The heist
The game opens with Zidane and crew hatching a plot to kidnap Princess Garnet at a play they are putting on. These little scenes help to ease players in and create some tutorial spaces. It also creates a slow open. There’s a lot of walking but very little action going on. During the play itself there is a Simon Says style minigame that actually turns out to work pretty well due to the fast paced nature. I was surprised after how bad these types of scenes were in Final Fantasy 7 and 8. There is some sort of mechanic here with getting more money by doing well and using more special effects in battle but it didn’t seem important enough to really engage with it. In the end Garnet runs away and is kidnapped (willingly) by Zidane’s crew and Steiner but crashes into a forest as the ship gets damaged in the getaway. In the forest there’s more tutorializing and lot of walking back and forth. We’re also introduced to the Active Time Event (ATE) which is just a toggle to view “meanwhile…” type cutscenes with other characters. I’m not sure it adds very much but I guess it’s optional. After traversing a couple screens there’s the first real boss, who isn’t quite a real boss because Blank shows up and is an overpowered character to help finish it. In fact my entire party was wiped and it was just Blank finishing that battle. There’s a 2 screen chase sequence after and then Blank gets petrified in the forest for some reason. The rest of the group makes there way to an ice cave which serves as the second “dungeon.” The background here look nice and the main mechanic is avoiding blowing winds which cause instant battles and finding fake walls with treasure behind them. At the end of the cave the whole party except Zidane falls asleep leaning to a boss that is fought with one character. This is expectedly not a very fun boss because you really only have 2 options, fight or potion. We’re already a couple hours in but we haven’t encountered a real boss and the slowness is starting to get to me.
Afterwards there’s Dali, a little farm town. There’s a number of ATEs here and something is off about the village. Vivi gets kidnapped and Zidane and the newly aliased Dagger go to find him while Steiner tries to trick them back to Alexandria. In the kidnapper basement it looks like there’s a bunch of black mages being manufactured and Vivi was confused. It’s an intriguing hook (I remember almost nothing about this game) but I was annoyed that there were treasure chests I couldn’t get because the story was advancing. The party frees Vivi and is confronted with Black Waltz 2. He attacks everyone but Dagger but at least he’s less of a gimmick so that’s nice. Immediately after the part boards the airship delivering black mages, turns it toward Lindblum and immediately into another boss battle. Thankfully it was also pretty easy. There’s a cool chase cutscene and the party lands in Lindblum.
Lindblum
Lindblum is a cool location but boy does it just waste your time. There’s a lot of cutscenes, nearly an hour by my game clock. You also recruit Freya who I guess is some sort of mouse dragoon? It feels weird because while she sticks around like a party member in cutscenes like a regular party member it’s a while before you actually get to play with her. Besides cutscenes the city is just really big with lots of areas and lots of loading. The only real activity is the Festival of the Hunt which is a battle minigame where you rack up points for defeating enemies. Even though I knew this was coming there’s no place to grid beforehand. You only have Zidane and the enemies packs outside the city were a bit too much for him to do on his own. It was a bit frustrating so I just did as much as I could with what I was working with. It doesn’t really matter in the end as it just nets you extra items. It turns out while you were doing the festival Freya’s hometown of Balmacia was attacked. After being told she can’t go Dagger slips the party sleeping drugs and her and Steiner go off on their own.
Finally, there is some gameplay again as the team treks across a swamp and into the next dungeon Gizmaluke’s Grotto. The dungeon involves opening doors with bells (keys). If you choose the correct door well you get extra items. Vivi was getting pretty weak here but Freya and Zidane with the Ogre had a lot of damage output and carried the team. Interleaved with the quest to Bermecia Steiner and Dagger travel from Lindblum to Treno. These scenes are mostly just walking around while plot happens. The focus shifts back to Zidane’s group and there’s a small puzzle dungeon before the party meets Kuja, Queen Brahne, and has a fight with Beatrix to close out disc 1. Gameplay-wise you have to win but plot-wise you lose, a pattern I’ve never been a fan of.
My impressions at the end of disc 1 are mixed. I’m mostly enjoying it, in some ways more than I expected but at this point I can’t say I’m too engaged in the plot. Stuff is just happening but there’s no real sense of what’s going on in the wider world. It doesn’t feel like there’s any real peril. There’s also some fairly long stretches with little gameplay. It kinda feels like I’m going through the motions.
Disc 2
Focus shifts back to Dagger’s group and they meet up with Marcus from Zidane’s troupe and there’s a fight with Black Waltz 3 again. They then move on to Treno. Treno is a spot I have distinct flashbacks of auction house grinding. In fact it’s one of the few things I can remember clearly about the game. Again you walk around the city and there’s more cutscenes as well as a subplot where Marcus needs a supersoft to save Blank. Though the supersoft is literally just given to you after walking around a bit making it very anti-climatic. The party goes back to Alexandria via the underground spider tunnel. I’m surprised I don’t remember this because it’s just very interesting from a design perspective. They all get captured once they make it to the Alexandria side.
