Garnet Til Alexandros XVII
Age: 16
Height: 164 cm (5'4")
Vivi Ornitier
Age: 10
Height: 121 cm (3'11")
Adelbert Steiner
Age: 33
Height: 190 cm (6'2")
As usual with Amano's art, for the final game the character designers for the game (Toshiyuki Itahana and Hideo Minaba, here) changed things quite a lot.
3 more Potions (the city has a total of 6, so I can't tell which ones you missed), 3 more cards (Sahagin, Zombie, and Lizardman, found at the different corners of the entrance plaza with the statue), 1 Ether and 1 Remedy (these are one each in the two shops that are connected to each other and can be entered from the central square, the one with the ticket booth in the middle), 1 Tent (along the left edge of the steeple where the save moogle is) and 1 Phoenix Pinion (this one is in the central square and behind the ticket box, at the corner where the road that lead to the palace is, near the Inn's entrance).
The castle also had a Phoenix Down to be found in the Moogle room, and as was mentioned, the two chests that drop down in the engine room of the Primavista can be reached and opened, containing a Phoenix Down and a Phoenix Pinion.
Let me know if you want to have pointed out to you other things you might have missed in future locations you'll be visiting, or if you'd rather I don't because you find that annoying. As mentioned, there are guides and, thanks to the magic of the modern internet that 1999 players could not easily access, we can check those online very quickly today.
The good aspect of this is that most of those should still be possible to obtain the next time you visit Alexandria, and none of the missing stuff is especially significant anyway, just like the cards and potion it's stuff that's handy but hardly game-changing. The bad aspect of this is that some future location will not be possible to visit more than once and might have very useful items to collect.
Also, as some people mentioned, in addition to the castle itself also having a number of items to collect, there's also the reward from Brahne that changes depending on the duel - at 100 she gives you a rare item you won't otherwise see until late Disk 2, although it's not too useful - which can be easily missed, as it requires to personally go and talk with Brahne while you're controlling Steiner, and the Elixir from the last soldier in the tower if you did manage to talk to all the Pluto knights; if you get that one, Steiner will even ask to himself "wait, wasn't there one more...?" before dismissing that detail as unimportant until he's found Garnet.
So, you did mention that FFIX opening stretch was longer than FFVII, and certainly more eventful than FFVIII if you count "defeating Ifrit" as the end of the opening, but was it better, from an enjoyment, story, or gameplay standpoint? Inquiring minds want to know!
Also, entirely for my own accounting purposes, these three updates featured a total of 149 images. Counting them now so I don't need to count them at the end, but also because it's interesting to know how the image accumulation is proceeding update-by-update. It is, right? It's not just me who find these technical details interesting?
To me, that would suggest that the main game was designed first, and they knew they were gonna include a card game, so included references to it in the incidental dialogue where necessary, but they only figured out the full mechanics for it and the name very late in the developmental process.
100 isn't that hard, I don't think... challenging, since it's above 80, but not too challenging. Unless I'm misremembering? The final prize was at 1000, wasn't it? Now THAT was hard.
100 isn't that hard, I don't think... challenging, since it's above 80, but not too challenging. Unless I'm misremembering? The final prize was at 1000, wasn't it? Now THAT was hard.
That...that's basically Terra with Celes' hair and clothes, albeit a bit altered (tweaked color scheme, floral design, etc.). But really, it looks like Amano combined both characters for Garnet's look.
The pace of jumping does change, so if you ever get the timing down, it's probably going to change. Some of the later speeds even have uneven spacing, so you'll alternate between long and short gaps between the jumps.
(You can play this game later in the story if you really really want to Omi, just remember that you can spend hours and hours doing it here first before even knowing Vivi's name.)
Unlike every other game in this series, I have played Final Fantasy IX before nearly to the end, once.
It was over twenty years ago now. My recollections are… Spotty. I remember specific plot beats, elements of characterization, but very little of the overall structure of the plot. I know the name of the main villain, but not what motivates them.
What I recall most of all about FF9 is a feeling. An atmosphere. A game whose aesthetic sensibilities are polar opposites to FF8's; a return to a kind of fantasy that was not, for me, my first exposure to Final Fantasy, and so was strange and novel, even as it may have been more familiar to a general audience.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. All these years ago, I never finished FF9, never crosses that final threshold.
