Checking back in with the Iifa Tree/Disc 2 behind me!
Finally got that good Vivi backstory I craved! Hell, most everybody's gotten some interesting backstory at this point, but Vivi is hitting those Kingdom Hearts themes/motifs of personhood & identity that I love and I'm glad I've come as far as I have to see it.
With Zidane, though, urg. I wish I could say this game was doing him dirty based off of what I like about Zidane from secondary collaborative FF titles (primarily Dissidia 1 for PSP), but this is the source material. He's definitely gotten more depth, which I've enjoyed seeing and appreciated when it's given, but the womanizing cool guy schtick could use a rest, even if I get to see the sad backstory reasons for it.
Kuja, though?
Still the hottest war criminal, and now ascendant, can't wait to figure out that guy's whole deal.
Also, w/r/t a boss fight towards the end of Disc 2:
Did anyone else best that Iifa Tree boss (Soulcage?) with a 1-shot life spell? Everything else in the Iifa Tree lead up had been undead so I took a shot and then baddabing baddaboom da boss was dead. Love it when a Final Fantasy does some straight-up FF shiz.
I'll try and write again sooner than before I beat Disc 3, but either way, I'll keep y'all posted.
Wow, you've turned on the afterburners.
I just spent a bit more time in Dali last night before falling asleep and am about to board the airship.
Wow, you've turned on the afterburners.
I just spent a bit more time in Dali last night before falling asleep and am about to board the airship.
Between adapting to the flow of swapping Fast Mode on/off & embracing the grind when trying to fill out Quina's Blue Magic selections, much like Zidane after too many bonks, I entered Trance! and spent two turns/weeks going Whole Hog.
Play timer is >20 hrs, the Iifa Tree party closed Disc 2 at about Lvl 30 each.
Just woke up in Lindblum after some Alexandria action, and all of the happenings have got me like Clone Wars Season 3, which is to say...
...Secrets Revealed...
Amongst all that I've received additional evidence in defense of Zidane. Now does he try to immediately take 2 steps back after his 3 steps forward? Yes. But by this point I'm allowing myself to be swept up in the beeg melodrama. All of my precious ding-dongs & weirdos can stay.
Except for Amourant. F*** that guy. For now.
Checking in a week later - after getting the Blue Narciss, I spent entirely too long trying to find exactly where on Lanar Island the Anemones were hidden for the sake of getting Quina some Bad Breath. Only just today before passing out did I progress the plot up to landing on the Forgotten Continent.
Once again, Vivi continues to be the heart & soul of this story. Got some ample tears shed on the return to the Village. Zidane is made better solely by the fact that he's in proximity to Vivi and witnesses his existential struggle.
And, once again, Kuja continues to be the hottest thing alive. He's like young Stalin in that he can simultaneously both get it and absolutely need to get the hell outta here. I have gotta figure out this dude's deal.
Gonna see this through, I'm too close now to not.
About to begin the journey to Burmecia myself, after picking up Quina - who I never really liked during my first attempt at finishing FFIX. Maybe this time, with a guide, it will be a bit better.
About to begin the journey to Burmecia myself, after picking up Quina - who I never really liked during my first attempt at finishing FFIX. Maybe this time, with a guide, it will be a bit better.
What I'll say, as someone who feels like they spent too much time farming for Quina's Blue Magic even while using a guide, is this:
- Pick and choose the abilities/spells you think you'll actually use. Quina has 24 potential Blue Magic abilities, and I use maybe only 4-5 of them regularly.
- Matra Magic is very handy, as, when it works, it drops the enemy to 1 HP, making them perfectly eatable.
Otherwise, go hog on those frogs~
The gang is back together, and we indulge in a CG cutscene with a classic anime trope before spreading our wings.
Hell yeah, HELL yeah. Big feelings and anime melodrama are my bag, baby. That last little Lindblum reprise lifted my spirits after the consecutive split-party dungeons. And while we're digging a little further into Kuja's whole deal, I've some thoughts that I'm excited to have disproven:
So a distinction is being drawn between our heroes' world of Gaia and Kuja's world of Terra. The way they're being talked about after the gang is reunified in a way implying that Terra is a separate world from Gaia. However, the way we've seen Kuja & Garland speak of things implies to me that they're one & the same, as if Terra was a past iteration of Gaia before an extinction event that saw millenia pass before "Gaia" rose from the ashes. Anyways, we'll see how fantastically wrong I am in due time.
