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Final Fantasy IX
Topic Started: Oct 21 2009, 08:05 AM (414 Views)
Kylecake
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~Galuf's flame has flickered out...~
I will now try to review Final Fantasy IX! Hope you enjoy it!

For Starters

To begin with, this game takes place in 1799 in the world of Gaia. This story is mainly about Zidane, the main protaganist in Final Fantasy IX. It follows him and his companions traveling through the world looking for a answer to their own question. He goes across Gaia in search of where he came from, he only remembers one thing of his childhood years: a blue light.

The Story

I loved how this game had a reference to every other main Final Fantasy game, it's like the game went back to it's roots and climbed it's way up!
The start is about a thief's group named Tantalus that have directed orders to capture the Princess Garnet Til Alexandros XVII and take her to Lindblum, while they look at their brief, a young Black Mage named Vivi plans to see the play that the group plan to act out while the kidnap the princess. (Getting this so far) During the performance, Zidane and and the team attempt to make off with Garnet, raising the suspicion of royal bodyguard Adelbert Steiner. Steiner tries to protect Garnet from Zidane's kidnapping but with no succession. That's because Garnet actually wants to be kidnapped. Zidane and the group take off with Garnet but on the way take Steiner and Vivi with them... I won't spoil anything else for you.

[10/10]

Gameplay

Using the same system as Final Fantasy IV, the game utilizes the Active Time Battle system in battle. When a character's ATB gauge is filled up, that character can choose a command to use. Normally, enemies attack whenever their turn is up, but the battle can be set to 'wait', making the enemy unable to attack a character while they are choosing a spell or an item from the menu.
In Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, the player was only allowed to have 3 people per party. In Final Fantasy IX, this is changed back to the classic 4-person party. Also the game allowed for two players to control some members in the party. (Yay!)

Another thing I loved is the new "Limit Break" Trance, when a party member is attacked, the trance bar charges up. When the Trance bar is full, the party member turns into a neon light show and allows the party member to use new skills or in Steiner's case triple strength. For several characters, their Trance skills depend on the abilities already learned, e.g, if Zidane has learned the ability Flee for his Skills ability set, he gains the ability Free Energy for his Trance ability set, Dyne. Zidane is the only character who is able to use new abilities in their Trance. Most characters' abilities are enhanced, for example, Vivi gains Double Black, which allows him to cast 2 Black Magic spells in one turn, and while in Trance, Garnet's 'Summon' command is changed to an 'Eidolon' which causes the Eidolon to attack at the beginning of Dagger's turn for a while. Eiko, like Vivi, gains the 'Double White", allowing her to cast two White Magic spells. Freya's 'Jump' is also enhanced so she stays in the air and rains spears on all enemies during her turn until her gauge empties. Quina's 'Eat' ability turns to 'Cook', giving the more likely chance that Quina will eat the enemy. Amarant's "Flair" ability changes to "Elan" allowing him to cast flair skills on multiple targets.

One more thing about the Gameplay is about the Character Classes, I love how they had fixed job classes unlike previous Final Fantasy titles, it make's the player use all characters available and not just a privileged few.
This game could also be called the most humorous of all the series, every character had a hilarious personality trait for example: Vivi's clumsiness and Zidane's skirt chasing.

[10/10]

Graphics/Musical Score

Squaresoft really pushed the boundaries of what the PS1 could accomplished, the beautiful pre-render backgrounds were astonishing at the time and the 3D characters had the same kinds of graphic's as FFVIII, both games were defiantly a leap from Final Fantasy VII. It's scenery was simply amazing, all the places were obviously planned precisely and carefully.

Final Fantasy IX is the last Final Fantasy game with music composed exclusively by Nobuo Uematsu(Best composer of music I know). The original soundtrack for the game had a whopping 110 tracks, and an additional soundtrack was released with 42 more new tracks.
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Many people speculate that the reason why Uematsu no longer composed game soundtracks on his own after this game was that he was simply overworked. Regardless, years after its release, Uematsu has stated on multiple occasions with little to no hesitation that both the score and the game itself were his favorite of all his projects to have worked on thus far.
Much of the music in the game revolve around the themes of the J-pop ballad, Melodies of Life, which was composed by Uematsu and performed by Emiko Shiratori. The song itself was sung in Japanese for the Japanese release of the game, and in English for the North American and European releases of the game.

There are many memorable pieces of music which include: Hunter's Chance, Kuja's Theme, Dark Messenger, Assault of the White Dragons, You're not alone, ect. These are only a few of the many songs in the game that are awesome!

[20/20]


So my overall score of this amazing game is:
[40/40]

I hope you liked my first review!
Edited by Kylecake, Oct 21 2009, 08:06 AM.
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Rally
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Are you high!?
Good job, Vivi! :D

I knew you could do it justice. All it takes is a little boost in confidence. ;)
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Fayt
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Easy wins have never been my style
Very positive review, a whole 40/40!

Personally I wouldn't rate it that highly, for some reason this particular FF didn't really get my attention like some of the others, although I can't really put my finger on why. Just something in it didn't quite agree with me, Beatrix alone makes it worthwhile though. :P
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