Obviously IX is not forgotten. [...] And yet… It's impossible to escape the feeling that it is the small, unassuming child of the family. The overlooked one.
How do you know somebody is a FFIX fan? Don't worry, we'll tell you.
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.
I'm not going to say that anyone claiming that IX's return to stylized high fantasy after VII and VIII are wrong. But...
The Tantalus Theatre Troupe
I just want to note that "Tantalus" is a fantastic name for a gang of thieves.
Vast towering cities, airships flying over the mists, a distinct Early Modern vibe to it all. It's too short for us to learn anything much, but it's enough to inspire a feeling - some grand adventure is about to start, in a world perhaps more magical than we're used to.
This is FF9's first big surprise: We are starting in an airship. Its wooden hull and elaborate towers evoke the great ships of the Age of Sail, though this one lacks sails - it is driven by some other, unseen means. It's also much larger than such ships ever were, almost a floating castle unto itself.
our little party lands in the airship's engine room, which gives us a neat look at what that thing is running on. It looks like… A giant bellows?
It contracts repeatedly, pumping something somewhere, and steam is involved in the process somehow. Very curious.
Shocking surprise, IX also has my favorite version of airships. Huge, baroque constructions of wood and brass cruising over an eternal sea of mist.
Tremendous Edge Chronicles vibes.
Ah, gorgeous, gorgeous PSX pre-rendered backgrounds. How I've missed you.
IX has far and away the coziest envronments of the PSX titles, which we all know is the true measure of JRPG quality.
No "spending half an hour wandering around campus before we even get into a fight" this time around, the game is introducing us to its combat within about a minute of the first cutscene.
The four-man party is back. No longer will we be shackled to three-men party comps that incentivize every character to be a generalist because there isn't enough room for specialization!
No offense to FFVIII, but as far as openings go, I feel like IX blows everything up to the raid on Dollet out of the water. Overall the pacing of IX's first disc is great IMO.
This is Setzer and the opera from FFVI, is what it is! And you're making me play as Setzer! The ignominy!
While Setzer's probably the closest FF-related comparison you could make...but there's an even closer, non-FF one you might think of for Zidaine and someone else that you might have noticed.
a knight standing guard next to the royal pair
we transition to a new cutscene, and a new character.
No spoilers, but Vivi and Steiner are two great characters. There's a good reason why whenever the cast of IX is brought up, "VIVI MY SWEET CHILD" and "clank clank clank CLANK CLANK CL-" are usually the first ones mentioned.
"humanity" in Final Fantasy IX turns out to be a broad concept, and we find nobles who are dog people, bird people, a kid who's literally a hippo… There are fish people, too
Tremendously huge fan of the abundance of goofy OG, Dragonball-esque animal people. Sometimes your neighbor is a fish. Sometimes the president is a dog. Why not?
King Leo and two of his hench… hippos? Aardvarks? I think they might be aardvarks.
The Head Chef of the Alexandria Castle kitchens is a Lickitung!?
And sometimes they're something even weirder and unexplained. Why not have the Tantalus mooks be weird pincer handed hooded goons? Why not have the chief be a weird-ass munch monster? I love it.
The uniform of the Alexandrian soldiers.
Literally just Cammy.
There has never been a Final Fantasy game where two potions or 100 Gil was critical to success even in the early game.
There *is* a sidequest that involves item pickups hidden all across the world environment, fyi. It's not too onerous, but let us know if you want any more info.
This game barely makes any more sense to me today than it did when I was ten years old.
Tetra Master is hot garbo and can safely be ignored. Also, it really bugs me that almost nobody calls it "Tetra Master" ingame; they mostly just call it "the card game". How bizarrely oblique.
This… Seems to be skipping over most of what would be the actual plot of the play. Are they performing an abridged version or something?
Clearly it's a racket to keep people on the hook by only performing 30 minute increments of the play to ensure they come back next year. Not content with thievery, they've also invented padded out watchbait cliffhangers. What rogues.
I honestly find that little touch incredibly charming.
That's basically this game in a nutshell.
Blank gives Zidane an instruction consisting of a single button input, either a face button or a directional arrow. Each option corresponds to a specific choreographed movement; and entering it correctly leads to a cool exchange of 'blows' while fucking it up causes Zidane to knock Blank over, all while a flamenco-styled tune plays and the crowd bobs along. It's surprisingly thrilling!
Is.....is this....the first good Final Fantasy minigame?!?
Blank: "What are you talkin' about!?" [He pantomimes.] "My helmet totally reeks! My armor's way too big… And my back's real itchy… The boots are wet… My gloves are all slimy… There's cookie crumbs in my pockets…"
Zidane: "Okay, I get the picture…
King Leo weeps! Steiner falls to his knees in horror and sorrow!
incredible use of the menu screen timing to convey how little respect this dude gets.
