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I've been putting off writing about FF9, but my last trip down memory lane (FF6) caused me to think about it a lot, which is quite a feat, considering I make a point of thinking about FF9 as little as possible. Both were the last games for their respective consoles. Both seek comfort in familiar archetypes after the previous game involved some hefty experimentation with the formula. Both use summoned monsters as a major plot point rather than just firepower. Both create a whimsical atmosphere, then darken it substantially after a mid-game catastrophe. Both feature a skill system based on extracting abilities from equipped items. They also bookend my relationship with the series as a fan - I became a Final Fantasy fan a few hours into FF6, and I haven't considered myself a fan since the day I quit FF9 out of sheer apathy, and placed it back in its jewel case, never to be opened again.
So, no, I don't really like it. There are a lot of Final Fantasy games I don't like (and a lot I do; this isn't Something Awful), but there's a special reason I don't like FF9. Read on to find out!
I don't like FF2 because it's a mess of unfocused ideas that only really work in theory. I don't like FF8 because all the good stuff is buried under mounds of tedious, needlessly obtuse systems that don't add anything to the game, except length. I don't like FF7 because the unskippable cutscenes slow the game to a crawl, and cease to be entertaining once you realise they're not actually very good. It's not that I think these games are bad, just that one or two aspects don't sit right with me, and no doubt there are people out there who love them. As there should be.
I don't feel this way about FF9. I just think FF9 is rubbish.
FINAL FANTASY WILL EAT ITSELF
FINAL FANTASY!
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This is going to be short (thankfully), because (a) I don't remember 90% of this game, and (b) its problems are still glaringly obvious from the 10% that I do remember. Let's go!
The event that most stands out in my mind occurs in the Ice Cave, the game's second dungeon: Upon entering the Ice Cave (possibly not the actual name; I can't be bothered checking - oh, wait, it's Ice Cavern), the party is confronted by certain walls that have treasure chests behind them. Fearless Leader Zidane suggests that Vivi, the black mage, could melt them down with his fire magic. Vivi gives a speech about how it's nice to feel needed, and then melts them. It isn't a long scene, or an especially badly written scene, or a tedious scene, but it does - in my mind, at least - encapsulate everything shitty about FF9.
You see, this is an intentional echo of a scene in FF4. In that game, the player came across a mountain, the path up which was blocked by a large slab of ice. The party did include a black mage, called Ryida, but, due to events earlier in the game, she has a crippling fear of fire and can't bring herself to melt it. However, if the player returns to the mountain later, having picked up the character Rosa, a cutscene is triggered. Rosa, being a far more empathetic character than the others, is able to help Rydia overcome her fear of fire, resulting in her melting the ice, and giving the player access to the mountain. This scene serves multiple purposes: It opens up an area the player previously had no access to, allows Rydia to cast a spell she couldn't cast before, and develops the personalities of Rydia and Rosa. It means something.
Now, back to FF9: What is the point of Vivi melting the walls? The player always has the same party when they reach this point, so the presence / absence of a character doesn't factor in. In terms of how they play, the characters remain identical. In a SNES era game, with their shorter, less frequent cutscenes, Vivi's reaction might have qualified as characterization, but the game is so concerned with his plight that excising this dialogue wouldn't have made a difference. Since the event will occur the very first time the player enters the cave, it does not open up a new area for them to explore. The entire event could be removed, and it wouldn't matter. It's totally and utterly superfluous.
The only reason this scene exists is because there was one like it in a previous game.
FINAL FANTASY!
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The only reason anything in FF9 exists is because there was something like it in a previous game. Or, at least, it felt as if there should have been something like it in a previous game. That's the problem: It's a "traditional" game that draws its inspiration from our collective memory and perception of those traditions, rather than the traditions themselves. So, the first hour or so of the game is concerned with airships, because Final Fantasy has airships in it! Then they blow up without having done anything. There are crystals, because Final Fantasy has crystals in it! Then they're forgotten about. There are lots of moogles, because Final Fantasy has moogles in it! Even though they weren't in fully half the games up until this point. And neither were crystals. And the airship was a vehicle at the end of the game that makes overworld travel less tedious, not something that was shoved in the player's face repeatedly from the beginning. You can see where this is going.