For whatever reason Beatrix and Brahne didn’t kill the party. There’s really no reason why this should be the case given how they basically genocided an entire city but plot convenience I guess. So they wake up and need to move to the next city where the survivors are which is a giant tree surrounded by a whirlwind. The party climbs up it which is a fairly long dungeon. At the top is a city. Upon arrival you get a tour and then need to fight a boss. The jewel that keeps the whirlwind going shatters causing another sequence of forced battles going down and then back up the tree and ending again with a battle with Beatrix who again wins for plot reasons (and again spares the party). They follow her back up to the airship where Brahne summons Odin to utterly destroy what’s left of the survivors in an epic cutscene (she must really hate them).
Focus shifts again to Steiner and Marcus. There’s a minigame to break out of the cage and the two split up. By random chance Zidane’s group teleports to where Steiner is and they set off to get Dagger. This part is on a 30 minute timer which is plenty of time make makes you feel pressured to push forward without engaging too much in battles. At the end you fight Zorn and Thorn and recover Dagger. Then you fight another battle again Beatrix and lose again. But she decides to join the party because Brahne has gone too far. The perspective switches between to the two parties who battle their way down to the bottom. Dagger, Vivi and Zidane escape via the underground Gungan Roo passage. A super easy boss shows up but plotwise chases the party causing them to end up in Pinnacle Rocks. Here the party meets Ramuh and has to complete a story for him before becoming your first summon or edoleon. The party makes their way back to Lindblum which is now occupied by Alexandria. Cid tells them that they will need to go to the north continent and there’s a passage just past the swamp.
It took me a bit to actually figure out what it meant but the entrance is in the swamp itself. You recruit Quina who is probably the worst character. Not necessarily for any gameplay reason, blue mages tend to be pretty powerful but Quina is just ugly and annoying as a character. Just a genderless weird doll-looking thing that talks in simple speech and just wants to eat things. Inside the tunnel, Fossil Roo, you get to ride more gargants. These consist of basic puzzles to go from one line to the other and flip switches to get the gargant to use a different line. It’s pretty simple stuff but finally the less structured gameplay is returning. At the other side you exit on the new continent, a barren and rocky area. As you walk through the valley you’ll notice something on a bridge above which is the next area Conde Petie. This has a bunch of dwarfs with weird English names but they use the now standardized “Rally Ho!” chant which harkens all the way back to Final Fantasy. There’s not much to do, you can buy stuff but they tell you to go to the Black Mage village which is a medium length walk through a forest from here.
In the Black Mage village you learn that the Black Mages escaped from Queen Brahne to live out their lives in the forest. They only have a life-span of about a year and they’re discovering the concept of death. This gives some development to Vivi as we start to understand what Black Mages are which is machines that are made from the mist. It seems though that the party need to go to the “sanctuary” beyond the Conde Petie so we travel back.
Back in Conde Petie the team needs to find the priest who will marry Zidane and Dagger so they are allowed to visit the sanctuary. This is played off as a bit of a gag but also serves to help develop their relationship a little. On the way to sanctuary they run into Eiko, a little girl with a Moogle named Mog. She apparently lives next to the sanctuary called the Iifa Tree. Zidane saves her from falling off a cliff and so she develops a crush on him which serves as some comedic hijinks between Zidane and Dagger to foster some romantic misunderstandings. Eiko invites the party to her house which a destroyed village of ancient summoners of which she is the last. This is surprising to Dagger because she beleives she is special for being able to summon edolions. After a scene and choice minigame where Eiko cooks for the party it’s decided that they need to go to the Ilifa Tree. Eiko is hesitant to go as it requires undoing a barrier spell but she eventually relents and goes with the party. Exploring the depths of the Iifa Tree roots they find it to be the source of the mist on Zidane’s continent. Fighting Soul Cage at the bottom they dispel the mist from the world.
After exiting the party wants to wait for Kuja to return but the moogles tell you that someone has stolen the jewels from Maidan Sari. The trip back to Maidain Sari is easy but once you get there you fight Amarant which is another gimmick battle where you wait for him to stop moving before attacking. After beating him we asks to be finished but Zidane lets him go. After visiting Eiko and getting the jewels from her, Zidane find Dagger singing in a boat down in a cove under the kitchen. As they drift out this causes flashbacks causing Dagger to remember that she came from Maidan Sari with her real mother on a boat. Her mother died but she was raised as the princess garnet of the royal family of Alexandria.
The next day the party heads back to the tree with Amarant recruited. They spot Kuja parking his dragon on a high branch. Amarant is able to carry the rest of the team up the tree with Zidane to confront Kuja. After getting into an argument Dagger defends Queen Brahne and says she used to be nice, but Kuja points out that she’s already pointing an armada at the lifa tree behind the party. He takes off on his dragon. He’s able to use the remaining mist to summon monsters to attack the party as well as Brahne’s armada. Dagger rushes off to find the sealed eidoleon, Leviathan. She realizes that it’s ability means she can’t save Brahne but at the same time Brahne summons Bahamut. Kuja is able to take control of it and turn it back, wiping them all out and killing Brahne.
