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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy IX]

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Omicron said:
i'd just like to make a side note that Final Fantasy IX's One True Hater somehow dug up my SpaceBattles account, a website on which i posted once in the last ten years, to DM me and continue explaining to me why IX is Bad Actually, and for his troubles has now gotten himself banned from SB as well

this is what persistence gets you: absolutely nothing
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Man, some people have way too much time on their hands.

...

Wait a minute, I need to check something.

**Checks**

So did their Spacebattles account have the same name as their SufficientVelocity one? Because I got a random PM out of the blue talking about this comment I made by someone who's name is themed similarly, and who got banned at some point in the last three days after they sent it and I summarily ignored them.
 
NotYourParents said:
Unless their goal was just to rant in the first place. I feel a little annoyed because there is a part of the game I want to complain about later, but I don't want to be on the same side of the argument as…that.
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I repeated and paraphrased a bit their argument to present it in a polite fashion so that we had a proper analysis of it in the thread (Omicron had a pretty interesting rebuttal of it), even if I disagreed with the argument itself. Nobody seemed to mind.

And, of course, plenty of people have argued against other games in the thread before, and we've mostly managed to keep it civil despite sometimes heated disagreements. See: my dislike of the WotL translation.

Given that, I don't think you need to worry about your criticism being lumped in with that of somebody else - just say what you think and why in a polite fashion when the time to make said comment comes, and I would expect that nobody will be annoyed by it.
 
NotYourParents said:
I do wonder how many of their points I would have agreed with if they were in front of me in list format and not firehosed out in wall of text format, but otherwise, I don't think they succeeded at his goal to have you dislike FFIX and tear it to shreds.

Unless their goal was just to rant in the first place. I feel a little annoyed because there is a part of the game I want to complain about later, but I don't want to be on the same side of the argument as…that.
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Now that we've reached this part of the game, I can say that most of his hate seemed to stem from the fact he believed Dagger knew/suspected Brahne would steal her eidolons, which would make her return to Alexandria suicidally stupid.
 
But seriously, Dagger did a real number on him.

Some guys mourn Aerith like a real person because she was their first emotional gutpunch in a video game, this guy instead decided to become Dagger's bitter ex. He's gonna find six other guys (like that reviewer he tried to link) and found a league.

NotYourParents said:
I do wonder how many of their points I would have agreed with if they were in front of me in list format and not firehosed out in wall of text format, but otherwise, I don't think they succeeded at his goal to have you dislike FFIX and tear it to shreds.

Unless their goal was just to rant in the first place. I feel a little annoyed because there is a part of the game I want to complain about later, but I don't want to be on the same side of the argument as…that.
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I feel you. It's obviously fine to bring up critique of the game, both Omicron and the thread did it many times over the years, with some complaints landing more successfully than others, but this incident...

Well, the core issue with his argumentation was just a barrage of negativity with most complaints carrying the same weight as "was it ever explained in the story why baby's shoes were never worn? Not looking for fanon." It was annoying given the broad tone of this thread and a clear indication that they were made in bad faith: he wasn't bringing up his honest thoughts, just reaching for any and all kind of ammunition he could grab in an attempt to, as he basically said in response to my comment, prime the thread to hate on the game.

He's achieved the opposite, prompting people to come to the game's defense on all levels, and yeah, I do feel a bit like he's poisoned the well as far as critiquing FFIX goes. (Like, at the very least I would have made a joke about Dagger turning right around and marching back to her castle after successfully running away, even if it does make sense in context, but I didn't because I don't want to be that guy either.)

Overall, I guess we'd just need to try to move on from the whole thing and meet potential future criticisms on their own merits.
 