Final note: My meta was working in the living room while I was grinding away in the Desert Palace when they asked if I was playing a Sonic game, because they'd swear they heard the sound of Sonic's spin charge.
It was the encounter screen-wipe sound effect that plays at the start of combat. Now I can't unhear it and I chuckle a little bit every time it happens.
Just entered Treno - a section I remembered not liking years ago for whatever reason. It's been fine so far, so maybe it was just a "not in the right frame of mind" thing. Place is pretty confusing so far though.
I recall some people here having positive things to say about Steiner, so I hope there's some big change late in disc 3 or in disc 4, because my feelings on him in both attempted playthroughs can best be summed up as "useful in a fight, but nails-on-chalkboard irritating". The attempts at humor involving him just never seem to land with me either, so that doesn't help.
Just entered Treno - a section I remembered not liking years ago for whatever reason. It's been fine so far, so maybe it was just a "not in the right frame of mind" thing. Place is pretty confusing so far though.
"Place is pretty confusing so far" is how I feel trying to navigate all of these maps. Over time I built up enough familiarity with the core locations to remember how to get where I needed to be, but I had a segment during my playtime yesterday where I had to pull up a GameFAQ guide to figure out how to proceed to the next story dialogue; I spent maybe 5-10 minutes meticulously walking around a village, only to be told there was a staircase that I couldn't perceive until I was informed of its existence. Maybe it was easier to perceive with the pixel-smoothing effects of 2000-era CRTs, but I certainly felt silly.
I recall some people here having positive things to say about Steiner, so I hope there's some big change late in disc 3 or in disc 4, because my feelings on him in both attempted playthroughs can best be summed up as "useful in a fight, but nails-on-chalkboard irritating". The attempts at humor involving him just never seem to land with me either, so that doesn't help.
From where you're at, the things I think I enjoyed most about Steiner at the time was the comedy in his physicality - beeg metal man make wacky arm-flailing movements. Otherwise, yeah, his patriotism is exhausting.
As for myself, I just wrapped Disc 3 before I had to pass out yesterday.
Great news! Finally got that Zidane backstory I was looking for!
Bad news! The worm has turned for me, read the spoiler for why! (5 Paragraphs!)
If I hadn't played through it myself, I couldn't believe how god-awful the pacing on that reveal was. Just a consecutive hour of dropping the plot payload like a diarrhea dump, ceaseless and full of horrors. They could've at least drip-fed us some of this and maybe it would've landed better, but when you have all of it coming from the mouth of Garland, a character who's entire on-screen existence in this game is confined to Disc 3, and all at once in an exposition dump, it all gets harder to swallow.
Like, the red & the blue, the souls of Terra & their Genome potential-vessels, Gaia becoming Terra, the SoulCycle-I mean Cycle of Souls, (*Liquid Snake voice*) BROTHERS!, Zidane being THE MOST SPECIAL BOY WHO EVER SPECIAL BOY'D WHAT A PERFECT SPECIMEN MCMAHON LOOK AT THAT BODY? You had to do a lot better than that to make those reveals work for me this late in the game, because when presented all together for the first time in this late-game reveal, it all reads as a garbled mess.
At least I was right about Garland & Terrans being of an ancient/progenitor sort of society, it just turns out that they were instead from Mars/a red planet on some anti-Prime Directive/pro-Galactus kind of shiz where they were waiting for the blue planet Gaia to ripen before they could...slurp the now-stagnating soul juice? To replace it with their own soul juice? Makes perfect sense, it's grade school, SpongeBob.
And ugh. Kuja. My hottest little war criminal. No depth behind those curves & locks. Just the exact surface-level murderous clown he always presented himself to be, a 3rd-rate Kefka at best, upset because HE didn't get to be Daddy Garland's Special Little Boy.
The circumstances under which everything turns to shit? It's that nobody knows how to take the f***ing keys out of the Invincible. Every time, Garland & Kuja keep leaving the deck of the Invincible unattended like it's not The Most Powerful Airship In Existence, The Ship That Dominated Alexander & Bahamut (and I'm assuming Queen Brahne because I have no faith at this point that they'll actually explain how Kuja got her under his thumb - remember how this all started? I don't know if the game does!)