Disc 2 is a better than Disc 1. At least in the back half, most of the time the player is in control and able to wander around a bit and get into battles but there’s still a little too many fixed sequences. The plot is also a little more engaging. Instead of moving from place to place rather arbitrarily the party has a goal and a bit of world building happens between the Black Mages and the Iifa tree. Though there’s a lot of repeat travel between locations.
Disc 3
We arrive back in Alexandria as Dagger is getting ready for coronation. Zidane is down in the dumps as he probably can’t see Dagger anymore. We walk around as Vivi for a bit and trigger some story sequences. There’s a little sketch with Eiko entering the castle and talking to Toto. He helps her draft a love letter which she wants to deliver to Zidane. Through some hijinx multiple people read it and they all meet up at the docks for a little comedy misunderstanding. Afterwards the party leaves for Treno.
In Treno you’re basically given a task of competeing in a card tournament. You can try to get new cards but this was not very interesting so I just played a few rounds before going to the tournament. The champion is Cid and he gives Zidane and friends a lift back to Alexandria. At the same time Alexandria gets attacked by Kuja, his mist monsters and Bahamut. You fight a couple battles with Steiner and Beatrix. This mostly functions as a level up mechanism for Steiner since you haven’t played as him in a while. Dagger hears a voice and walks to the top of the tower. She resonates with Eiko who jumps out of the airship and gets paused in mid-air by magic (huh?). There’s some pretty cutscenes of Alexander being summoned around the tower. It turns out in this game he’s more powerful than Bahamut and destroys him. Kuja attempts to take control of Alexander using the Invincible which we learn is a sort of spaceship. Onboard is Garland, a Darth Vader looking old man who apparently has some beef with Kuja and controls the ship. Instead of controlling Alexander he fires a large Independence Day type blast and destroys both Alexander and a good chunk of Alexandria.
It turns out the the crew was saved from Alexandria with only minor injuries. Zidane wakes up in Lindblum palace finding that Dagger has lost her voice and they don’t have any airship to pursue Kuja with. Cid suggests that to continue making progress with airships he will need to be cured of being an Oglop. This initiates a fetch quest for Zidane around Lindblum to collect some potions. The plan doesn’t work and so it’s suggested that they go find Cid’s wife who originally cursed him. Meanwhile Quina washes up on the beach and meets up with the party.
We need to head back to the Black Mage village. It was at this point that I started my first rounds of Chocobo HotCold. It’s a pretty decent minigame tied to a larger metagame and much much better than the Chocobo game in Final Fantasy 8. This is good because this one is necessary to do some side quests. Vivi finds out the the Black mages decided to leave with Kuja because he promised to extend their lives but a few stayed back to hatch a Chocobo egg and experience the miracle of life. One of the black mages finally relents and tells Vivi that Kuja’s base is underneath a desert. Using the ship to get to the other side of the continent there’s a desert with nasty antlions. You need to pick the right hole otherwise you need to fight one. The next part feels like something is missing. Zidane and the party wake up in cells. It seems Kuja has captured everyone. He forces Zidane to get an artifact for him on the Lost Continent but he can’t do it himself due to an anti-magic field. At this point you have to pick some team members and rather long cutscene plays out as you watch the airship float across the world map to the destination. The Lost Continent is just a pseudo maze that you traverse but the enemies a fairly strong. At least I had to grid a bit. It’s annoying though because there’s no rest spot so you need to keep buying tents and items to heal up. In Olivier the party finds some very strange artifacts talking about an airship and a dying civilization that only Zidane can understand. Piecing it together it seems like there’s an alien race involved.
Back at the desert palace the rest of the crew escapes. This section involves a few minor puzzles to be solve which give you items and also weaken the boss at the end. Luckily I didn’t need to fight too many battles here because I wouldn’t want to as there are no good heal locations. When Zidane’s party comes back Kuja runs away with the 2 jesters kidnapping Eiko. The team follows the airship by sea to Esto Gazo in the frozen north. Here was a good place to level up since you finally have access to cheap healing and the enemies are right in the plaza. Lots of grinding for exp and money getting everyone the best gear I could buy in the shop. This is necessary because the dungeon area is pretty hard. The enemies aren’t so bad but there are a few miniboss Red Dragons that are really annoying because the Whilwind magic deals random damage meaning it could just be a slight bit of damage or wipe your whole party in one go. At the bottom you fight the Jesters merged into one ugly being and Mog turns out to be an eodolion who watches over Eiko. Kuja having been unable to acquire it retreats. In the bottom of the cave is Hilda, Cid’s estranged wife.
Hilda reverses the magic on Cid so that he can complete the Hilda Gaurd III airship. The team takes this to Ipen Castle which is a strange Symphony of the Night style upside down castle which houses some artifacts. This is one of the place I remember most because I struggled her my first playthrough. This time it wasn’t so bad but you do get locked into the castle because Zidane has to play a “game” of who can find the artifact the fastest with Amarant. Amarant wins but Zidane’s team is forced to fight the boss. I actually lost here due to sheer attrition. Since I was using Zidane, Steiner and Freya as my attackers only one of them (Freya) had any real damage output due to jump having a magic component. The second time I was a little more prepared knowing that the other two were mostly useless on attack and adjusted accordingly. You find out that Gaia and Terra (where Kuja is from) are linked somehow and that there is a way to bridge them. You just need to visit a few shrines.
