Final Fantasy IX was released for the Sony PlayStation in late 2000, having been developed as an ode to the past after the tonal change in theme that occurred in FFVII and FFVIII. FFIX featured a whimsical plot set in a fantasy world and leaned heavily on nods and references to past games, including remixed songs, reused character names, and a general emphasis on the Final Fantasy “brand” itself.
This game would be the end of an era in many ways, a beautiful send-off to a style and tone of game that Square wouldn’t revisit in the mainline series again. Its development overlapped with the development of FFX (which would be released only a year later on the PS2 and would mark a significant evolution of the series) and would be the last game in the series that featured an entire soundtrack composed by Nobuo Uematsu, who had been the main composer of all 8 previous entries as well.
As a teen when this game first released, I adored everything about FFIX. It was a breath of fresh air and harkened to what Final Fantasy meant to me as a child. As an adult, particularly after having just played through FFs I – VIII back-to-back, playing this game was an experience in whimsy and nostalgia tempered by a deep sense of loss for everything this game is revered for. It’s far from a perfect experience, but FFIX is stylistic and consistent in theme, with a vision and a story that both explored new ground while unabashedly paying homage to its forebears.
While the mainline series would never again revisit this style, it’s worth pointing out that the lineage of this game lives on in series like Bravely Default and to a lesser extent, Octopath Traveler. We also had spinoff games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles for the GameCube and later Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light for the DS that carried the torch and passed on this legacy to a new generation of gamers.
Whimsical vs Cinematic
Similar to FFVII and FFVIII before it, FFIX featured many extended Full Motion Video (FMV) sequences, often with characters rendered on top of the video to appear as if they were “in” the video. While this style of cinematic storytelling remained, FFIX is still on the whole a very whimsical Final Fantasy game. While themes of loss and finding the meaning in existence permeate the game, they always take a backseat to colorful, animated, lighthearted set pieces. FFIX is full of larger-than-life characters that lean into every trope in the book, allowing the audience to immediately identify everything there is to know about the character and instead focus on the vaudevillian presentation of its fantasy world. The story of FFIX is still deeply moving in that way that comedy can lower your defenses and make emotional beats hit much harder, however it plays fast and loose with internal consistency, ignoring glaring plot holes and underexplaining pretty much everything. All style with little substance, this is a rollercoaster blockbuster that dumps delightful nostalgia on your lap and allows it to linger until it seeps deep into your veins.
The Gameplay
After the heavy experimentation in FFVII and FFVIII, Final Fantasy IX was a return to form with a very traditional JRPG gameplay loop. The party size was bumped back up to 4 characters, and combat featured the last use of the Action Time Battle system that had been used since Final Fantasy IV. Long gone were complex systems like FFVII’s Materia and FFVIII’s… well everything. Instead, FFIX featured a standard level up system with job identity baked into the characters. Vivi is a black mage, and can only be a black mage. Quina is a blue mage, Freya is a Dragoon, Steiner a knight. What the characters lack in choice they gain in identity, and they gain it in spades.
A small amount of player agency was introduced with the Ability System which allowed you to spend “Gems” on which passive abilities you want to equip your character with, however this is a very light and easy to understand system that often just presented the illusion of choice. Characters unlock new abilities by equipping different equipment and then unlocking the ability by winning combats and earning AP, a system that is almost a 1:1 copy of Final Fantasy VI’s Esper system, with the only difference being that every piece of equipment is useful until all of its abilities have been learned, which is actually a really inventive way to improve what was usually a very rudimentary equipment progression system in previous entries.
The Ability System. We can see here that Zidane has 19 gems to spend across his abilities. As the game progresses, you get dozens of different abilities and more gems to spend on them.
Following the immense success of FFVIII’s Triple Triad card game, FFIX introduced a new card game: Tetra Master. It shames me to say it, but Tetra Master is just far inferior to Triple Triad in every way. Where Triple Triad could be brutal with obtuse “rulesets”, the core gameplay was built on structure and predictability, making the difference between winning and losing based on the strength of the cards you used and your ability to strategically outsmart your opponent. Tetra Master on the other hand is full of random variables. Cards “level up” over time, and have randomized attack directions when acquired, making any semblance of balance nearly impossible. Additionally, the core rules have a baked-in element of RNG, something you have zero control over. You can play the worst card in the game against the best card of the game and STILL win if the dice rolls in your favor, meaning that oftentimes victory (or defeat and the permanent loss of a card you spent a huge amount of time acquiring and then leveling up) is up to complete chance. Frustrating to say the least.
To put it bluntly, I’d play Triple Triad in real life. It’d be fun. But you could never play Tetra Master in real life due to the crazy computer programing in the background that makes all meaningful decisions. Luckily, Tetra Master is NOT a progression system in FFIX like Triple Triad was in FFVIII, so it can be completely skipped and have zero impact on your ability to progress through the game. Outside of a few related achievements that took me about 3 hours total to complete, I wisely chose to ignore Tetra Master on this playthrough and was very happy for it.