Omicron said:
i'd just like to make a side note that Final Fantasy IX's One True Hater somehow dug up my SpaceBattles account, a website on which i posted once in the last ten years, to DM me and continue explaining to me why IX is Bad Actually, and for his troubles has now gotten himself banned from SB as well

this is what persistence gets you: absolutely nothing
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Hah, funny enough had the exact same thing a few days ago, where once I realized what was going on my response was simply "mute conversation, ignore account, report as Affairs of Other Boards (which sadly went nowhere apparently you had better luck)". Thought about bringing it up here or in the spoilers thread, but didn't think they particularly deserved the attention in continued work on achieving the Number One Final Fantasy IX Hater award.
NotYourParents said:
I do wonder how many of their points I would have agreed with if they were in front of me in list format and not firehosed out in wall of text format, but otherwise, I don't think they succeeded at his goal to have you dislike FFIX and tear it to shreds.

Unless their goal was just to rant in the first place. I feel a little annoyed because there is a part of the game I want to complain about later, but I don't want to be on the same side of the argument as…that.
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I mean, as long as you aren't going off into unhinged rants nitpicking every single part of the plot actively looking for ammunition, you should be perfectly fine? A good part of what turned everyone against that poster was that it was blatantly obvious they were only here to hate on FFIX, since they had basically zero prior post history until showing up in a thread that had recently been retitled "Now Playing FFIX" to go "BOY FFIX I HATE FFIX LET ME TELL YOU HOW I HATE FFIX" with zero regard for spoilers. That would be eyebrow raising even if they were someone with prior posting history in the thread, coming out of the blue swinging was just gunning for getting themselves a threadban.

Like just to make a... not quite similar comparison, but one for an unpopular opinion on a game, Egleris already mentioned their own dislike of the WotL translation of Final Fantasy Tactics. They were pretty consistent in said opinion and posted about it basically every update comparing WotL to the original translation, and sure I massively disagree with their take and eventually just stopped reading those posts, but also they were still plenty civil as posts? Egleris is still a consistent poster in the thread who doesn't go full hater or anything, it's fine to have different opinions, even negative ones. It's when it reads like a hitpiece from someone proclaiming themselves as the only sane person in the room that it becomes an issue.
 
Yeah, it really was astounding how much he had a hateboner for a fictional character in a JRPG made for teenagers.

I have a fair amount of thinking about Garnet's seemingly inexplicable decision to return to Alexandria after the whole opening being about kidnapping her from it, but I didn't initially share it because god I was so sick of the Garnet Debate. Which is to say... Garnet's decision does make a lot of psychological sense if you take some time (like writing an entire brief character study during my second playthrough of IX) to think about it.

We haven't seen any proof that Garnet is consciously aware of the Eidolons, aware that her mother knows about their existence, or aware that her mother is planning to extract them for whatever Kuja's nefarious plot is. Garnet is acting on the basis that she solely has the authority of a princess, not any sort of magical MacGuffin Maiden.

And within her limited knowledge of the going-ons of Alexandria's government, Garnet has very good reason to believe that it was her decision to flee the palace that directly lead to the war with Alexandria.
  1. Tantalus publicly kidnapped Princess Garnet, something which Garnet went along with but no one in Alexandria has the ability to know.
  2. Tantalus has a good enough relationship with Regent Cid, the ruler of Lindblum, that he can ask them to do major favors for him, and may have already done so in the past.
  3. Queen Brahne, whom everyone treats as a good ruler, is competent enough that she could have reasonably learned about this with whatever spy network Alexandria possesses.
  4. Alexandria near immediately declares war on Burmecia, Lindblum's weaker ally, after Princess Garnet's kidnapping.
From Garnet's perspective, it looks like the war in Burmecia is retaliation for her kidnapping. That Alexandria is discretely wiping a smaller nation off the map so it'll have better odds fighting Lindblum and somehow forcing Cid to release the poor hostage Garnet. Thus, the war is her fault and everyone who dies as a result is because of her.

Garnet, as a good person, is understandably extremely guilty over this and, as an assertive person, feels a need to personally fix things. However, any statements from her stating that her departure from Alexandria was voluntary would necessarily be suspect if she said them while remaining in Regent Cid's custody. The treacherous regent is forcing the poor princess to say things!