At each shrine to deposit 2 characters leaving Zidane and Quina to fight a boss at their shrine. This boss is pretty easy since you might not have been using Quina very much. Once complete you can go to an island to warp to Terra. On Terra Zidane finds that he is actually part of an alien race and that Terra is a vampiric planet that sucks the life from and becomes the other planet. The other denizens are just puppets, much like the black mages are to Vivi except for one. We finally get details about Garland. He is the caretaker of Terra and controls the Genomes (the name of the alien race). He seeded the Lifa tree on Gaia, which disrupts the flow of souls, redirecting them back to Terra and releasing the mist. Kuja and Zidane were originally sent to stir shit up but Zidane forgets for some reason (isn’t this basically the plot of Dragon Ball Z?). Zidane not wanting to let Gaia be destroyed gets into a fight with Garland and wins. Kuja shows up to gloat over Garland and kill him, and gains the Trance power which I think is the only time trances are directly mentioned in the plot. Like the black mages his life is also on a timer so he says “fuck it” goes on a rampage and destroys Terra. The party escapes on the Invincible with some survivors.
Disc 3 is surprisingly limited. There’s a lot of party switching and limitations that prevent the player from grinding. It’s also where so late story details come into play with Terra. It honestly doesn’t feel cohesive especially due to the otherwise steampunk aesthetic. It’s also just abrupt. The black mages felt a little more woven in and the Genomes are literally the same thing but just less developed. It was also the very end where it actually feels like you have enough freedom to do some sidequests, specifically the Chocobo Hot and Cold.
Disc 4
After destroying Terra the party lands back on Gaia with the Invincible. The Lifa tree has now started to emit mist over the entire world and there’s a large portal above it opened by Kuja. I finished more the rest of the side quests at this point but you do need to go into the portal in order to get the best weapons. Inside is a twisted world of memories, basically each screen is a sort of flashback of world building. Garland speaks to Zidane and tells him about how he was afraid of the edoleons which is why he destroyed the Maiden Sari village. He also explains how all life shares its memories and it all traces back to the progenitor of life, the crystal (the one in the logo). Kuja wants to destroy this crystal to basically end the universe. The team beats Kuja but he destroys it anyway. In the death of the universe the god of death Necron comes to take the party but they resist and fight beating him and thus not ending the universe? The party is teleported back to Gaia where Cid picks them up in an airship. Zidane stay behind, sensing Kuja’s energy and wanting to stay with him when he dies. He appears to be swallowed by the Lifa tree. The final scene has the Tantalus Theater Troupe performing I want to be your canary. The main character is turns out to be Zidane and Garnet rushes out to meet him.
Ozma
In Final Fantasy 7 the Ruby and Emerald Weapons took a lot of prep work to find a strategy to beat them. In Final Fantasy 8 the Omega weapon took strong execution of a deliberate pattern. Final Fantasy 9’s Ozma is just random garbage. Even before fighting him you need to do a whole side quest of giving friendly creatures items. I’m not sure how you are expected to do this sidequest without a guide. Each creature tells you what the next creature is but doesn’t tell you where to find them and it can still be difficult. Even in the area where they appear I was getting in 10+ battles making we wonder if I was doing it correctly. The prize is that Ozma can be hit with normal attacks and no longer absorbs shadow damage. Even then, his attacks are so strong that even at level 70 (which is about 10 level higher than one needs to be to beat the game) he can basically wipe the party unless they get a dodge. He doesn’t waste at tacks either if they would be ineffective and he will counter-attack after every move and can heal himself for 9999 hp. So while you can setup your party to reduce the impact of curse which does huge damage and every status effect or have most of the characters absorb shadow damage from Doomsday (which also damages him) much of the rest is just getting lucky he doesn’t drop meteor on you or heal too often. His HP is rather low so the battle is kinda short but if he wants to he can just tank forever. I used Freya with Dragon Sign to deal guaranteed 9999 damage (you spend most of the time fighting Grand Dragons to grid levels so this is pretty easy) and Steiner using Shock which can also do 9999. Zidane sucks as an attacker so he’s usually a utility character with elixirs or remedies and I used Eiko to heal. It took maybe about 8 tries before I had a good setup and got lucky enough to win. Really an awful and not fun optional boss especially given the amount of grinding I had to do for it.
Final Fantasy 9 was the first Final Fantasy game I actually owned. It was one of only a few games I owned for my PSX (the rest I borrowed from friends). I had played Final Fantasy 7 and 8 by this time and so I would officially say I was a fan of the series and my decision to buy a PSX was mainly hinged on that. I’ve only played it once since I got my PSX and I remember that I thought it was okay, not my favorite. I think the fantasy setting and the more devisive character designs were less interesting overall but my memory of that time was really hazy, I don’t remember most of the game so this one was more interesting to come back to because it just didn’t resonate as hard.