The Story
Final Fantasy IX’s story is… not its strong suit. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the game and I like the story, but looking at the structure of the story with any sort of critical eye reveals that it’s the weakest part of this game. You’ll notice I haven’t broken up the story into a three-act structure here because… it doesn’t follow the standard three-act structure. Sure, I could arbitrarily cut the total story into thirds and call them “acts” but the entire point of an act is to have a self-contained goal and theme, something that FFIX… doesn’t do. Sure, the game has plenty of bombastic and poignant moments, however from a storytelling perspective, it… meanders. A lot. There’s a ton of backtracking and POV shifting that completely dispels the intensity of most of the climactic plot points. It feels less like a story and more like… well a game. And I know that sounds weird, because it IS a game; However, FFIX meanders in a way that no other entry had since the NES days. Hell, I’d argue that FFII has a stronger narrative structure than this game, from a story-beat perspective.
Instead of focused rising action and falling action leading to a grand story arc, instead we have roughly 10 mini arcs that each explore an idea and place our characters in the middle of it. Here’s my breakdown:
The Intro: Vivi explores Alexandria while Zidane, Steiner, and princess Garnet participate in the fake opera/abduction of the princess.
The Chase: The party crash lands in the evil forest when escaping Alexandria, save Garnet and Vivi, and make their way to Dali. There, we learn of other Black Mages like Vivi except they are mindless puppets before commandeering a ship and flying to the city of Lindblum.
The Hunt: We meet regent Cid in Lindblum in his cockroach form and learn of his concern for princess Garnet and the bloodthirst of her mother, the queen. We partake in the Festival of the Hunt and meet Freya who is an ex of Zidane’s and a beautiful Burmecian rat-girl dragoon (and BAE).
Burmecia Falls: We hear that the Queen of Alexandria attacked Burmecia, so we go to save it with Freya. Garnet and Steiner decide to head back to Alexandria. We get to Burmecia in time to be defeated by the queen and her shadowy weapons dealer Kuja who is E X T R A and flies away on a dragon.
Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: We go to Cleyra which is just Burmecia 2 and we see it get destroyed when the queen uses the Odin summon she extracted from Garnet. We escape on the Queens Airship and use it to go back to Alexandria where we abduct the princess. Again.
The Lost Continent: We learn Kuja flew to the north continent, and chase after him through Fossil Roo, which is like an underground tramway powered by bugs. We meet a village of Black Mages who gained sentience and are afraid of dying, giving us Vivi’s most important character arc as he is one of them and will also die an early death. We then meet Eiko the summoner and find out that princess Garnet was actually a summoner from the same tribe, and they are kind of like sisters. We follow Kuja to the Iifa Tree which is making all the evil mist in the world and kill it, clearing the mist.
Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: The evil queen dies in battle against Kuja, so we return to Alexandria and assist Garnet in taking her place as Queen. But before she can be sworn in, Kuja shows up and destroys the city with the summon Bahamut before Garnet and Eiko defend it with their combined summon Alexander. We then talk Garnet into leaving the city to chase down Kuja for revenge.
Following Kuja: We chase Kuja around the world and at one point, get trapped by him in his desert base and forced to get an ancient artifact for him. There are several dungeons back to back that are fun and thematic but otherwise lack meaningful plot progression. We do learn that Kuja is a subordinate of a man named Garland.
Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: At the end of the chase for Kuja, we find ourselves in Terra, which is like… an alternate dimension version of Gaia our home world. We get a HEAVY dose of exposition and narrative (that once again only makes enough sense to allow the plot to move forward with little actual explanations of the hows and whys). Essentially Terra was dying, so they tried to merge with Gaia 5000 years ago. As a part of the process, they need to kill and replace the “souls” of Gaians with those of Terra, and that’s what the mist was/the Iifa Tree was doing. Also, Zidane is from Terra and was sent to Gaia to facilitate the death of the Gaians to accelerate the process. Zidane is basically a lifeless golem as well, similar to Vivi. The themes hit REALLY hard here, since Vivi’s story arc was also done very well, and there’s so many little moments where Vivi and Zidane support one another as they both try to reconcile their own existence.
The Finale: Kuja kills Garland, the leader of Terra, and decides that he’s going to destroy “the crystal” which is the progenitor of all souls and end life as we know it in the entirety of existence. We all get in our associated airships and have a big climactic battle, then we go through the final dungeon of Memoria to meet Kuja and stop him. There’s eldritch entity known as “Necron” that is released after Kuja destroys the crystal and we fight that too. It’s not very well explained. And that’s it! We then get a long tear-jerker of an ending FMV.
The flow of this story is chock full of little moments that really land and in general, the whole thing is very consistent in tone and vision, however it just lacks an exciting narrative structure and you often feel like you go to the next area simply because someone on screen said that’s where you should go, not necessarily because it makes a ton of sense or was telegraphed in any meaningful way. I want to stress that this doesn’t necessarily make any of it bad, it’s just… not a traditional story shape and leaves the audience kind of at a loss for what’s really happening. You never really feel like you know where this is going if that makes sense? You know Kuja is mustache-twirling evil, but you don’t have the stakes or the vision of a villain like Sephiroth driving your chase of him. And all of the other points, the politics between nations, the destruction of practically every city in the game at one point or another, the constant revisiting of Alexandria… most of it doesn’t really play a huge part in the meta narrative. And that’s okay, it’s a part of what makes the whimsical FF games whimsical. That being said, I am actually looking forward to FFX and its much more narrative and structured story after playing this game which always felt so open and directionless.