Thus, the only way to conclusively prove that she left Alexandria of her own free will is to return of her own free will, to persuade her mother to call off the war before thousands die. And for all that Garnet isn't confident in her ability to do that (she wouldn't have left in the first place if she thought it would be easier than fleeing to Lindblum!), she does think it is possible with her unexamined axioms that her mother is a good person and that her mother loves her.

Unfortunately for Garnet, these axioms turned out to not be true.
 
To be clear, I've been part of this thread for a while and have done my fair share of complaining (and have plans to do a lot more complaining!). I'm not letting one person's crusade against a particular character change my opinion or willingness to voice it, it's just that this was a weird and singular example of a phenomenon I don't have a name for and am not entirely sure how to describe.
 
Speaking honestly, I don't think it takes that great a leap to react in puzzlement to Dagger's decision. This is because of the game's framing.

Basically, to us, the audience, it's plainly obvious that the queen is a villain from the moment she appears on screen, and everything we see in the game just reinforces it, it's not subtle. We see her trying to blow up the ship with Dagger on, we see her servants utilizing dangerous and unhinged Black Waltzes, right after Dagger leaves we see the queen personally orchestrating various atrocities in a peaceful country... By the end of it, even Zorn and Thorn seemingly act baffled that Dagger isn't trying to escape them and seems to think that her status as a princess carries any weight still. She (and Steiner) is the only one who refuses to see the obvious, which can be frustrating when it's so blatantly clear to us.

And, well, if you don't consider her inner world (which, in this particular case, I'm gonna go on a limb, proooobably has a touch of sexism in it, but otherwise easy to do even for normal people since we've only met all those bozos just a few hours ago), if you primarily consider things from the bird's eye view of following split storylines and watching ATEs, that puzzlement could easily turn into blaming Dagger for being stupid, stubborn and borderline suicidal.

You can make sense of her, but it does take effort and thought and care in a game that's otherwise subtle as a crushing train when it comes to character beats.

So, if you just played the game for fun and didn't write 10k words of analysis for every hour you've played, and you went away with an impression that Dagger going back is a stupid contrivance to drive the plot, that doesn't make you an unhinged hater or even an unintelligent person, and a case can be made that the game leaving people with that impression is at fault.

No excuses for complaining about Black Waltz logistics, though. That shit was just tedious.
 
illhousen said:
So, if you just played the game for fun and didn't write 10k words of analysis for every hour you've played,
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I mean, he kinda did do that, it was just all that analysis was dedicated to "AND HERE'S WHY THIS GAME SUCKS: Featuring How Mad I Am At Garnet For Not Immediately Complying With Whatever a Nice Guy [TM] Says" rather than, like, actual reasonable critiques.
 
wetodet said:
I mean, he kinda did do that, it was just all that analysis was dedicated to "AND HERE'S WHY THIS GAME SUCKS: Featuring How Mad I Am At Garnet For Not Immediately Complying With Whatever a Nice Guy [TM] Says" rather than, like, actual reasonable critiques.
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Oh, that guy was just super weird, no argument here. Kinda impossible to argue otherwise after he followed Omicron to another site to slide into DMs to continue complaining about a game.

I was speaking more broadly about people wishing to make criticisms about that plot beat and feeling tainted by association.
 
wetodet said:
I mean, he kinda did do that, it was just all that analysis was dedicated to "AND HERE'S WHY THIS GAME SUCKS: Featuring How Mad I Am At Garnet For Not Immediately Complying With Whatever a Nice Guy [TM] Says" rather than, like, actual reasonable critiques.
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No, you see, Zidane loves her and protected her, so how dare she abandon him. It's not like he was just trying to get in her pants.
 
illhousen said:
Speaking honestly, I don't think it takes that great a leap to react in puzzlement to Dagger's decision. This is because of the game's framing.