On the plus side, while my opinions of Zidane & our antagonists have nosedived, my opinions of everyone else in the main cast (with exceptions for Amarant) has skyrocketed. Quina is a nonbinary legend, they're just a quirky lil' Qu who likes to eat, they just like me fr fr. Steiner has indeed warmed up on me by this point. Freya's stagnated a little bit, but she's been rock solid since the get-go and where she's alighted is a good place. Vivi continues to be the best dang thing about this game, the heart & soul of the crew. Heck, I like Eiko too, she plays the spunky kid sidekick role well enough. And as for Garnet, I'm glad I've continued to enjoy her development after her cool anime recovery moment (back when you first take flight). She's the real protagonist for me at this point.
Fortunately, I'm at the end at this point. No more side stuff, no more grinding. I'm slappin' on the 9999 button without remorse and rolling credits before this Sunday is through, because I'm just over the 40-hr mark and more than ready to be done.
Pushed through to the end of Disc 3. As I recall, there isn't much to Disc 4 besides the final dungeon and ending cinematics.
The story has largely descended into incoherent anime bullshit at this point. Sometimes I swear they've got a checklist of callbacks to the first 8 games and every scene they pull a new one out of a hat.
Spoiler:The young nihilist villain murders the elderly fascist villain by kicking him off a cliff? Why not. (FF6)
Some lifestream / river of souls bullshit? Sure. (FF7)
Invasion from space by creepy aliens from a dead world led by the main character's brother? f*ck it, throw it in there. (FF4)
The four elemental fiends? Eh... we'll give you one. The other three happen off-screen.
Re-reading this now that I'm on Disc 4 and realizing:
I never got as far in FF4 as I thought I had, because I didn't realize the space-invasion-by-dead-world element was a FF4 nod. Is that what the moon's whole deal was?
The deed is done, the chapter is closed. By hook or by crook, I have rolled credits on Final Fantasy IX.
Nostalgia is a real son of a gun, because, I mean, you can see where I was on the game this morning. Now I'm cleaning the tears off of my glasses after bawling my eyes out during the credits. Like, my beefs with the final stretch of this game remain, and can mostly be applied to the final dungeon too. When I look back over my time with the game, I think I end up landing next to hbi2k: liking a number of individual elements, but never getting a really satisfying whole out of the thing.
But then the music hits just right, like when I hear the harp arpeggios referencing the series' classic Prelude near the game's end and I'm like "oh dang, nice". Because maybe I was a dorky teen who listened to the Distant Worlds concert albums way too many times in high school & college (&, who are we kidding, nowadays too), so I already know the Melodies of Melodies of Life.
So yeah. I let the emotions flow over me during the ending sequence, and I gave in to astonishment. I bawled as I sang along during the credits roll. I let myself indulge in the melodrama once more, and at least ended this thing strong in my soul.
I think I'd call this my least fav. Final Fantasy without hesitation, but it's still a Final Fantasy; There was some gold in them hills, and what precious nuggets they were.
EDIT - PS: Bout to pass out and had spoilery highlights from the end I forgot to mention amidst the tears, see below if interested:
- I'll admit the Iifa Tree escape was cool as hell and made me wish I was playing as THAT Zidane all game, that's the flipsy lad I remember from Dissidia. However, while the modern console releases of FF9 have perfectly smoothed updated character models, the full-CG cutscenes have received no upscaling, so the blended format they use of modern Zidane running along the lower-rez CG cutscenes makes it look a little bit like Adam West behind the scenes on Batman, running in place in front of a moving backdrop.
- Yo, is Vivi dead? Is he hidden amongst his legion of "kids"? Did Vivi lay some rod? No matter the answers, real or imagined, not getting closure on the best boy is sad for me.
- Love da Gourmand Quina, may they taste all the great foods of Gaia.
- While it's a shame that Kuja never amounted to anything more substantial as a villain, I will find the bright side in receiving such a prime himbo in this, our Barbie July.
End of line.
EDIT - P.P.S: Ay shoutout to my boy Bobby Corwen, love a BoCo - which is to say, I enjoyed that last visit to the Black Mage Village.
It's taken me far longer than I'd hoped, but I finally ended my level-grinding and pushed through to roll credits on this amazing game!
This has been a strange trip for me, as FF9 was always my favorite after FF6. I’ve been on a retro kick for a good while now, playing lots of 16-bit titles, but they have all been games I MISSED for whatever reason, not replaying many retro titles that I’d completed before. Playing FF9 with decades of separation was like a new game entirely, rediscovering so many details that make this game wonderfully unique.