The Intro: Our adventure starts with a plan to kidnap Princess Garnet from Alexandria. Zidane and his acting/thieving troupe Tantalus, are going to accomplish this while putting on a mock play for the citizens and queen. The Intro: Vivi is a black mage in classic Final Fantasy form, with no features underneath his large hat and only two glowing eyes. Vivi is in Alexandria to see the play! The Intro: This is the Queen of Alexandria and Garnets mother. She’s mustache twirling evil at this point. The Intro: There are so many FMVs in this intro, and they spend a lot of time setting up the events. The Intro: “I Want to be Your Canary” begins with an overture by our boss, Baku, playing the part of King Leo. The adventure at this point happens both on stage and behind it as the actors attempt to keep the ruse going even once the princess is in hand. The Intro: During an intermission, The Queen finds realizes that Garnet is missing. She sends Steiner (one of our soon-to-be party members) and Beatrix (an NPC with a GREAT story arc) to find her. The Intro: Garnet disguised in a robe (that just so happens to be a class white mage robe, also identifying her Job in the game) runs into Zidane. The Intro: Plot twist, she ASKS to be kidnapped right when we are in the middle of… kidnapping her. Fortuitous for sure, but also a great way of giving the princess agency and motivation. She’s no damsel in distress, she has her own motivations. The Intro: Things go to shit, and Steiner catches the crew (and Vivi who has wandered on stage) with the Princess. The Intro: The queen shoots a Bomb (which is also a Bomb enemy type iconic to FF) onto the stage to kill everyone. Steiner doesn’t see it despite our party trying to warn him as it gets closer and closer to detonation. The Intro: The Bomb explodes and our theatre airship starts falling from the sky… The Intro: Landing in THE EVIL FOREST. (yes it’s called that). The Chase: Steiner agrees to help Zidane to rescue the princess from the monsters of the forest, but he’s not happy about it. Steiner is cut from honorable cloth and spends the first half of this game being a fuddy-duddy rejecting the call of adventure just to bring the Princess back home. The Chase: We escape the forest and make our way to the village of Dali. The party decides to explore a little and find that something fishy is going on. The Chase: When Vivi goes missing, the party finds an underground warehouse that is manufacturing something using Mist. The Chase: In the warehouse, they find Vivi, who had been captured by the villagers for “escaping”. The Chase: A few screens later, and we find out that the warehouse is manufacturing black mages from the Mist. This begins what is probably the most important theme of this game: What is the definition of life? The Chase: We commandeer an airship after escaping the warehouse and race against our pursuers (and their evil Black Mage army) to get to Lindblum, a neighboring country. The Chase: Vivi looks solemnly at the hat of one of the black mage enemies that was left on the airship. He doesn’t know how, when, or why he was created, and feels remorse at killing these seemingly lifeless automatons that are basically his brothers. The Chase: Great action shot as we narrowly make it through South Gate ahead of our pursuers. The Chase: Finally, we make it to Lindblum, a giant city that is also the airship capital of the world. BEAUTIFUL FMVs here. The Chase: Look at the artistic direction as a gate opens to let our airship in, showing the scale of the city and some truly gorgeous lighting effects. A view from inside the city as we dock at the airport in the castle, while other airships casually whizz past. The Hunt: We meet Regent Cid, who has been turned into an Oglop (basically a big cockroach) by his ex-wife for cheating on her. He’s otherwise a stand up guy and a mentor to our party throughout the entire game. The Hunt: While in the city, we bump into Freya, an ex of Zidane’s who is here for the Festival of the Hunt. She’s a badass dragoon and is from Burmecia (a nation of rat people). She is BAE. The Hunt: Freya left her homeland to become stronger and look for the love of her life who also went on a pilgrimage years ago. The Hunt: Cid reveals that HE was the one who commissioned Tantalus to kidnap the Princess, as he has had doubts about the Queen recently. And rightfully so, she’s like, SUPER evil right now. The Hunt: When shopping, you can come across the great reference (the first of MANY) to FFVII. Burmecia Falls: After the Festival of the Hunt and numerous cutscenes establishing the state of the world, we find out that the evil Queen attacked Freya’s homeland with the Black Mage army she was making in Dali. Burmecia Falls: Poor Vivi. The Queens Black Mages earn a nasty reputation as being very lethal and soulless murderers, and Vivi has to sit through many confrontations with people who demonize him for it even though he has played no part. Burmecia Falls: Along the way to Burmecia, we travel through Gizamaluke’s Grotto (I LOVE the naming in this game) which was like the Burmecian’s “gate” to Lindblum. Everyone is dead or dying at the hands of the black mages. Freya finds purpose here. Burmecia Falls: At the gates of Burmecia.. Freya kneels in reverence of her home and regret for not being here to defend it. Burmecia Falls: We confirm that the Queen is in fact behind the Black Mage army’s attack on the city, and that Beatrix has been personally delivering justice on the people of Burmecia at the Queens request. Burmecia Falls: Of course it’s raining in Burmecia, making the introduction of our “Mystery Man” as ominous as possible. This game just leans into the tropes and doesn’t give a shit about anything else. Burmecia Falls: We get some exposition, overhearing that the mystery man is named Kuja and HE’S the one who provided the Queen with the Black Mages. Burmecia Falls: The party jumps out to attack Kuja and the Queen, but Beatrix defends her queen honorably. Beatrix is pretty much “General Leo” from Final Fantasy VI, except given a much stronger presence throughout the game. She serves an evil master but only because her duty compels her. Burmecia Falls: After Beatrix defeats us, we have a “lowest point” moment for the party. Beautiful rainy FMV is beautiful. And sad. Kuja gloats over us before jumping on a dragon and fucking off instead of killing us. Why doesn’t he kill us? Who knows. But he doesn’t. Which is good, this allows us to kill him later. Silly Kuja. Burmecia Falls: OH YEAH and also while all that Burmecia stuff was happening, Princess Garnet and Steiner decided to go back to Alexandria. For reasons… not entirely made clear. She worked so hard to leave and now they are going back. This whole segment is weird and unnecessary. