It’s amazing how something so good (FF8) can be followed by something so bad. Rumor has it, people complained about FF8 a lot. They complained because it was so different from the “classical aspects of the series” that Square decided to give the fans what they really wanted. In reality Square (hopefully purposely) created a bad remake of all of thier previous FF games all rolled into one. Pretty much every aspect of this game is based on some other game. Surprisingly it seems to draw the most from FF1.
The biggest setback in this game was the return to Munchkin Land. Even FF7’s minchkins looked more normal than these charachters do, though I think it was mostly due to FF7 having pretty humanoid characters in battle. I kept expecting the Lolipop kids to pup up and tell me to “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”. They also all seemed ot have really weir mouths. The graphics were pretty nice though for other sapects. Like Black “I am Hell Incarnate” Waltz No 3, who should have been the star of the game.
Instead we get a comical adventure that takes us through a quick history of the FF series. We get to see Garland from FF1 again, The Black Mages return in a new flashier form. The Gurgu Volcano that once housed Kary, Feind of Fire returns complete with a rehash of the original 8-bit music. Too bad they didn’t bring back the good spell names like Ice3 and Lit2 or even “XXXX”. It’s always great eradicating your foes with a hardcore porn spell. The Characters themselves are so so. There’s Garnet, her Tinman, Steiner, the Scarecrow, Vivi, the cowardly “What – the – fuck – is – that – stupid – thing – and – why – does – it – have – its – tongue – sticking – out – like – that?” Quina, the half naked moogle girl Eiko, the Lord of the Dance herself, Freya, and of course the main charachter Zid-”I don’t use a big sword like my predecessors”-ain.
Of these charachters the most likable ones are oddly the ones that seem to have less to do with the plot. Steiner’s constant baffonish heroics get old after the 1000th time you see the same joke repeated; The whole thing with Vivi seems like it just sort of vanishes halfway through the game; Freya, what the heck is she there for? Oh right, classic Vengace. Then of course Quina. I have no idea whay this thing is in this game but personally it’s worse then the infamouse Cait Sith of FF7. I mean What the hell is up with this creature. All it does is eat, it looks very androgenous, it says dumb things, it looks stupid, it sucks in combat, and generally it’s useless. I don’t know what they were theinking when the designers decided to make Quina a party character instead of someone 100 time more interesting and useful like say, Beatrix. Oh wait, if they added Beatrix it would be like having two Steiners except one is a girl. You definitely don’t want two similar characters to choose from, I mean it’s not like they havn’t been making everyone identical for the last 4 games give or take.
Not that you could really use two identical characters in this. Another major drawback is unbalanced gameplay. This gets escpecially bad near the end of the game.Not since Chrono Trigger have I played a game up to the very last save point and given up on it for a year and a half or more out of enraged hatred.Basically ech character has thier own specialty, which means in battle at any given time with the most effecient all aound party, you’ll have 2 useless characters.An Optimized party being one that you’ll never end up with 0 useful characters. I mean you COULD put Zidain, Steiner, Freya, and Aramant all in one party, but then you’d have a hell of a time against anything strong tophysical attacks and you’ll never be able to easily heal. Not that you’ll really use Magic much for healing. Even a good ways intot he game chances are you will still be constantly short on Ethers ot retore MP and with the incredible high cost of Summoning by your healers, you’ll need to save everything you’ve got for those boss battles. The Black Mage Vivi was the only character I managed to get halfway self suffecient since he could not only heal but restore MP using Drain and Osmose.
So with it’s unbalanced gameplay and rehash plotline, FF9 manages to crap itself up pretty badley. I think I may have started out liking this game quite a bit but by the end It was just too much work to bother with. Unfortunately it seems Square hasn’t learned with FFX, which started out fantastically excelent and is slowly turning into a trudging shitfest of long boring pointless random encounters.
August 24, 2006 at 8:57 pm |
Yup, totally agree, the first disc was actually pretty fun overall, but after that, the game just turned totally boring and had way too many random encounters. And yeah, the black waltzes and the whole thing involving the manufacturing of black mages was very interesting, but the rest of the storyline didn’t sustain that level of interest.
August 6, 2007 at 1:51 pm |
Yeah you guys are a bunch of morons with no soul, who can’t realize final fantasy had more character than most other final fantasy games, the music was legendary, and most of all it did what an amazing rpg should do, it got you completely connected with the characters, plus the battle system was superb with the ability system being simple yet complex, with room to explore, and for graphic fans, not only were their gorgeous FMV’s that completely blew anything that had been done before out of the water, the normal play was beutiful too, all around the game brought a phenomenal and overal perfect close to final fantasy on the playstation 1.
August 6, 2007 at 4:29 pm |
On behalf of the management at Lameazoid.com, allow me to express my apologies that we don’t grasp the depth of character of a mute mongoloid with a tail and a bunch of supporting walking stereotypes, nor the brilliance of a gameplay system consisting of decades-old and dead-tired battle and leveling mechanics combined with an ability system that screws you if you sell something you shouldn’t have. We will try to do better in the future.
Rob
August 6, 2007 at 10:04 pm |
Couldn’t disagree more. Loved FFIX’s characters, story, music and all. It was worlds better than XIII, better than X or VII, and arguably on par with VI. For all the anger your “review” displays, every assertion you make is largely subjective and there’s not much intelligence to be found anywhere within it.
August 8, 2007 at 1:47 pm |
every assertion you make is largely subjective
Something tells me that you aren’t entirely clear on what a review is.
Rob
August 8, 2007 at 7:27 pm |
You know what, I agree with Andy. It’s on par with FF6. A big pack of stereotypes run around doing treadmill battles while slogging through a boring mess of a plot.
Next you’ll be trying to tell me Final Fantasy X-2 isn’t the best Final Fantasy game ever.
August 9, 2007 at 12:42 pm |
Well, I wouldn’t say the plot of FF6 is boring. At least, not the first half of it.
Rob
August 14, 2007 at 9:37 am |
FF9 is one of the easier games of the FF series to play and also fun. But is true that if you by mistake sold an item you are in trouble. But in my opinion the videos are amazing to watch. Overall is average. Cause I think the 3 FF that mark the history of RPG were FF4(in us FF3 for supernintendo), FF7 and FF10. But that just me
Dangayio
October 25, 2007 at 4:40 am |
Although you may be right with some aspects, including the battle system. I do not think this is an entire waste of a game. I actually enjoyed playing this, but think it could have been done slightly better like some other FF games, like FFVII, or FFXII
June 1, 2008 at 11:57 pm |
Why hello there! First may I point out that your argument could stand a better chance if you spelled the majority of your words correctly… Second… It’s a game, it’s meant to be played for fun, nothing more, and if it is too hard for you to play… them go play Lego Princess Island… that way you will not have to stray too far from your most desired dream of becoming a seduced half naked princess… hmm…
Good Day Sir!
A-R-o