It gives us the opportunity to Steal from him, though; and notably we can steal from him more than once. This is a first! Our first Steal gets us a Potion, the second gets us a Mage Masher, which based on precedent is going to be some kind of dagger, and the third gets us a Wrist, before the command returns "Doesn't have anything." to inform us that further thievery is useless. That's neat! If we're going to have a character permanently shackled to the Thief class and the Steal command, which historically haven't been… great… Then having Steal tables with multiple items per opponent could be a real boon.
Seeing as Zidane is one of the main characters of the game, yeah suffice to say the Steal command has gotten quite a glowup in FFIX compared to some of the previous entries where it tended to be at most "this specific boss/enemy has something useful I guess, other than that ignore it".
To tell the truth: I think the designers of VII and VIII were kind of embarrassed by moogles. Or, if not embarrassed, they felt like the cute, magical talking critters didn't really suit the grittier, modern vibes of the PSX era. I don't think it's a coincidence that IX, with its cartoon-like, high fantasy aesthetic, is the first game of that era to feature a moogle as a talking NPC.
Yeah it's certainly telling that the moment Final Fantasy pivoted back to a more... well, fantasy setting complete with somewhat more cartoony designs, is the moment it suddenly has dozens of non-human races around everywhere again, the Moogles are out and about, and the cast of playable characters is looking super diverse right from the get-go instead of "bunch of student-looking fellas" or "mostly humans, obligatory non-human too I guess".
I would say something like "the odds that there is something fucked up going on with one or both of these moons are zero," but I'm still not over the FF8 Moonspiracy letdown. ALL THAT BUILDUP AND FOR WHAT, ONE COOL CUTSCENE!? Ahem.
Now, I'm not going to preemptively cancel the game on twitter dot com or anything, so far we've had no indication that Queen Brahne is anything but a sympathetic character whose daughter is being targeted by vicious kidnappers. But I am making a note that the Queen is depicted as a grotesque caricature, obese, hideous, with the worst hair I've ever seen, and reacting to the spectacle with the kind of childlike glee usually associated with the Mad Ruler archetype. Is that a problem? I don't know! But, well, we'll see.
Honestly my first impression and assumption with Brahne was that since we're already in a fantasy world with all kinds of non-human races everywhere, she's just one of those fantasy races that happens to be queen. Idunno, part ogre or something and that's why she's big and blue.
Granted, what that says about the design idea of "make the probably evil queen a giant ugly blue woman" is different, I'm sure we'll have plenty to say about Queen Brahne by the end of the playthrough, one way or another.
Okay, a picture is starting to form. That 18/18 number above is an amount of, idk what they're called so let's go with "skill points" for now, that can be allocated to abilities which have a cost. For instance, we can spend 4 of these points on Protect Girls, which allows Zidane to take damage instead of a female character (and which tells us interesting things about his personality). This isn't permanent, though; we can take away those 4 points and put them into something else instead whenever we want.
Right now, the only abilities Zidane has access to are Protect Girls and Flee-Gil, which allows us to still get gil even after fleeing from battle; that's not actually enough to spend all 18 skill points. We'll need to find a way to learn more abilities, and it looks like that's going to be with items; Zidane's starting armor is a Leather Vest, and that Leather Vest has the Protect Girls skill tied to it. We can learn that ability permanently by gaining 35 AP in battle, at which point it'll presumably be permanently added to this menu where we can equip it or not out of those 18 skill points.
So, character growth is going to be tied to items. How will that work out in practice? We'll see.
In my opinion? It's a good middle ground between "characters abilities are entirely determined by their levelups, everything is predefined", and "characters can hop between three dozen classes and learn whatever skills they want, grabbing the most broken combos". Tying things to equipment instead means you can somewhat regulate character growth by not giving out too good of abilities/equipment too early, compared to say FFT where you can just go "I Learn Holy in Chapter 1 and now I nuke the rest of the game". It can also combine nicely with sidequests and whatnot giving you good equipment early since now on top of "hey you got the Platinum Knife 2 hours before it shows up in shops", said Platinum Knife might also have a new ability tied to it that you're also getting early.
he fact that he is referred to as a "Knight of Pluto" without a name should alert us that something is up, and checking him against the roster should alert us to the fact that this isn't, in fact, a Pluto Knight at all, but Blank in disguise. (Or, you know, you're able to make out that he's still wearing his leather blindfold under his helmet at this low resolution. I suspect the upscaled textures of the Steam version make it a lot easier to notice.)
Something which Steiner, the Captain of the Pluto Knights, who has all of eight men under his command and should damn well be able to know their face and names, is totally oblivious to. As if we needed any further evidence that he is… Well, kind of a buffoon.