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Again, I don’t have a lot of screens of this segment of the game because it was all over the place. But basically Garnet gets back to Alexandria and of course the Queen is evil and steals a bunch of Eidolons (Summons) from her. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: These two jester fucks are evil and it’s never super well explained who or what they are. But they sort of kind of work for the queen and kuja and are basically just annoying obstacles for us at many a turn. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Meanwhile, the party makes their way to Cleyra, which is a sister city to Burmecia, just in time for evil Queen Brahme to use the Odin Eidolon she stole from Garnet to literally blow up Cleyra (which is like, a treehouse). Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Great FMV but also depressing because it has some allusions to a nuclear blast destroying an entire civilization. The Queen is really fucked up. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Boom. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: And Odin fucks off. “Odin will return to commit mass genocide again soon!” Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: The party narrowly escaped by hitching a ride on the evil Queens airship. Freya is OBVIOUSLY distraught and good on the game for acknowledging this. Zidane is ready to go, but Vivi is comforting her. Vivi is a pure mood and we don’t deserve him. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: We overhear Beatrix having a crisis of faith. She knows what her Queen is doing is wrong, however she is duty bound to follow her orders. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Beatrix asks what we are to do with Princess Garnet. The Queen is batshit crazy. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Beatrix’s faith continues to crack. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Poor Beatrix. Not shown: The party sneaks Garnet out of Alexandria AGAIN and we race back to Lindblum AGAIN. Sorry for not having screenshots of that, again this part of the game jumps around a lot and it wasn’t clear what I’d want to capture or not. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: We get to Lindblum in time to find that the Queen is ALSO attacking here. The Black Mages are raining down death and destruction from the Queens Airship. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: The eyes of a madwoman. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: BOOM Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Garnet sees with her own eyes the devastation being performed at her mothers will. Cleyra and Abducting the Princess… again: Poor Garnet. ; _ ; The Lost Continent: The party discusses chasing Kuja to the Lost Continent in the North. The Lost Continent: Once we get to the north, we find out that there’s an entire village of Black Mages that gained sentience and disserted Kuja/Queen Brahme’s forces. Basically every time we visit the Black Mage Village, Vivi has huge character growth and it’s heartbreaking. The Lost Continent: The Black Mages explain the concept of death to Vivi. The Lost Continent: And even though they “understand” it, they don’t know WHY it’s important to them. They don’t have the language to properly express how or why they feel the way they do, something that Vivi (and later Zidane) battle with. The Lost Continent: Vivi is BROKEN. He knows he’s like these black mages but also different. He now knows that death of old age can happen, and is having an existential crisis that doesn’t fully resolve for quite some time. The Lost Continent: Garnet and Zidane talk about what they think Vivi is going through. This is a great writer’s tool to “talk to the audience” to ensure that the themes are coming through. The Lost Continent: Vivi approaches the eldest of the Black Mages, the one who seems to be the most emotionally matured. The Lost Continent: ONE. YEAR. Can you imagine? This stuff is H E A V Y for what is a lighthearted fantasy game. Honestly, it hearkens back to the feelings I get from watching the Blade Runner movies which have similar themes around the Replicants and their limited artificial existence. The Lost Continent: Black Mage #288 hits us all with some good philosophy. The Lost Continent: And he gives Vivi an ounce of purpose, even if it doesn’t absolve him of his existential dread. The Lost Continent: Vivi <3. The Lost Continent: We meet Eiko who is 6 years old apparently. She’s one of my favorite party members, but one of my least favorite characters in the story, largely due to the Loli personality they give her (and her frequent pursuit of romantic interest in Zidane) The Lost Continent: We see the Iifa Tree in the distance. In a great twist on the “sacred tree” trope (see Yggdrasil in SO many fictional works), the Iifa Tree is actually a machine of evil, creating the Mist that covers parts of Gaia (the world of FFIX) The Lost Continent: Eiko takes us to her village and reveals herself to be the last of a long line of Summoners. The Lost Continent: Here, we continue the thought experiment that Vivi is experiencing. Seriously, he may be my favorite character in all of Final Fantasy, with such an amazing arc. Poor little sad black mage boy. The Lost Continent: I WANT TO HUG YOU. The Lost Continent: Zidane has a heart-to-heart with his adopted lil’ bro. The Lost Continent: “I don’t wanna feel like this anymore” is such a depressed call for help and I think EVERYONE can empathize with this moment. The Lost Continent: Zidane does the best he can and gives him an honest answer: Sometimes there isn’t a clear answer. The Lost Continent: We finally decide it’s time to stop the Iifa Tree from making Mist, and also maybe Kuja will be there? That’s like the entirety of their plan right