First off, the world and characters are a wonderful return to fantasy that was sadly missing from the techno-angst vibes of FF7 and FF8. I can appreciate good techno-fantasy, but FF had been leaning into that a bit too hard, so I loved this game for the more familiar and soothing environment designs. All in all, the storytelling in plotlines like Vivi’s search for his origin and identity, Steiner’s conflicts in loyalty, Garnet/Dagger’s acceptance of responsibility… they all integrated much more seamlessly and in a more engaging manner than what had come in the prior two FF entries. All in all, I love this game and am thoroughly glad the JRPG club selection inspired me to re-experience it.
I do have some gripes though.
Oh man, oh MAN, the GRIND. The level progression needed to be much more natural and integrated. There was far too much separation between long town and story sections split off completely from world and environment traversal that would lead to battles and exp leveling. I hated having to intentionally grind for hours just to feel prepared for major battles. I’ve also gotten far too used to modern quality-of-life options missing in this game. I would have loved to auto-play cutscenes with dialogue rather than have to click through them manually (DQ games do this really well). And why can’t I just use a Tent out in the world rather than only near Mogs? The whole idea of a TENT is to use it anywhere. Maybe it’s a translation issue, but it’s very tiresome to travel back to a particular spot to use it. Not being able to change party members or abilities mid-combat is also very annoying.
Kuja? I hate this character, not for his actions but for his design. That outfit is just awful.
Amarant? Seemed very tacked-on and shallow. I know they tried to develop his character, but it all felt like some Manager said in a design meeting yelled “We need another character! We have to have eight or so-and-so cutscenes won’t work!” And someone else says, “Yeah, but that would require unique weapons, some custom abilities… I don’t know if it will fit this late in the game.”
“JUST DO IT!!”
“alright, alright… sheesh”
And for crying out loud, show me more of his face! You can barely see his chin, to the degree I thought he was another race of creatures entirely. He looks like a headcrab from Half-Life broke into FF9 and attacked a normal character and they just couldn’t get it off.
Lastly, maybe (probably) I’m just getting old, but I totally forgot how sexualized Garnet is. Square must have dedicated a crack team of texture artists to highlight her butt cheeks juuuuust right.
Anyway, I’m done griping. Loved the game, even the cringey parts.
Have found time and energy to play more games finally and been working on FF9 for a few nights now.
On disc 3 and back in Treno. Boy, I really don't like this card game. Steiner has gotten better - I had forgotten how he subtly changes after the Iifa Tree.
Getting kinda close to where my previous attempt to complete the game petered out.
Finished in early November. Cross-posting final thoughts from the Pile of Shame thread:
Starting over on the Switch after getting about 70% through the game on PS1 might seem like a waste of many hours, but I doubt I would have ever finished the original version. Thanks to the nudge of the JRPG club playing this, and the Switch being not only portable, but having fast-forward and standby options, I finally saw this through to the end with a guide.I'm glad I did, because in spite of various things that bother me, Final Fantasy IX is a pretty good JRPG of the era. Seeing it through to the end finally allowed me to see the transformations various characters undertook, especially the ones I absolutely hated (Steiner), or let me understand them better (Quina), which let me feel much more positively towards them. The story is certainly worth experiencing, and alternates between joy, melancholy, tragedy, redemption and philosophy. If concentrating on the main story, it moves along snappily, but my completionist mindset meant that I pursued most of the sidequests - f* the cardgame though, and I never got all the chocographs.
Speaking of chocographs - the only reasons I pursued that was because the fast-forward option made the chocograph hunting merely "really annoying" rather than "unbearably awful".
IX is the newest Final Fantasy I've played. I've never enjoyed the 3D overworlds and this is no exception. I hope they improve in the PS2 era games, as I've now purchased the Switch versions of X and X-2, after owning both on PS2, but never getting past the title screens.The final boss fell quickly thanks to lots of ffwd level grinding on my part. Certainly enjoyed my time with FFIX by playing it on the Switch with a guide. Seems like the perfect way to do it.
I've never enjoyed the 3D overworlds and this is no exception. I hope they improve in the PS2 era games, as I've now purchased the Switch versions of X...
Well, I've got good news and bad news about X's overworld.
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