Tech and graphics
Final Fantasy 9 does not represent nearly the same leap 8 does but a subtle improvement. Textures and models blend together better so overall the models look better and are generally higher poly at the expense of only showing one character outside of cutscenes and combat. This is a bit obscured in the Switch port due to graphical upgrades but the texture work is superior to 8 overall. There’s also a little more flourish to the animations. Lots of them are bespoke but they go a bit further adding extra animations in little places that might have otherwise been simplified. A great example of this is the moogles that operate as save points. They do a little flip and flutter down with a quill. Enemies also have death animations this time. It’s mostly a little something that could have not existed but you can tell they wanted to add an extra something. Backgrounds are also an improvement and generally split the difference between Final Fantasy 7’s chaotic backgrounds and Final Fantasy 8’s lawful right angles. It’s easy to navigate but there is a lot of variation. The cursor does appear when the character is obstructed which also helps. Scenes will even switch as you move which can create a nice effect of a camera cut. Although scenes in general seemed to be a lot more zoomed in, perhaps to show more detail and prevent the player from getting stuck. There’s also more effects layered on top. The early ice area shows this off in abundance but it’s also present as smoke in chimneys and wisps of mist in the background. In Final Fantasy 7 the frosty winds would be part of the background FMV, but Final Fantasy 9 layers them over the top in polygons. This creates a little more pop to them and allows more complex interaction and maybe saves a bit of disc space.
Another big change is just the art style itself. Final Fantasy 9 goes with a more traditional steam-punk fantasy setup versus the futurist visions of Final Fantasy7 and 8 and they took big departures with the art style. Characters have exaggerated proportions and more chibi-esque appearance. Not quite full bobble-head but somewhere in between. Many are also non-human. This gives a significant variety to the models as they can be different shapes and sizes and have more cartoonish animation. It feels like a sort of flex by the designers to do things this way. Although in my opinion it misses the mark. Characters just look ugly, whether it’s Steiner’s eyeliner, Garnet’s skin-tight orange leather overalls, or Zidane’s Rachel haircut. Other NPCs have exaggerated proportions, colors and animal features. It feels like a mess and almost none of it is appealing, except Vivi who is an excellent rendition of a classic black mage. In fact much of the art requires significant interpretation, especially on the PSX’s low resolution but even with the updated models. I couldn’t make sense of what models like Freya and Quina were even supposed to be. Definitely a choice and but not as well executed as it could be. A good point of comparison is the Zelda series. Ocarina of Time used exaggerated character and the series has often featured a deliberately strange looking characters but it still has appeal and a sort of logic to it. Gerudos look weird with their giant noses but you can make sense of them as a consistent race, things in Final Fantasy 9 all look different and don’t seem to have as many rules. I can still appreciate what they were going for but I still don’t care for it.
Sounds has minor upgrades though you can’t tell in the Switch port due to sound effect compression. There’s generally a bit more punch to sound effects, like magic usage in battle, it’s one of the the thing that really took me back to the first time I played it. I hadn’t thought about these sound effects in a long time. The soundtrack is better than I remember. It loses a lot of the melodic strength of Final Fantasy 8 and is a little more ambient but quite fitting the peaceful fantasy vibe. It’s really shame about the boss music though, for the first time in 6 games it’s no longer a banger.
Gameplay
Much like the graphics are a throwback so is the gameplay. Each character has a fixed class and not much variability. This sets it very close to something like Final Fantasy 4. Characters will also come a go from your party and I was surprised how often the party makeup was fixed, all the way up until the end of disc 3. This is good and bad. Sometimes it feels very forced especially when you get locked in to a sub-optimal makeup but have to push through 2 hours of content before you get a chance to change. On the other hand it does force you to use the other characters and keep them at similar levels, something that you largely didn’t in Final Fantasy 6, 7 and 8 necessitating auto leveling or extra grinding. You do at the end get the ability to freely choose your party though. The limited amount of flexibility in the classes comes from abilities. You get a certain number of reallocatable points to spend on abilities that increases after leveling up. These can range from gaining more experience, to nullifying certain status effects to doing more damage against certain targets. They aren’t huge changes though, in fact despite have 2 characters that are white mage + summoners each one has certain exclusive spells, Dagger will never learn full-life for instance and Eiko will never learn most elemental summons. The game does not want players to get too creative. The abilities you learn are based on equipment. I honestly don’t like this system for a few reasons. The first is that you need to know to hold on to all of your equipment. If you came from other Final Fantasy games you might be inclined to sell stuff off once you get more powerful items, but this is a mistake because you might be throwing away you means to learn certain abilities. The game does give you a few different ways to learn most things but figuring out where to get them can be difficult. There’s also just certain things that can only be learned with a specific item. One thing I remember from my first playthrough was I has missed all of Vivi’s -ga spells because I missed to Octogon rod. This can be debilitating and requires a guide to fix. There’s even some limited items that if you sell means you cannot learn that ability ever again. Vaguely remembering these warnings things went smoother for me this time than last. The other issue this causes is that you spend most of your time suboptimally equipped often using very old items just to grid the abilities. It’s create some extra book-keeping headaches.