now. See this is what I mean, the story is meandering a bit. This is all IMPORTANT but it’s… just been sprung on us and contradicts the previous direction the game had been going in. The Lost Continent: And of course the tree isn’t a literal tree, it has parts that are like something out of Event Horizon. The Lost Continent: Yeah we are wondering that too, Vivi. The Lost Continent: After stopping the mist production, Vivi has a realization: No more mist means no more Black Mages… meaning he basically just ended the ability for more of his “brothers” to be created. The Lost Continent: And of course he immediately blames himself and believes that he’ll be demonized for his actions by those he cares about. RELATABLE The Lost Continent: Luckily Kuja DOES show up. And so does Queen Brahme (remember her?). And they have a fight instead of fighting us. The Lost Continent: Kuja summons Bahamut who basically just destroys the queens entire armada. The Lost Continent: Evil glowy Kuja FMV. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: In her dying moments, the queen seems to regain her humanity. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Another great theme, the responsibility of good stewardship and the weight it places on Garnet. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: They bury the queen in a beautiful garden and Garnet is resolved to be the Queen Alexandria deserves. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: But wait, before we can get comfortable, Kuja shows up and decides it’s time to destroy Alexandria. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Garnet races to the balcony just in time to witness Bahamut fuckering up her town. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Seriously the FMVs though. <3 The Glassy eyes, the emotion. It’s hard to believe this game was developed on the same console as Final Fantasy VII. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: B A H A M U T Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Beatrix is looking for redemption, and decides to defend the people of Alexandria along with Steiner from Kuja’s monsters. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Not shown: The multiple battles that you get to fight with Beatrix in your party, where she uses iconic Knight abilities (including General Leo’s “Shock” from FFVI, again she’s a CLEAR reference to him) Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: The rest of the party arrive via airship (they had been playing in a Tetra Master tournament in another nearby city at the time. Yes, really) to see what’s going on. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Eiko says some words that don’t make any sense to Zidane (or the player) Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: And then yeets herself off the airship. This is weird, but also holy fuck is it the best FMV in the game. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Eiko plummets to the balcony where Garnet is waiting. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Garnet’s pendent starts glowing too as she sees Eiko. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: These two are pretty much sisters, both the last of the tribe of Summoners and they are reacting to one another. I’m not a fan of Eiko, but this “moment” of them as sisters protecting the city brings a tear to my eye every time. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: They summon Alexander, the ultimate Holy Eidolon (and so appropriate, because Alexander is often portrayed as a living castle, and he’s protecting castle Alexandria here with those glorious wings) Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: JESUS THIS FMV <3 Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Alexander DWARFING Bahamut. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Even Kuja is impressed. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: All of the sudden, spooky man shows up and starts monologuing about Kuja. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: Kuja mentions the name “Garland” for the spooky man (a reference to the villain of FFI). He’s been thwarted by the man who has commandeered the Invincible which is like a UFO airship thing. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: The Invincible neutralizes both Bahamut and Alexander. Alexandria Lost and Abducting the Princess… again… again: And Zidane arrives to hold Garnet and comfort her after she just witnessed the destruction of her city. Following Kuja: We chase Kuja around the world doing side quests sort of aimlessly. Along the way, we visit the Black Mage village again and witness the birth of a baby chocobo. This scene is BEAUTIFUL. Following Kuja: The black mages nursed the mother and took care of the egg earlier in the game, and now they have essentially fostered new life. Such a great thematic moment as these creatures that struggle with their identity and what their “lives” mean, fostering new life and feeling emotion about it. Following Kuja: It turns out that Kuja showed up and lied to the Black Mages, telling them that if they followed him and helped him do evil stuff, he’d extend their lives (another great allegory for snake oil salesmen abusing the naive with promises of health and long life, something that takes advantage of that Existential Dread we all know) Following Kuja: We continue to add to Vivi’s arc as now he’s more brazen with asking the real questions. Following Kuja: We learn that Vivi is likely one of the prototypes (which is why he looks different) and maybe he’ll last longer. But nothing is set in stone (and that’s good, we need to believe that Vivi thinks he could die at any moment) Following Kuja: This. A thousand times this. Vivi vindicates his existence by acknowledging that the empathy and sadness he felt for his friends loss makes him alive, it makes his existence real, even if he WAS “created”. Following Kuja: And now he uses this to uplift his brothers. Where once Vivi was weak and confused, now he is a pillar of support for them. Following Kuja: Garnet feels greatly about Vivi’s plight and gets some wisdom from the six year old Eiko. Following Kuja: We eventually catch up with Kuja, but he sicks the jester fucks on us again. They attempt to steal Mog (a reference to the Moogle from