Something to be said about how the sideways hop from "going for as realistic as we can on PSX hardware" to "fuck it, 3D Modeled anime style" does a lot for the little bits of characterization like this. Steiner in particular is stealing the show with that face.
It's interesting that after two straight games focused on interrogating the idea of "coolness" and featuring maladjusted protagonists with issues relating to other people, using cold aloofness and killing prowess as a mask for their insecurities, we're now getting a protagonist who's just a funny little guy. A trickster archetype who has several friends, a trained actor and stage fighter as well as a thief and a scoundrel, who also seemingly can't keep himself from flirting with some women and accidentally making others mad at him. Oh, I'm sure there are hidden depths to Zidane and some mystery to his past, but unlike Cloud and Squall, he doesn't project mystery; you'd be forgiven from looking at him and thinking he's exactly what he appears to be.
Steiner absolutely, 100% forgot about the play and believes that he just saw Princess Garnet actually die in real life. Funniest character of all time.
Garnet has a summon menu full of summons that start at Shiva and top off at fucking Bahamut.
At level 1.
I mean, she can't use any of these; she only has 46 MP, and her cheapest summon, Shiva, costs 96 MP. So in a sense this is purely symbolic.
But what a symbol. We don't yet know what Summons are in this setting, but it's clear that Garnet is in some way special; she has a kind of incredible potential, even if it hasn't manifested yet.
That just sounds to me like it's time to figure out how to bust the game wide open with early grinding/Max MP abuse so Garnet can drop dragons on people in Disc 1.
The ship rises, to the shock and surprise of the crowd; but Queen Brahne has, by now, likely seen her daughter on the stage and realized that an abduction is in process, and she waves to the cannons posted on the castle's tower.
It's almost like class-based design is really useful and versatile and allows you to create custom encounters and to have characters with complete skillsets from the first level of the game!! Crazy how that works!!!
Suffice to say, as much fun as playing with GFs or Materia or whatever can be, I am glad to be back to a simple class-based system. Doubly so in that it doesn't seem too inherently breakable the way multiclassing ala Tactics or FFV is, going instead for a more refined version of the predefined roles of FFIV.
But we'll get more into that as the game goes on, I'm sure, at this point we've only seen what's presumably our first four character party.
What? A character who has magic uses magic in the plot which causes things to happen? I'm pretty sure we don't do that on this platform, this must be a mistake.
It really is wild to think about the fact that we went two whole games with magic just kinda existing as a gameplay system but otherwise never being actually that relevant for cutscenes and the like. Meanwhile, Terra's Magic and the Espers were at least an important plot element in FFVI (even if they rarely got cutscene use), FFV at the very least had things like "Spam all the revival options on Galuf"....
Looking forward to defined classes meaning characters like Vivi and Garnet can actually involve their magic in the plot of the game.
I know in my heart of hearts, that the two of them together could likely defeat any monster, any boss. But my God, the amount of collateral damage would be immense.
That just sounds to me like it's time to figure out how to bust the game wide open with early grinding/Max MP abuse so Garnet can drop dragons on people in Disc 1.
It was mentioned that Shiva costs 96 MP; Garnet max MP will be 96 at level 19, assuming normal growth. That's A LOT of levels to gain when you're fighting level 1 mobs - unlike FFVIII, this isn't a game where enemies scale. It's better to hold back on leveling, the game's much more fun that way.
Also, this time very much like FFVIII (and FFVI), later in the game there's ways to increase stat growth. Luckily, in this game they matter very little - it's possible to defeat not only the whole game, but even a whole four of the five bonus bosses, while still being level 1; itemization is just THAT important in this game, alongside with a decent amount of system knowledge, of course. Still, leveling up early will mean lower stats.
Fantasy matriarchy can be done well (see Digger), but far too often it falls into one of the following categories:
- The matriarchy is blatantly evil and/or incompetent. At best, it's a misguided attempt to make men sympathize with the plight of women by showing how bad it would be if oppression happened to them, and, well, there was a lot of discourse about why it's a bad idea. At worst, it's plain old sexism. "Look at them broads trying to govern like they have brains for it" kinda thing.
- Women are wise elves attuned to the mysteries of nature and guiding their society with gentle hand with no desire for warfare inherent in men. Second wave feminism by way of goddess worship, etc. It's... better than outright misogyny, but still smells of gender essentialism and can hide a lot of nasty ideas underneath the positive veneer.