The other mechanic that was added is Trance. Trance is the general replacement for Limit Breaks. Instead of one powerful ability, you get enhanced stats and an additional set of abilities opens up like being able to case 2 black magic spells or Zidane’s powerful Dyne moves. You get about 3 turns of this until you revert. The problem is that the trance meter moves slowly. Whereas Final Fantasy 7 might let you do a couple limit breaks in a boss battle it takes maybe 20-30 battles to get a trance. You rarely see them and can’t count on them unless you’re really diligent to set it up so they tend to be a non-factor in strategy. They also cannot be saved. Once the meter hits the top you go trance you will go out of trance at the end of the battle so it’s often the case that you will finally get your trance only to have it against some weak enemy and then the meter resets. Poor choices all around.
Minigames
As far as minigames go Final Fantasy 9 is easy the best so far. Even the opening scene has a simple rhythm type game that works well. But larger minigames like Tetra Master and Chocobo Hot Cold are good too. Tetra Master card power levels never really made sense to me, but the basics of play sort of do. It’s no Triple Triad but I could see becoming invested in it but I don’t have that sort of time. Thankfully it’s not required and doesn’t pay as well as Triple Triad. Chocobo Hot Cold takes the bomb sonar of Final Fantasy 7 and the incomprehensible Chocobo whistling game of Final Fantasy 8 and finally creates something that’s fun to play. While the concept is simple, you get better signals as you get close to treasure, it’s really the overall metagame that make it interesting. It also helps by being backed by easily the best track in the entire game, Vama alla Flamenco. It opens up nicely too. As you gain chocographs in the forest you can explore the world map for treasure and that treasure gains you new chocobo abilities and other hot-cold spots. My biggest disappointment is that Chocobo Forest and Air Garden can be tedious due to having to switch land masses. Switching sides in air garden or testing the hills in the forest is just annoying and introduces needless disruption. Exploring the world map with clues is engaging and you’re well rewarded. It’s probably the best overall minigame in the series so far.
Disc 1
Disc 1 mostly setups of the main plot and characters. Zidane and his theater troupe kidnap Garnet and they need to trek along to Lindblum where they split up. Garnet’s mother, the Queen Branhe is the main antagonist driven mad for conquest she goes around destroying cities. She uses black mages to carry out her work and this catches the attention of Vivi who is also a black mage but seems to have a soul. I had forgotten about the Black Waltzes who seem like they would be more important than they ended up being given their introduction. The whole sequence from their introduction to reaching Lindblum is also surprisingly linear. You fight multiple boss battles in a row without the ability to do any random battles. The battles aren’t too hard but it does feel pressured especially because at such an early place in the game you need to rely on items for healing. There’s also a pretty standout cutscene of the crew getting chased by Black Waltz 3 that sticks out here. In Lindblum we’re introduced to Cid, the regent of Lindblum who has been turned into a bug by his estranged wife. I found the city to be big and overwhelming and it really just feels there to waste time. There’s some fetch-questing to travel around the city and a lot of cut-scenes. There’s also the festival of the hunt mini-game but you have no real ability to prepare for it so you’d have to know it was coming long before you trigger the scenes in Dali.
At the end the party splits up with Dagger and Steiner mostly engaging in some cutscenes on their way to Alexandra and Zidane, Vivi and Freya going to Burmecia which got destroyed by Queen Branhe. This sequence ends with the part fighting Beatrix in a win-but-you-actually-lose type of battle. We also get the first glimpse of Kuja who winds up as the antagonist later.
This disc is very linear and has long blocks where you are caught up in cutscene after cutscene with little gameplay in between. The plot also doesn’t have any real sense of peril, it just feels like we’re going from place to place.
Disc 2
Dagger’s party does some errands around Treno and then takes the giant underground bug to Alexandria and are subsequently captured. I had forgotten about the Gargants which on this playthrough were one of the things that stood out more. Design-wise I like them. In the mean time, for whatever reason, Branhe doesn’t actually kill the party. This doesn’t really make any sense since she just genocided a bunch of rat-people. In any case, Zidane’s party has to go to Cleyra to climb the big tree surrounded by a whirlwind. Beatrix shows up and again beats the party but does not kill them. Then there’s another big cutscene with Branhe destroying Cleyra with Odin because she really, really hates these rat-people. The cutscene as I recall was used in the game’s advertising. I had forgotten all about it but there was definitely a nostalgia hit. The next sequence has Zidane’s party teleporting to Brahne’s airship using black mages but then they simply teleports back to Alexandria because I guess that was the only way they could make the plot work? This teleportation mechanism is never explained but nobody besides black mages seems to travel via teleportation even though it’s very convenient because they cross a long distance instantaneously. Everybody meets back up and they battle out of the castle, even Beatrix as she has a change of heart (but sadly she doesn’t join your party) (also her culpability in genocide is never really mentioned again).