FFVI) from Eiko. Mog explains that she’s actually an Eidolon and has been protecting Eiko their entire life. Following Kuja: We get a heartbreaking moment when Mog kills her physical self to become a true Eidolon so that Eiko can summon her. Following Kuja: Here we get a scripted battle sequence where Eiko summons Mog as an Eidolon which just destroys the jesters. Following Kuja: Kuja references “Trance”, which is this games version of Limit Breaks. It’s cool that they make it a canonical thing outside of combat too. Now Kuja wants to enter Trance so he can become more powerful. Following Kuja: After Kuja leaves and abandons the Black Mages once again, we learn that he had been lying to them the entire time. Fuck you Kuja. Following Kuja: Garnet finally comes to terms with her grief and decides to cut off her hair. Obviously this is a cultural thing from Japan (and some other cultures) where it signifies a significant growth or change as a character. A sort of metaphorical “growing up”. Following Kuja: It’s a beautiful FMV. They all are. God what a gorgeous game. Following Kuja: She’s resolved now. Following Kuja: We learn of a “portal” to Terra, which is apparently another world/dimension version of Gaia so we plan to go there. Along the way, we bump into Gilgamesh (yes, THAT Gilgamesh). Just another great reference. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: We go to Terra (even though Kuja is still out there somewhere. But again, meandering plot) and meet the spooky guy Garland face to face. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Ominous comment is ominous. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Terra’s prerendered backgrounds are arguably the most pretty stuff ever done on the PlayStation 1. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Zidane learns he was “born” here in Terra. Which makes sense, because he’s the only person in the world with a monkey tail, which is what all these created automatons from Terra have. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: They tell him he’s just a lifeless husk given “programming”. He isn’t buying it. (see the importance of all the Vivi themes earlier?) Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Vivi looks at the camera and tells the audience exactly what the creators of the game were doing here. These Terrans are no different from the Black Mages and now Zidane has to deal with that. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Spooky guy Garland monologues about Zidane, and how he was created to sow chaos on Gaia. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage:Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Zidane is confused and lost. He has always wanted to find his “home”, and now that he has, he doesn’t feel like it’s his home. He knows he isn’t evil, but he also knows deep down that what Garland is saying is right. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Zidane loses himself to the programming and becomes depressed. Thoughts from his previous interactions with his party members enter his mind but he pushes them away. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: VIVI <3 Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Vivi and Eiko show up to rescue Zidane from Garland, but he rejects them. He doesn’t want to hurt them, he doesn’t want to be anything any more. Great allusions to depression and how one event can break a person. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Oh yeah Amarant is another party member in this game. He’s basically a mercenary that follows us around to learn why Zidane is so happy go lucky all the time. And here, he calls Zidane out on this depression bullshit. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Zidane continues to reject his friends. “I don’t want to trouble you any more” again, a message to the impressionable youth playing this game. This SPEAKS to the depression and loneliness we often feel as humans. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Garnet (nicknamed Dagger… it’s silly and I won’t go into it) also calls him out. This is such a great example of tough love breaking through to someone who needs it. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: After talking it out and fighting some enemies and listening to an awesome fucking song (titled, of all things, “You are not alone”) Zidane comes to terms with his state of being and accepts the love and help of his friends. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: And now it’s time to kill spooky guy. Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: And of course Kuja shows up! Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: So we have to fight him too! Except he USED TRANCE. UH OH Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Kuja wins, kills Garland, and decides he’s going to end all of existence because of course he does. This game needs a last boss, right? Terra and Zidane’s Heritage: Beautiful FMV is beautiful. The Finale: Now WE have the ufo airship “Invincible” and we race towards the final dungeon, which is floating above the Iifa Tree. The Finale: Beatrix shows up along with Cid and all of our other friends to help us get through Kuja’s wall of dragons. The Finale: Beatrix is so fucking badass. The Finale: We get to the final dungeon, and it’s like… a weird twilight zone episode where it’s made out of all of our collective memories. The Finale: We get to Kuja and of course he’s going to final villain monologue. The Finale: After monologuing a bunch and sending a mini-boss at us, it’s time for the real thing. The Finale: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN. (oh yeah there’s another boss after this called Necron but he basically doesn’t matter and isn’t important). T H E E N D
Extras & Achievements
Okay, so I’m not “dinging” my score for FFIX as a whole because these achievements were introduced after release and were arbitrarily added by the company the performed the remaster in 2016. That being said, WHAT THE FUCK the achievements for FFIX are obnoxious, obtuse, and in a few instances, downright abusive.
First of all, FFIX has some GREAT minigames and extra content that are truly fun. Every corner of FFIX’s world is filled with side-quests and optional events that only amplify the vaudevillian atmosphere.