- Barely disguised author fetish. Probably the most respectable option of the three, but tends to overlap a lot with the above two.
Given the apparent tone of FFIX, probably the best thing it can do is to not make matriarchy a big thing. Like, it's a quirk of Alexandria completely unrelated to the plot and motivations of villains or heroes, just a few jokes at Steiner's expense before moving on.
I suppose Alexandria being mirror-Troia in this regard, what with Troia having worn the second one of these hats, and being readily forgettable as a place, is probably the best we can hope for. I haven't played IX, so all I have to go on are half-memories of other LPs and a few things that have inexplicably stuck in my head a la "Queen Brahne was not impressed". And various references to IX from other games. So as far as the overall character of Alexandria in this game, I'm... kind of clueless as to what'll happen.
...you know, Steiner being the very definition of a himbo plays interestingly with him being the one important guy in a matriarchal kingdom where women are soldiers and men de facto lesser citizens. It's flipping a lot more of the gender tropes than you'd expect (come on gimme a slapflight or flexoff or something between him and a male villain without a shirt)
Idk, it seems more like a sort of mild chauvinism people take for granted than any kind of major systemic oppression, otherwise I feel like the game would be making a much bigger deal of it beyond some light jokes at Steiner's expense. By all indications it's just sort of an unexamined cultural stereotype that women just make better leaders and not some kind of quasi-Amazonian dystopia where men have no rights and get sent to the insane asylum to be treated via mesmeric rays and cold water baths for "wandering testicle syndrome".
Also, fuck it. Here's some more concept art. Out of all the "guys jumping at you and posing in a void" pieces Amano has done, this one of Tantalus is a favorite.
Idk, it seems more like a sort of mild chauvinism people take for granted than any kind of major systemic oppression, otherwise I feel like the game would be making a much bigger deal of it beyond some light jokes at Steiner's expense. By all indications it's just sort of an unexamined cultural stereotype that women just make better leaders and not some kind of quasi-Amazonian dystopia where men have no rights and get sent to the insane asylum to be treated via mesmeric rays and cold water baths for "wandering testicle syndrome".
Also, fuck it. Here's some more concept art. Out of all the "guys jumping at you and posing in a void" pieces Amano has done, this one of Tantalus is a favorites
Yeah, the game so far doesn#t seem to have really examined or pulled that much focus against the idea of a matrarical story. It feels like it mostly was a case of "We want a princess as co-protagonist, we want her to have an cruel mother(?)-Queen". And it mostly was from there, more on vibes then anything it want to actually critically focus on as a piece of the story.
Sure, leotard ladies guard is a thing, but it doesn't give that much focus to that either, so it mostly also feels like a piece of "That would be hot" "Yeah", and not more then that.
Maybe minor tones of sexism involved in that, but nothing actually egregious. At least my impression so far from reading the updates.
Yeah, the game so far doesn#t seem to have really examined or pulled that much focus against the idea of a matrarical story. It feels like it mostly was a case of "We want a princess as co-protagonist, we want her to have an cruel mother(?)-Queen". And it mostly was from there, more on vibes then anything it want to actually critically focus on as a piece of the story.
Sure, leotard ladies guard is a thing, but it doesn't give that much focus to that either, so it mostly also feels like a piece of "That would be hot" "Yeah", and not more then that.
I suspect they got there mostly by accident, then leaned into it. They wanted Garnet and Brahne for the reasons you presented, and probably wanted the contrast between "Brahne's highly competent general" and "Garnet's bumbling bodyguard" to characterize Steiner, just for reasons of organic plotting and character arcs needing foils and such.
Then somebody else pulled the concept art for female knights from FFIV when going over character references and said "we gotta make a 3d versions of this, right?", got nods all around, somebody put two and two together and said "what if we contrast Steiner with the general by making the general a woman, so we can use this design for the soldiers?", and they ended up with a sort of matriarcal kingdom which has a minor stereotype of "men are morons" tackled on because it was funny - that FFIX wants to be funny at times seems pretty evident already, I'd say.
(For the designs I'm referring to, go check this update):
Honestly his funniest bit of characterization is coming up once he starts talking to Vivi. Like I said earlier, the only time I willingly use Steiner is when Vivi is in the party.
Unless you're a dirty THIEF a rotten SCOUNDREL and VILLAINOUS CAD attempting to lead the Princess astray in which case only the gods can save you from the QUEEN'S JUSTICE, MARK MY WO-