Basically, to us, the audience, it's plainly obvious that the queen is a villain from the moment she appears on screen, and everything we see in the game just reinforces it, it's not subtle. We see her trying to blow up the ship with Dagger on, we see her servants utilizing dangerous and unhinged Black Waltzes, right after Dagger leaves we see the queen personally orchestrating various atrocities in a peaceful country... By the end of it, even Zorn and Thorn seemingly act baffled that Dagger isn't trying to escape them and seems to think that her status as a princess carries any weight still. She (and Steiner) is the only one who refuses to see the obvious, which can be frustrating when it's so blatantly clear to us.

And, well, if you don't consider her inner world (which, in this particular case, I'm gonna go on a limb, proooobably has a touch of sexism in it, but otherwise easy to do even for normal people since we've only met all those bozos just a few hours ago), if you primarily consider things from the bird's eye view of following split storylines and watching ATEs, that puzzlement could easily turn into blaming Dagger for being stupid, stubborn and borderline suicidal.

You can make sense of her, but it does take effort and thought and care in a game that's otherwise subtle as a crushing train when it comes to character beats.

So, if you just played the game for fun and didn't write 10k words of analysis for every hour you've played, and you went away with an impression that Dagger going back is a stupid contrivance to drive the plot, that doesn't make you an unhinged hater or even an unintelligent person, and a case can be made that the game leaving people with that impression is at fault.

No excuses for complaining about Black Waltz logistics, though. That shit was just tedious.
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Speaking for myself, when I played through the game before sitting down and writing 10k words about my thoughts... Well, I made the same assumption as Zidane: "Dagger is probably headed for Burmecia." It made perfect sense: the group had specifically told her she had to stay put so they could go to Burmecia to stop a presumably Alexandrian attack, so of course Dagger would pre-empt them by drugging them and going first, so that when they reach Burmecia and she's already there, they're put in front of a fait accompli and have to just accept her tagging along.

It wasn't at all on my radar that she was instead going back to Alexandria. When it was revealed, I was, at first, baffled. It's only once I sat down, laid out my thoughts, and wrote about it that I decided that this did, after all, make sense considering Dagger's established character and the information we know she has access to. But at first it was a genuinely wild swerve that made me question her judgment (and it did end up pretty poor judgment in the end, just in a way I think is believable and excusable given the premises).
 
Omicron said:
I brought up the timeline earlier. I felt it was wonky. I'm not actually sure anymore - let's lay it out.

Zidane's timeline: The group wakes up. They leave Lindblum, go through Gizamaluke's Grotto, reach Burmecia at the tail end of the Alexandrian assault. Beatrix takes them all out. They get back up, leave Burmecia, head straight for Cleyra, climb up the trunk, the storm vanishes.

Garnet's timeline: She and Steiner leave Lindblum. They head to South Gate, at which point news of Burmecia's destructions have already reached it. From there, they reach Treno, meet with Tot, take the Gargan Roo, head for Alexandria and are taken captive. Garnet meets with Queen Brahne, and Kuja puts her to sleep.

Brahne and Kuja's timeline: They leave Alexandria with an army of black mages, which goes through Gizamaluke's Grotto. They reach Burmecia and destroy the city. Zorn and Thorn are there. Zidane and his party encounter them and are defeated. Brahne, Kuja, Zorn and Thorn all go back to Alexandria. Kuja makes a stop by Treno, where he runs into Garnet, then heads back to Alexandria in time for Zorn and Thorn wait for Garnet and take her prisoner. She is taken to Brahne, Kuja puts her to sleep, and Zorn and Thorn draw the eidolons. Meanwhile, Cleyra's sandstorm shield goes down for unexplained reasons.

There's… Something that doesn't work there. Zidane goes from "there for the destruction of Burmecia, heads immediately to Cleyra, sandstorm breaks," while Dagger's entire side story happens after news of Burmecia's destruction has already spread and takes its time winding through multiple locations and then ending up a prisoner. And while all this is happening, Queen Brahne's team just move between Burmecia, Treno, Alexandria and presumably then Cleyra as the plot needs while manifesting supernatural awareness of Dagger's movement so she falls into the perfect trap.

