Final Fantasy IX Review by Sky Render Tagline: A fine example of how to completely and utterly fail to make a good RPG. Graphics - 6/10 Why give FF9's graphics a low score, you ask? Surely I must see how OOBER NEET they are! Well, I don't particularly agree, because you see, I've seen good 3D done on the PS1, and FF9 ain't it. FF9's character models are poorly textured, blocky, and just plain ugly. The 2D backgrounds are no better or worse than FF8's, and the FMV's are plenty impressive, but only help to remind the player of how utterly hideous the in-game character models are. Much like FF7 before it, but for slightly different reasons, FF9's visuals leave much to be desired due to the severe inconsistency in quality they present. Sound and Music - 8/10 This is definitely FF9's strongest point. There's a lot of good tracks in the game. But unfortunately, the majority of them are remixed and repeated to death, and there are some SERIOUS ear-bleeders in there (particularly the music used during a certain sequence in Conde Petie). The sound effects are pretty much standard FF faire, just there doing their job and not being annoying. Gameplay - 2/10 It would be difficult to find a worse gameplay system than FF9's. The battle engine fails in almost every way possible: it lags, it's slow-paced, it's painfully static, it's malicious as hell towards the player, and it's invoked far too often due to the random encounter engine having such a humongous range between least and most steps between encounters. The game takes a good 30 seconds just to load a single battle to the point where you can actually take action. Enemy and player attacks will frequently lag for a few seconds while the game loads them, resulting in you seeing the spell/skill user twitching like mad while the game furiously tries to find the spell/skill name and animation. It doesn't help that all battle actions are animated at a jerky 15FPS, either. Even at the fastest ATB setting, it still takes a very long time for the turn bars to fill, far longer than any previous FF. Then too, what you can do in combat is so very limited that you basically never have any reason to vary your tactics in the least. Just mash Attack for the warriors and spam your best attack spell for the mages, and pray that the enemy party doesn't do a cheap attack that decimates your party (a favorite action). So, the battle system isn't fun. What about the main game? Let me sketch this out for you: the main game is boring with a capital B, as linear as can be, and one step short of impossible to complete if you don't engage in side-quests regularly. The side-quests are easily the WORST ever invented for a Final Fantasy. Most of them (the coffee bean quest, Excalibur II, etc.) sound like rumor-mill material and have absolutely no hints in-game concerning them. Others (like Chocobo Hot & Cold) have a bit of potential for greatness, but are damped by idiotic design flaws (like forcing pixel-perfect accuracy in said mini-game). There are also mandatory mini-games which suck very, VERY badly (Red-light-green-light where you move forward at 1 pixel per button tap, have to go across an entire freaking screen that way, and have to start all over if you make even one mistake... Yeah, hate-inducing.) And then there's QuadMist, or Tetra Master as some call it. Remember those rules in FF8's Triple Triad you hated? Same, Combo, Diff, those bad boys? Well, they're back, and they're worse than ever, and there's two new added annoyances: attack directions and HP scores for the cards themselves. This would be slightly (but only slightly) tolerable if the damned game didn't randomly pick the victor of a card battle irregardless of the actual attributes of the cards themselves. So, main game and side-quests are also boring. Well, at least it must have a deep stat and skill system, right? Wrong. FF9's system is the most simplistic and pointless since FF1. After the comparatively complex Esper, Materia and Junction systems of the previous three games, FF9's system is just pathetic, and the main source of the battle engine's static nature. You learn skills from equipped items, which can then be equipped with skill jewels. You get about 90 skill jewels over the course of the entire game, via leveling up, and you never have enough to set up any useful ability combos. If you're going to rush through the game, you basically have to keep equipping really crappy weapons and armor to use the skills you want in battles. Which is extremely bad, since FF9's combat stats are 99% determined by your current equipment. There's also theoretically a way to get your base stats to go up via equipment you wear, but this system is so incredibly pointless, since base stats basically do nothing. This game's engine has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Story - 3/10 What do you do after writing three epic tales of world-shattering proportions in a row, with cast members who had actual depth of character and made you give a damn about them? If you're Square, you make a light-hearted story about nine misfits who band together to save the world from the world's girliest man ever, as he kinda tries to maybe conquer the world somehow. Maybe. He might just be trying to find more hair gel to make his FABULOUS hairdo look even better. Not like the game really makes it clear until it's almost over, and even then, it still makes no sense. FF9's plot is downright schizophrenic, and feels like a rough draft of a comedic script got mixed in with a rough draft of a tragic script. Normally those two mix pretty well and make for very epic tales, but FF9 just... doesn't do it well at all. The transitions from goofy and silly to death and destruction are so abrupt and unforeshadowed that it's downright confusing. The cast of characters don't help anything, either, as they're all defined by a single personal quote each and possess no depth beyond that. It's really bad when your main characters have absolutely no character development, and FF9's just short of that (each character gets exactly one change to their viewpoints, and it's always so blatant and abrupt that it feels forced). FF9's plot and characters are so very simplified and disjointed that it's nearly impossible to enjoy either. Replay Value - 0/10 That's right, zero replay value. Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, ever changes or varies in the least in replaying this game. The main story is so linear and banal that replaying for that would be pointless. The gameplay engine has absolutely no replay value, since every fight is essentially pre-determined ahead of time, and you have next to no impact on how it will play out. The side-quests are so evil and painful to engage in that you'd have to have a self-hate streak of unmatched proportions to want to go through them again. About the only thing FF9's worth replaying for is the music, and you can certainly get your hands on that by other means. No need to suffer through a horrible game just for the music. Overall - 4/10 This game is absolutely abysmal. Its one redeeming factor is the music, which is pretty bad since you can get the boxed set of music for this game for less than the game itself costs. Even if you're a long-time FF fan, give FF9 a miss. Pros: + Very good soundtrack, for the most part Cons: - Everything else about the game Target Audience: People who hate themselves and want to suffer as much as they can. Oh, and overly zealous fans of the series who don't care how good a game actually is as long as it has "Final Fantasy" in the title. I can't think of anybody else who would actually want to play through FF9. Buy or Rent? Neither. Seriously, avoid this thing. If you're a die-hard FF fan, then you've probably already bought it. If you're not, there's no reason to ever subject yourself to it. Just read a plot summary and listen to the soundtrack, it'll be less painful than actually playing the game.