Eventually the team gets back to occupied Lindblum and then told to go to the Outer continent. Here they find the black mage village and learn about the black mages that escaped from Brahne’s army and their short life-spans. This serves as a bit of character building for Vivi. They also recruit Eiko who lives with some moogles in the summoner village Maidan Sari. And then we learn of the Lifa tree which is apparently makes all the mist on the mist continent that allows airships to fly and also can be used to make black mages. The spirit of the Lifa tree seems pretty evil so they kill it dispelling the mist. Even understanding the plot points late in the game it’s never clear to me what Soul Cage actually is. The Lifa tree doesn’t die or anything it just doesn’t produce mist anymore so I guess none of this actually mattered? In any case after getting Amarant, the party ends up at the tree again to confront Kuja who uses the mist and some eidolon-controlling magic to destroy a fleet of ships from Alexandria killing Queen Branhe. It turns out he has some bigger global domination plan and was just manipulating Branhe. We also learn Dagger is actually from Maidan Sari and was simply adopted after escaping its destruction. At least one point I think they do a decent job job of is getting into the conflict of Dagger being related to Branhe who is bad person but also her adoptive mother. But I still think it’s funny that Beatrix got a full pass.
Disc 3
Disc 3 starts out really slow as you basically explore Alexandria for a bit and then got over to Treno to compete in a card tournament. Even once the action starts with the attack on Alexandria gameplay is still very limited and on-rails. We get introduced to Garland (nudge nudge wink wink) who looks like a discount Darth Vader and for some reason Kuja really hates him. Kuja’s plan to steal the eidolons fails and Alexandria gets blown up by Garland’s spaceship in an exciting FMV. Afterwards the party has to go find Kuja’s lair. The whole entrance sequence is just weird. You enter a sand hole in the desert and then after the loading pause you’re locked up in jail, like some scene was just missing. This part got really stressful because you have to pick a party and you’re basically stuck with that party for a while, if you chose poorly then I hope you made another save. My party was suboptimal but you can buy tents from the moogle to heal after grinding as long as you have a positive income stream, so I spent a lot of time doing that.
The Disc 3 plot is around Terra which is another planet that vampirically destroys other planets and that’s where Kuja is from. Only Zidane can understand what’s going on which pretty obviously lays out where this is going. What is not obvious when you pick your party is that you also have to play a section with everyone you didn’t pick which also required some grinding. I split my party into physical and magic users because it told me that the location had an “anti-magic” field, but this is for plot convenience and does not seem to impact gameplay at all. Very confusing. Some more stuff happens and then you finally get the airship. The next area, Ipsen Castle is pretty cool but I can’t help but think the upside down concept must have come from Symphony of the Night. This area also locks in your party for completely contrived reasons (Zidane wants to beat Amarant to some treasure so he can’t go outside) which I didn’t expect and was fairly annoying. The boss is a spider that is guarding 4 mirrors which are activated at 4 shrines over the world. I doesn’t even really make sense plot-wise why this stuff exists, it’s just there to waste time. In any case you open a portal to Terra. It was also around this time I started really putting some time into side quests because it’s basically the first time you actually have the whole party and can go places on your own.
In Terra we learn Zidane is actually an alien and a brother of sorts to Kuja. I’m not sure what the idea here was. It’s not a good twist and it’s literally just recycling the exact same zombified black mage plotline except this time with Zidane. This hampers Vivi’s character development too because at this point we’ve forgotten the black mages even exist, they are no longer important to the plot at all. Garland is the master mind controlling Terra and Kuja is his failed experiment that was designed to stir up chaos on Gaia. Zidane was sent too and this has just become the plot of Dragon Ball Z down to the space monkeys. Kuja is a failure and going to die so he goes berserk and destroys the whole planet but luckily the party can escape on the spaceship Invincible.
These late developments just feel silly and disconnected to the earlier material. I guess if you did a remake it would make sense to split these into 2 separate games. Or have a bigger time skip to differentiate them.
Disc 4
Disc 4 is just the final area but before that it was getting through some side-quest stuff. The big one is Chocobo Hot/Cold which takes a fair bit of time to explore but yields a lot of powerful items. One thing the world traversing did is make it obvious how lazy the world map is. Only the mist continent has anything of interest, the rest of the world is barren, the density of stuff is just really bizarre. Even names of the continents “outer”, “lost”, “forgotten” got mixed up in my head. It really feels like the world map was made just for Chocobo Hot/Cold. The minigame progression and all of this item collecting becomes necessary for the secret boss.
Ozma
In Final Fantasy 7 the Ruby and Emerald Weapons took a lot of prep work to find a setup to beat them. In Final Fantasy 8 the Omega weapon took strong execution of a set pattern. Final Fantasy 9’s Ozma is just random garbage. Even before fighting him you need to do a whole side quest of giving friendly creatures items. I’m not sure how you are expected to do this sidequest without a guide. Each creature tells you what the next creature is but doesn’t tell you where to find them and it can still be difficult with a guide. Even in the area where they appear I was getting in 10+ battles making me wonder if I was doing it correctly. The prize is that Ozma can be hit with normal attacks and no longer absorbs shadow damage. Even then, his attacks are so strong that even at level 70 (which is about 10 level higher than one needs to be to beat the game) he can basically wipe the party unless they get a dodge. He doesn’t waste attacks either if they would be ineffective and he will counter-attack after every move and can heal himself for 9999 hp. So while you can setup your party to reduce the impact of curse which does huge damage and every status effect or have most of the characters absorb shadow damage from Doomsday (which also damages him) much of the rest is just getting lucky he doesn’t drop meteor on you or heal too often. His HP is rather low so the battle is kinda short but if he wants to he can just tank forever. I used Freya with Dragon Crest to deal guaranteed 9999 damage (you spend most of the time fighting Grand Dragons to grid levels so this is pretty easy) and Steiner using Shock which can also do 9999. Zidane sucks as an attacker so he’s usually a utility character with elixirs or remedies and I used Eiko to heal. It took maybe about 8 tries before I had a good setup and got lucky enough to win. That luck really takes away the accomplishment because you don’t really feel like you can build something consistent. Really an awful and not fun optional boss especially given the amount of grinding I had to do for it.
