you can take part in or smaller stories you can complete which don't affect the main story. You have the option of doing them, but the rewards are usually great. And most of all, the side quests are fun. With the amount there are in FFIX, you'll spend absolutely ages completing them all.

Just like FFVIII, this game has its very own card game called Tetra Master. It is a very different game to FFVIII's Triple Triad however, so you must learn a whole new set of rules. Basically, you gain cards from either winning them from your opponents, finding them in chests or on the floor, or collecting them from enemies you've defeated. By pressing the Square button when next to somebody, you will challenge them to a game of cards. You select five cards which you would like to play and then you are taken to a 4x4 grid, with anywhere between 0 and 7 squares being randomly blocked when the game begins (meaning you cannot place a card there). Now, Tetra Master is a lot more complicated to explain than Triple Triad, so I'll only be telling you the basics. Your cards will have small arrows on the corners and sides of them. If for example you placed a card with an arrow on its left side next to an opponent card's right side which doesn't have an arrow on its right side, you will win over your opponent's card giving you one more point than him or her. If your opponent's card did have an arrow on its right side however, making the arrows point towards each other, your cards then “fight” and the card who doesn't lose all its hit points wins over the other card. You see, your cards have numbers and letters on them, each representing certain things like hit points, attack power etc. The higher the number or letter, the more powerful that specific statistic is. Your ultimate goal is to be the player with the most cards won over at the end of the game. You can then choose which card from your opponent you wish to keep. Like I said, the game is very hard to explain in words, but once you start to see it in action, it becomes so easy. The card stats and battling thing takes a while to learn but in the end, it becomes a very intelligent and fun card game which you'll find yourself addicted to. It will take you ages trying to collect all 100 cards in the game. I've spent many happy hours playing this gem.

One of the best side quests is the chocobo raising. Regular FF players will be familiar with chocobos and remember that FFVII previously had the most interactive chocobo raising quest. FFIX's isn't quite as in-depth as that because you don't go out searching, catching, feeding, and breeding chocobos. Instead, you find a chocobo in a chocobo forest, conveniently named Choco, who then becomes yours. You must play a game called Chocobo Hot & Cold where you ride Choco in the forest searching for treasure buried beneath the ground. You press the square button to dig with Choco's beak and you will get hints on how close you are to treasure by the noises Choco makes. This is the best side quest in the game and you can end up taking Choco to other sites in the world to search for treasure there, as well as use him to search for even bigger prizes on the World Map. You will find plenty of rare items and some of the best weapons in the game by doing the chocobo raising quest. I'll point out that I call it chocobo raising because by finding more treasure in the Hot & Cold game, Choco will level up much like your characters do from battles. After he gains a level he will become quicker at digging up treasure. Therefore you are raising Choco's level.

There are tons of side quests, like I say, and it's where you'll be spending most of your time by the time you beat the game. But you can do them whenever you want. You may decide to do them when you get stuck at a point in the story. Or you may feel you should do them as soon as you can because the rewards will prove extremely helpful to you. Whenever you decide to take part in them, you'll have a lot of fun completing them, and there are so many as well.

As far as difficulty goes, FFIX can be extremely hard to beat. You must make the most of your random battles and learn what each enemy's weaknesses are. You must protect your characters from effects as often as you can and make sure to buy new weapons, armour, and accessories with your money. Keep yourself prepared. You should always make sure each of your characters is equipped with their best weapons and armour and are at full health at all times – you never know when a huge boss fight could pop up. It isn't so difficult that you will be driven away from playing the game though. You may end up being annihilated by some bosses, but once you figure out their weakness, or just level your characters up a bit more, you'll overcome them and will feel happier about it. The balance of difficulty is great but if you are inexperienced at RPG's and try to rush through it, you will have a harder time.

Controls – 10/10

The controls are basically the same as FFVII and FFVIII. You move your character freely with either the D-pad or left control stick. You can set the option to hold the Cancel button to make your character walk or run when you push a direction. I always make it so that you run when you push on the D-pad or stick because it means your right hand is more relaxed. The X button is your main Confirm button, which lets you talk to people, see the next piece of text in a conversation, confirm a selection on the main menu or battle menu, examine mysterious things on the floor, read papers or signs, and open treasure chests. The Circle button is the Cancel button which speaks for itself really. Triangle opens the main menu or skips your turn in battle. And the Square button asks people if they would like to play cards with you. The L1 and R1 shoulder buttons enable you to escape battles where it is possible.

It's a perfect RPG controller setup which all RPGers will be right at home with, but those new to RPG's may be a bit bewildered at how many different actions the buttons do. I remember having to get a little used to the controls when I first started playing RPG's with FFVII all those years ago, but it doesn't really take long at all. Especially if you're not so young, then you will remember what each button does. A perfect setup though. No complaints at all.

Graphics – 10/10

The graphics of FFIX are some of the best I've ever seen on PlayStation. The pre-rendered backgrounds look remarkably life-like and the character models are so detailed. Those who have played previous FF's will notice the character style in FFIX is very much like the original 2D style, albeit in 3D. Squaresoft switched from the smaller character style in FFVII to the taller, more realistic style in FFVIII. Now in FFIX they seemed to have traversed back to the original style again, with the smaller characters. I don't think I prefer any one style over the other. I love the style of FFVIII, and I love the style of FFIX. Yet, I think the style of FFIX means they could get away with adding more humorous actions which might not have been included in FFVIII because of how mature the game looked.

Personally though, I really have warmed to FFIX because of its style. I love the character style because it creates the more fantasy-type world and does enable for there to be more humorous-like sequences. As far as realism goes though, I think this is some of the finest you'll see on PlayStation. Some of the water effects in particular look beautiful. Quality Squaresoft stuff.

Sound – 10/10

Honestly, what can I say about the music? You all know this is going to be one of the highlights of the game anyway. Square are well-known for their awesome soundtracks to their games, and just like all previous Final Fantasies, FFIX is no exception. In fact, FFIX probably has the best soundtrack of them all. Everything from the battle music to Garnet's treasured Song of Memories with full vocals is absolutely amazing. You will simply not be able to get these brilliant tunes out of your head, ever. If you play the game as much as I have, you'll be able to pick a song at random and hum it to yourself whenever you want. That's how much you'll love the soundtrack.

As for the other half of the sound, the effects, they too are of top quality. Everything from swords clashing to fire burning sound as real as real does. You'll simply love it.

Overall – 10/10

Final Fantasy IX is another masterpiece from Squaresoft. I cannot recommend this game enough. Every RPGer should have this game in their collection as it is one of the best RPG's ever created. And if non-RPGers are looking to give a go at one, then FFIX would be a perfect place to start. Everything is explained in so much detail so true beginners will have an easy time learning how to play.

It's definitely one of the biggest games I've played too, with a total of four PS discs. The game world is huge and the amount of villages, secrets and hidden places there are to find is extraordinary. The story will have you glued to the game, and you won't be able to stop playing until you get it beat. You constantly want to know what will happen next, and you really never do know what will happen because of all the amazing twists in the game.

I just cannot praise Final Fantasy IX enough. It's one of the best games I've played, and one of the best Square has produced. If you don't own this game then you must try as hard as you can to find a copy of it. You will not regret it.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/15/05, Updated 09/01/09

Game Release: Final Fantasy IX (EU, 02/16/01)