A fun jump-rope minigame which tests your ability to recognize patterns and consistently hit to a beat.
A dueling minigame during the opening opera scene that has the crowd cheering you on as you perfectly perform the “scripted” battle with the other actor on screen, pressing the right buttons to correspond to the appropriate dodge or attack as rehearsed.
A racing minigame where you press two buttons alternatively as fast as possible to race a poor little hippo boy as he is getting in shape.
A frog catching minigame
A mining minigame
A zodiac symbol coin collecting minigame
A beast hunting festival minigame
The aforementioned Tetra Master card game minigame
A trivia random encounter minigame
A Red Light/Green Light minigame to sneak past a guard to free your party from a prison
A “friendly enemy” minigame
There is an optional superboss, Ozma, who is indirectly tied to this minigame. Ozma is second only to Ruby Weapon in superboss difficulty in the series thus far.
A coliseum minigame
An auction house minigame
A cup-game minigame featuring three identical twins
A Moogle mailman minigame AND sidequest at the end of the game to deliver letters between the moogles of the world
And then the mother of mini-games, Chocobo Hot and Cold which is without a doubt my FAVORITE chocobo-related minigame in any FF and was just as much fun today as it was 23 years ago the first time I did it.
There are THREE related sub-minigames within Chocobo Hot and Cold and they are all a ton of fun and very rewarding, involving finding treasure on the world map and eventually visiting all the beaches of the world for a fun end-game bonus.
Jumprope. As you jump, the speed and rhythm changes at 20, 50, 100, 200, and lastly 300 jumps. This. Fucking. Sucked. Dueling minigame during the play at the start of the game, “I Want to be Your Canary” Festival of the Hunt minigame. Catching frogs in the swamps of the world with this games delightful culinarian (and non binary) Quina Red Light/Green Light minigame where you take control of the now frog formed Regent Cid trying to sneak past a hobgoblin. Fighting Ozma, a giant floaty ball of death. This optional Superboss was INCREDIBLY difficult even with my entire party at lvl 99 and with all the best gear in the game. Chocobo Hot and Cold, where you travel to different areas of the world (Chocobo’s Forest, Lagoon, and Floating Garden) and search for treasure. It’s addictive and fun and so much better than FF7’s chocobo breeding/racing. As you hunt, you get maps that allow you to search for treasure on the overworld too. As you get more and more maps, you unlock different colors of your chocobo who can travel to more and more places. (Light blue is rivers, Red is crossing mountains, Dark blue is the sea, and Golden can actually fly) Super fun and satisfying subquest leads to an actual flying mount. They learned so many lessons from the pain that was FFVII’s system.
The issue with the achievements for this game, is that the designers of the remaster chose the hardest and most time-consuming elements of all the above mini-games and assigned achievements to them. Here’s just a few examples:
The Jump-rope minigame is completely optional and stops increasing in difficulty at 300 consecutive jumps. So, 300 should be the achievement, right? Maybe 400? No. ONE THOUSAND consecutive jumps. This ends up being about 9 minutes of nerve racking perfectly timed button-entry. This achievement took me 3 hours to complete alone.
The racing minigame increases in difficulty 9 times, with each increase coming after 10 “wins”. If you beat the hippo boy by a large margin, then it counts as 5 “wins”, so you can easily power through the first 6 or so difficulties by winning two races each. But starting at the 7th difficulty, you have to really go crazy to beat the hippo, and it’s never by a large margin, so you have to beat him 10 times in a row to get to the 8th difficulty. Then at the 8th difficulty it’s even harder, and I found myself losing some races simply due to fatigue in my fingers and had to step away from the game and come back. And again, 10 more wins to get to the final level of 9 and the achievement. The worst part? This minigame is time-locked and you can’t just continue on with the game and come back to it. You have to do it in one “go” more or less. OBNOXIOUS.
The dueling minigame achievement requires a perfect score. This is one of the easier ones, particularly for those of us that are fans of rhythm games, but it’s still very difficult and once again, is time-locked so you have to just keep doing it over and over to get the achievement, no coming back for it.
Tetra Master requires defeating 100 different npc’s which isn’t too bad (again, took me about 3 hours to do) but still involved a lot of rng manipulation and save-scumming by reloading when I lost my good cards.
So, some of the most delightful parts of the game are ruined by an out-of-touch developer making the achievements absurdly out of reach. But wait THERE’S MORE.
Movie Critic: The game features a system called “Active Time Events” which is basically optional cutscenes you can watch to see what other characters are doing around the world. There are numerous areas where you can miss ATEs due to not visiting the right screens in the right order, or by viewing previous ATEs in the incorrect order, or by selecting incorrect dialogue options. The achievement Movie Critic requires you to get EVERY SINGLE ATE. These are ALL ‘one and done” and ALL are missable. This was without a doubt the most nerve-racking part of my playthrough and required me to have a guide open in another screen at all times that walked me through the game screen-by-screen to ensure I didn’t miss any. This is just antithetical to the original vision of ATE’s that they are bonuses and that they are “guided by your actions”. By always choosing options that you have to choose instead of the options you WANT to choose, it lessens the experience and the feeling of your own input into the events of the game.