Memoria
The final area is a super linear dungeon. Again very disappointing coming from Final Fantasy 7 which used branching paths, and Final Fantasy 8’s very well done non-linear castle. Instead you just walk from screen to screen as Garland lays the final story bits out and you fight a boss gauntlet against the four fiends from Final Fantasy 1. The screens themselves are pretty to look at but there’s just not much to any of it. At the end you fight Trance Kuja. Trances aren’t really mentioned from a plot perspective aside from this, so it feels weird they’d introduce it like that since literally no other person in the game trances. After all that grinding for Ozma he was trivial to beat. He then destroys the crystal that created all life and memories (or so I understand), in fact this is the same crystal that is in the game’s logo and it’s only mentioned at the very end. Destroying the crystal destroys the universe I think, and the final boss is Necron, a death god of sorts. It really feels like they just ran out of plot and needed some ass pull. Beating Necron means the universe is not destroyed and everyone is happy. Not even the only Final Fantasy to throw in a last minute final boss but I have no idea what the point of any of this was. Could have just been super Trance Kuja or something.
The final bit has Zidane staying behind to be with Kuja when he dies because he feels some sort of duty to do so and seemingly get killed by the Lifa tree. Though obviously that was a ruse and he reveals himself as the cloaked lead of a play put on by the Tantalus troupe to Dagger. Although most of the game seemed like a love story between Zidane and Dagger then end scene feels very platonic.
The port
The port has a number of issues, and very few features. Like Final Fantasy 8 it’s high-res with updated models and textures and the backgrounds and FMV get slight boosts but do not look up-to-par with the rest of it. It’s also a port of the mobile game so the menu are a bit weirdly spaced as they were originally design with touch in mind. It’s still has the 2x speed and enemy encounters off but they are oddly hidden in the pause menu. The weird thing is the performance issues. Entering a battle can sometimes trigger long load times and the game will just hang. But even when it doesn’t there’s small loads before the battle music kicks in that just feels jank. Also when entering battles the resolution changes by a few pixels and it’s very noticeable because the pillar box textures scale and it’s also very jank (the game was not modified for widescreen). Worst of all it crashed about 4 times. During certain cutscenes it just randomly locks up. Thankfully because auto-save happens on every screen transition you usually don’t lose more than a minute or two but it’s still pretty busted. Definably not a great port by any means but it’s serviceable especially with the graphical upgrades.
Thoughts
I knew that Final Fantasy 9 was a throwback to older Final Fantasies but I really couldn’t appreciate it back then. Now, having come from playing the last 8 I can really see some of it, and very specifically Final Fantasy 4. The overall progression is very similar with characters going in and out of the party, at least until the late game. Each of these characters is a very fixed class with little customization. Even the plot shares some beats with things taking a extra-terrestrial (extra-gaiastrial?) turn. The game’s plot isn’t really anything interesting and it doesn’t trying anything interesting, it follows the same A to B storytelling the SNES games used. Even system-wise it doesn’t try anything too crazy. The ability system is where the customization happens but it’s still pretty limited. My guess is all of this is why it is so beloved by certain fans. It hinges on that nostalgia and simplicity. Whereas Final Fantasy 7 and 8 had deep systems that could break the game and thematically, wild and twisty (if a bit poorly written) plots, and Nomura designs, Final Fantasy 9 is rooted in familiar simplicity.
For me though, I’m less of a fan of this. The game feels too on rails, which is reminiscent of criticisms for the Final Fantasies that come after. It’s not until close the end where you are actually able to take stock of all your characters and use them as you’d like without being locked into a particular lineup. The freedom of systems just isn’t there. The art is just off putting. The music is as good as any but Final Fantasy 8 was the peak of the series perhaps just impossible to follow. I guess looking back my younger self had good instincts. This was not one of the great Final Fantasies and it was very forgettable. Even now I can only remember parts because I took notes. That’s not the say it’s bad, I still enjoyed playing it just not to the same degree as the others.
There’s been a lot of rumors about a remake and I think you could do it in a single game because it’s just so simplistic overall. The world is pretty empty, the cast of characters is small and relatively contained. It still does feel like two separate plots between disc 1 and 2 and disc 3 and 4 though. So maybe you could do it on smaller scale than 7, which seems to be what Square Enix would be looking for. I would also say it would be worthwhile just because the port is not very good, Final Fantasy 7’s port is barebones but at least it retains the console interface and isn’t overly buggy. I think fans of 9 probably deserved a bit better.
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