This is probably because Queen Brahne moves around in an airship, but… We know that the airships can't move freely above the mountains; they have a limited maximum altitude that forces them to pass through the Gates. That's why the black mage army had to go through Gizamaluke's Grotto. "Doctor Tot sold Dagger out" could explain the convenient trap, but how would he have gotten word out in time?

None of this is really a problem until you start to look at it too closely and interrogate how the parts fit together, but now it bugs me. Perhaps there's an explanation, though.
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Yeah, the timeline here doesn't line up well. I went to check the FFIX Ultimania, which has a timeline of the events, and while to its credit it tries to make everything line up it's still iffy.
Basically the Ultimania timeline works like this:

  • January 19th: The party leaves Dali and reaches Lindlum. The Alexandrian army attacks Burmecia.
  • January 20th: Festival of the Hunt. Garnet and Steiner flee Lindlum and reach South Gate. Zidane & Co. leave Lindlum a while after and make way to Burmecia (I assume they go through or at least enter Gizamaluke Grotto, but it's not mentioned).
  • January 21st: Zidane & Co. arrive to Burmecia, by now conquered, fight Beatrix and are defeated. Kuja leaves towards Treno. Garnet and Stenier meet Marcus at the station, go to Treno and board the Gargant, directed to Alexandria. End of Disc 1.
  • January 22nd: Garnet, Steiner and Marcus arrive at Alexandria and are captured. Zorn and Thorn start extracting Eidolons from Garnet. Zidane's party goes to Cleyra and Freya partecipates in the cerimony. The sandstorm disappears.
IMHO it looks too compressed (though not the worst I've seen), but not knowing the travel times it may at well work out. I'm doubtful though.
 
Flare said:
Yeah, the timeline here doesn't line up well. I went to check the FFIX Ultimania, which has a timeline of the events, and while to its credit it tries to make everything line up it's still iffy.
Basically the Ultimania timeline works like this:

  • January 19th: The party leaves Dali and reaches Lindlum. The Alexandrian army attacks Burmecia.
  • January 20th: Festival of the Hunt. Garnet and Steiner flee Lindlum and reach South Gate. Zidane & Co. leave Lindlum a while after and make way to Burmecia (I assume they go through or at least enter Gizamaluke Grotto, but it's not mentioned).
  • January 21st: Zidane & Co. arrive to Burmecia, by now conquered, fight Beatrix and are defeated. Kuja leaves towards Treno. Garnet and Stenier meet Marcus at the station, go to Treno and board the Gargant, directed to Alexandria. End of Disc 1.
  • January 22nd: Garnet, Steiner and Marcus arrive at Alexandria and are captured. Zorn and Thorn start extracting Eidolons from Garnet. Zidane's party goes to Cleyra and Freya partecipates in the cerimony. The sandstorm disappears.
IMHO it looks too compressed (though not the worst I've seen), but not knowing the travel times it may at well work out. I'm doubtful though.
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January. ...they have a Janus?
 
The months are never named in-game, are they? I always dislike giving the Ultimanias any credit, so I wouldn't consider any direction about timeline they offer to be relevant to the game's worldbuilding.

If anything, given the Stellazio, I'd expect the months to be named for the signs, just like they are in FFT - not like FFIX is lacking in references to other games, anyway.
 
Egleris said:
The months are never named in-game, are they? I always dislike giving the Ultimanias any credit, so I wouldn't consider any direction about timeline they offer to be relevant to the game's worldbuilding.

If anything, given the Stellazio, I'd expect the months to be named for the signs, just like they are in FFT - not like FFIX is lacking in references to other games, anyway.
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It does also depend on how it is translated. The Japanese word for January is 一月(Ichigatsu), literally First Month/Moon.

Unlike English, where the month named Eight Month is actually the tenth.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
January. ...they have a Janus?
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Egleris said:
The months are never named in-game, are they? I always dislike giving the Ultimanias any credit, so I wouldn't consider any direction about timeline they offer to be relevant to the game's worldbuilding.