Steiner is running around the room trying to slap the damned bugs off him.
I want to point out that each of these moments have some absolutely fantastic physical "acting" on the part of the characters. It can't be understated just how well the character animations in this game sell the humor, the drama, and just the overall emotional heft of the game. In addition, even the timing on the speech bubbles, the way it'll cut off or but in on other characters, the devs really are twisting the medium in on itself to play to it's strengths.
I love this goofball so much.
Yep, you guessed it, Garnet jumps off the parapet, having sneakily grabbed hold of one of the ropes holding up the little colorful triangle that decorate the festivities. She swings on it, Tarzan-like, and Zidane realises that if he doesn't want her to escape, he has no choice but to do the same; he grabs his own rope, swings after her… And so does Steiner, though with less grace.
Notably, throughout all this, Garnet is clearly having the time of her life. Completely transformed from the sad, wistful princess at the show, she's smiling, taking ridiculous risks, and enjoying it all the while.
I believe that a large part of the answer to "which of the FF's from VII to X do you like best" depends on which brunette female secondary protagonist/love interest that you vibe with the most. They all have their undeniable charms, but Garnet has got to be my favorite.
She also continues to run so fast that she literally makes people spin by passing next to them, Looney Tunes style.
Aside from once again being peak physical comedy, the bandmembers have some of my favorite designs in the Tantalus troupe. They're these stylized greenish humans that look like something out of the Muppet Show, or that you'd find caricatured in a cartoon.
This includes one of the female member of the troupe, a blue-haired girl named Ruby who inexplicably talks like a cowboy:
To be fair, she *is* dressed like an Old West showgirl. I'd also not be surprised if turned out to have a Kansai accent or the like in the original script that they decided to turn into a southern drawl.
Also Zidane just can't stop flirting.
Zidane: "Wow, you're really athletic, Princess. I think I'm falling for you!"
Garnet: "This is nothing. I have been training to escape the castle, after all."
Zidane: "(Yeah, you're doing great!)"
Garnet: "(Hahaha. I have studied drama, you know.)"
Unfortunately Zidane forgets to turn on the charm at a crucial time.
At least until you remember that this charming rogue is currently pivoting opportunistically to "helping out" a woman he was originally planning to drug and abduct without a single moral qualm, and in fact seeming to find the whole thing great amusement.
I think why Zidane works (for me at least) is that everyone knows he's a flirt and a cad and treats him accordingly. Garnet especially is totally unphased by it, seemingly treating the whole thing with the sort of humor and self-assurance that keeps it in the realm of witty repartee and not weird, overly aggressive come-ons. She's a strong enough character that instead of the tropey "Kyaaa! Zidane you baka hentai!" stuff you'd find in worse games, you thankfully have a damsel-in-distress character that can interface with your flirty amoral rogue character without being totally turned into a prop. If Zidane is a scoundrel in the vein of Han Solo, then Garnet is Princess Leia.
FFII and IV had monsters explicitly working alongside rank and file soldiers. But I think this is the first time we see them used as actual weapons, airship mounted chocobo cannons notwithstanding.
I failed to anticipate and account for the difference in scope between IX's prologue and VII's Mako Reactor Raid.
I don't entirely agree. I think they're both very similar in scope and execution. You get an in-media rez introduction involving a act of criminal skullduggery that acts as a way to introduce our core characters and get a handle on their personalities in how they get along (or don't) with eachother. It's fast paced, and you get a broad look at the cultural and technological facets of the world the characters live in along with establishing familiarity with the antagonist. Lastly, they both end with an explosion.
Holy fucking shit this is so cool
am loving the aesthetic so far, the vibrancy of it, the colors of Alexandria, the weirdness of all these humanoid people.
The shift from character to character is also a really neat way to show us a breadth of perspectives on the plot and on Alexandria.
A pretty fantastic introduction. Final Fantasy is heading into a new direction aesthetically and vibes-wise here, though in many ways that direction is more classical than its previous flirtations with sci-fi inspired settings and story. There's a kingdom and a castle, a princess, an evil queen, a stalwart knight, a dashing rogue. But I'm very excited to find out how all these familiar pieces get rearranged in new and surprising ways. So far, what I would say about IX is that it is fun. Its characters are compelling, its comedy is genuinely funny, the game finally has a decent translation that even pulls off some solid wordplay with "Sir Rustalot," the action is top-tier.
I think the best endorsement I can give to FFIX so far is that this entire opening sequence puts a non-stop smile on my face from beginning to end, every single time I have played it.