Let the Bodies Hit the Floor III: There are three achievements associated with defeating enemies in battle. The first is for 100 enemies, the second is for 1000, and the third is for 10,000 enemies. By the end of the game, playing normally, the player will have between 900-1000 enemies defeated, meaning that this obtuse decision (probably made by some producer who never even played the game and just thought that increasing the amount by a factor of “10” each time sounded neat) essentially requires you to fight an entire games worth of random encountersNINE more times. Thank God that this game has a 3x speed option! To accomplish this achievement, I set my computer up to run overnight with auto-battle enabled in the easiest part of the world with my strongest characters with auto-regen enabled. It still took 10 hours nonstop at 3x speed. OBNOXIOUS.
2Excal2bur
Last but not least, I had to make a separate comment about what is possibly the most legendary of all FFIX goals: getting Excalibur 2. That’s right, this game features the sword Excalibur AND its “sequel” Excalibur 2. The very fact that there’s a sword called Excalibur 2 should tell you everything you need to know about the tongue-in-cheek tone of this game. Excalibur 2 has been in Final Fantasy IX since its initial release and has had the same unlock condition since 2000: Get to the penultimate room in the final dungeon on disc 4 of the game in under TWELVE hours. As a kid, this was the holy grail of things I wanted to do. It was legendary. Nobody I knew IRL had gotten Excalibur 2, and if not for strategy guides and the burgeoning internet FAQ scene, we wouldn’t have ever known it even existed. FFIX is a relatively short game if you don’t stop to do any of the above mentioned minigames and skip through all the dialogue as fast as possible. That being said, in the original version of the game, this was still INCREDIBLY difficult, as the game features an incredibly slow loading combat screen and many long cutscenes that eat into the 12 hours, not to mention having to actually still play the game, level up, and be strong enough to get through the final dungeon and all 5 of its super bosses to get to the final room in under 12 hours.
I never did it. None of my friends ever did to my knowledge (I feel like they would have told me so if they did, it was a big deal). It was almost an urban legend.
When I started this challenge to play through these games and 100% them, I was sweating thinking about this very achievement. Not only is Excalibur 2 still in the game for the 2016 remaster I played, but it is also (of course) an actual achievement, required if you want to 100% the game. I was going to have to find a way to do the thing that younger me with all the time in the world and summer vacations at his disposal never did.
And… well… I did it. BUT I feel empty inside. See, this is the one area of the remaster where the achievement is actually less impressive than it was as a kid. Playing on PC, the long disc-load times are gone. Battles and new screens load almost instantaneously. Furthermore, the games numerous FMVs that chew hours of time off the clock can be skipped now (they couldn’t be skipped on the PlayStation without opening the disc drive and causing the FMV to “crash”, something that could be risky in the playthrough). Additionally, the games’ 3x speed option does not cause time to go by three times faster, meaning that if you know what you’re doing and can still be accurate at 3x speed, leaving this option on will give you a huge advantage.
I’m going to be honest; I took my time and still made the cut. I got the Excalibur 2 at just under the 9-hour mark on my second playthrough using the above tactics. A part of me feels like I robbed past me of a true challenge, like I “cheated” or used performance enhancing drugs. And maybe someday in the future, I’ll set up a PlayStation and make an attempt to do it legitimately with all of the difficulties of the original experience. However, for now, I’m satisfied if not exactly happy. As of this writing, I have 2 months and 1 day to finish 100% FFX, FFXII, FFXIII, and FFXV. That’s roughly two weeks per entry, and I KNOW I’ll be cutting it close. So, with a mixture of pride and regret, I’ll take my “Great Value” brand Excalibur 2 achievement on Steam for what it is and just chalk up the legend as still never being truly attained.
Final Thoughts & Score
FFIX is simply great, and the 2016 remaster introduces some much needed quality of life that makes it the best way to play the game full-stop. If you are an appreciator of the Final Fantasy brand, this game is a must-play as it is chock full of references and nostalgia. Even if you ARENT a die-hard Final Fantasy fan, the game still presents a polished, consistent experience that is chock full of delightful side quests and minigames that add life to every corner of the experience. I’d give the game a 9 if the narrative structure was better put together, however what is here isn’t bad, it’s just wildly different than what most people expect out of a standard story structure. The music is great, the dramatic themes about finding meaning in a world and coming to terms with the nature of your existence are surprisingly well fleshed out and handled maturely. And then it’s also fun and light-hearted and full of little moments that put a smile on your face.
It’s hard to say how exactly I’d fix the few nitpicks I have here, when really the experience feels fully formed and driven by a consistent vision (which was so sorely lacking in the previous entry FFVIII). It’s still not perfect, and for an achievement hunter, you’re in for some PAIN with this one, but on the whole this is one of the greats of the series for so many reasons.
My name is Corey and I’m a hobbyist game developer. This is my personal blog and it will cover all things nerdy, whether it be related to games, tv shows, movies, books, or anything else that catches my fancy.
Leave a Reply