And then there's King Cid IX. Not only is it a piece of self-congratulatory past-kissing, but it doesn't even work, because there was no Cid in the first game. He's the eighth Cid. Pedantic, certainly, but that doesn't alter the fact that the game is patting itself on the back for something which never actually happened. It's so busy being smug about what a great series it thinks it's from that it forgets why the series it's actually from was great to start with.
FUN GAMES ARE FUN
FINAL FANTASY!
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I can (and frequently do) still play the traditional RPGs that FF9 is taking its cues from, decades after they came out. FF1, FF4, Dragon Warrior, Castle of the Winds... make your own list. They're all unbelievably simple: You wander around and kill things. Killing things gives you experience and money. Experience and money makes your character more powerful. A more powerful character, or party of characters, can kill more powerful monsters. It's repetitive as all hell, but what makes it tolerable is that everything goes by at such a pace that I always feel as if I'm making progress - I know that, if I put in just another ten minutes, I will be strong enough to tackle a previously unassailable boss.
FF9 takes this simple premise and makes it into a goddamn chore. It's possible to have an entire FF4 battle in the time it takes an FF9 battle to load. Even after it's loaded, we still have to watch the camera pan around all the monsters before we can even enter a command, which looked impressive in 1997, but had ceased to wow us two games later. The encounter rate is just as high as the earliest games, but the battles now take upwards of ten times as long to complete. Having to extract abilities from equipment in the same way that spells were extracted from Magicite was a nice idea, but instead of giving the player the freedom to customise the characters, it becomes an exercise in bookkeeping: Certain characters can only use certain items, the effects of each items will vary from character to character, each item needs a certain amount of AP before the ability is learned, each ability then costs a certain number of crystals to activate... I'd be more willing to devote time to a system like this if I gave a shit about the game, but I don't. It's just a series of very slow combats in very quick succession. The storyline suffers the same problem: It's a predictable, traditional storyline padded out beyond the bounds of reason. The end result is that you're playing a less dynamic version of FF4 in slow motion. Why bother?
It's also packed to bursting with minigames and sidequests that, like the Ice Cavern scene, are just sort of there without really serving a purpose. There's a jump-rope competition where you win nothing of value. There's a race where you win nothing of value. There are 13 hidden coins that unlock... I don't know what they unlock, because I was never told what they unlock, and consequently didn't give two hoots about unlocking it, since for all I know it was another generic item I could have just bought in a shop or won in a random battle. There's some ridiculously complicaed moogle penpal thing going on which I never bothered with for the same reason. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there's a hidden item which you can only get if you race through the game at (what it considers to be) breakneck speed - in other words, it rewards you for not caring about any of the role playing elements and just running from A to B while pressing 'attack' a lot. When given the choice between boring minigames that offer no reward and an RPG that doesn't want me to explore or build up characters, I chose to play another game instead.
THE END
Some people will tell you that this game is "Old Skool Final Fantasy", but is it? The series was called "Final Fantasy" because, had the first game failed, Squaresoft would have been kaput. Releasing the game was a gamble, especially in a market dominated by Dragon Warrior, and there was an astronomical amount riding on its success - it was a bold, ballsy move by the young company. Then, instead of re-hashing the same proven concept, Square released two sequels that were so different from each other that it's difficult to believe they belong to the same series. With each successive release, Squaresoft became more confident, but also more ambitious, raising the game every time, if not totally re-inventing it. FF9 is the point at which the confidence overtook the ambition and became complacency. It thinks that everyone will love it by virtue of it having "Final Fantasy" in the title, and so it doesn't bother trying to earn that love. It's Hudson Hawk. It's Thirty Odd Foot of Grunt. It's Jack Nicholson's shitty Chinatown sequel.
I quit before I finished it, some time into the final disc. A few months later, I lent it to a friend of mine. He moved, and I never asked for it back.
| ANTHONY R WOMBLE REMEMBERS... |
"FINAL FANTASY NINE: FAN MYTH AND HYPOCRISY"
I detest the above "article" and its attempts to force an opinion upon the reader. It is a fact Final Fantasy Nine is easily the best game in the series, and the above dissent is an example of hypocritical bigotry.
Myth: Final Fantasy Nine is derivative.
Fact: It is not derivative.
Myth: Final Fantasy Nine is boring.
Fact: It is not boring.
Myth: Final Fantasy Nine has horrendous loading times.
Fact: If you want nothing but mindless action, satisfy your base urges with a "game" of Half-Life and leave the gaming intellectuals in peace, you cretinous oaf!
The facts speak for themselves.
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