If anything, given the Stellazio, I'd expect the months to be named for the signs, just like they are in FFT - not like FFIX is lacking in references to other games, anyway.
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Omegahugger said:
It does also depend on how it is translated. The Japanese word for January is 一月(Ichigatsu), literally First Month/Moon.

Unlike English, where the month named Eight Month is actually the tenth.
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Dates in the Ultimania are given in this format:
(Number)年 (Number)月 (Number)日 ((Number)Year (Number)Month (Number)Day)
So the 15th January 1800 (start of the game) comes out as 1800年 1月 15日, but the month itself is not named as such.
The translation I took the dates from uses January, February and so on as a shorthand, to amke things easier on readers. There's some mentions of years in-game, mostly in dialogue and environmental interactions (like with the statues in Alexandria and Lindblum) and we have the characters' ages in the game manual, but as far as calendar goes in-game that's it.
As I said before, I don't like the Utlimania timeline much because I feel it's too compressed (would you believe that the game so far spans a week more or less? Yeah, me neither), but that's the best source I can get short of having Squaresoft's setting materials (good luck with those).
 
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Flare said:
Yeah, the timeline here doesn't line up well. I went to check the FFIX Ultimania, which has a timeline of the events, and while to its credit it tries to make everything line up it's still iffy.
Basically the Ultimania timeline works like this:

  • January 19th: The party leaves Dali and reaches Lindlum. The Alexandrian army attacks Burmecia.
  • January 20th: Festival of the Hunt. Garnet and Steiner flee Lindlum and reach South Gate. Zidane & Co. leave Lindlum a while after and make way to Burmecia (I assume they go through or at least enter Gizamaluke Grotto, but it's not mentioned).
  • January 21st: Zidane & Co. arrive to Burmecia, by now conquered, fight Beatrix and are defeated. Kuja leaves towards Treno. Garnet and Stenier meet Marcus at the station, go to Treno and board the Gargant, directed to Alexandria. End of Disc 1.
  • January 22nd: Garnet, Steiner and Marcus arrive at Alexandria and are captured. Zorn and Thorn start extracting Eidolons from Garnet. Zidane's party goes to Cleyra and Freya partecipates in the cerimony. The sandstorm disappears.
IMHO it looks too compressed (though not the worst I've seen), but not knowing the travel times it may at well work out. I'm doubtful though.
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...

I just wanna see something.

I know you said we shouldn't take this timeline too seriously, and I agree, but I want to explore for a moment what happens if we do.
​

This is the distance from Lindblum to Burmecia.

There is great variance in how far a human can travel in a day, but considering that the trip from Lindblum to Burmecia involves crossing a swamp and a cave complex, I think it's fair to compare it to the Appalachian Trail, and say that one day of travel should cover about 30km or so.

If Zidane's crew left from Lindblum at around noon after waking up from the drug, and arrived in Burmecia in evening of the following day, then that means the total distance between the two cities is around 45km. Granting them all superhuman walking speed and endurance because they are fantasy protagonists, we might double that, and say that this was a distance of 90km.

The distance from Lindblum to Burmecia is about, I would say, two thirds of the maximum vertical span of the Mist Continent, and about half of its horizontal span. That puts the Mist Continent at about 135km in height, and 180km in width.

That would make the Mist Continent…

​

…about the size of central France, from Paris to Le Mans. It wouldn't even reach the Belgian frontier.

Even if we assume that it took one full week for Zidane and his crew to reach Burmecia at 50km a day, that's 350km. That makes the Mist Continent something like 500km in height, and 700km in width. That gives us…

​

The entire Mist Continent is a little under the size of France.

I am becoming more and more of a Small Planet Truther every day.
 
For even more fun, try to map the distances onto U.S. cities, instead. There's something like 380 km between Houston and Dallas, both cities in Texas.
 
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