Final Fantasy IX

I may be writing this half asleep at work and 12 hours late to writing a review. But at least I am writing about one of my favorite games of all time. When I say a favorite game, I mean I can literally play it in my head and love it more than Final Fantasy VII ever meant to me. Final Fantasy IX is a drawback in an advanced way to a more traditional approach to the older Final Fantasy games. Even though it was developed alongside Final Fantasy VIII, it is still a personal favorite to me. The story is a take on the JRPG universe through a Disney mentality. The characters are quirky, often times careless and hilarious but are deep eventually and we get to explore them through different perspectives through new systems implemented in their new game. The Mognet system and the Active Tme Event system make its way through this entry, where different POVs take place throughout the story while the main POV is advancing.

The story starts from the point of view of Vivi, a black mage in the town of alexandria in search of a ticket for a show, where one event pulls another and 20 hours later you are overwhelmed by the events taking place, from saving a princess in Alexandria only to end up on the other side of the continent being on the run by the army and eventually going through a spiritual pilgrimage to find that the source of life is being depleted from a different planet that has a race of genomes taking over the same planet you grew up in. Okay, that sounded really boring and I apologize for summarizing an 80 hour experience in less than a paragraph, but what I do mean wholeheartedly is that the story is so engaging and involving that you won't notice it went by that fast because of how cinematic it can be and how well written it was as convoluted as any JRPG can be. Although not as convoluted as Sqall is dead though.

The Combat system is probably the most traditional approach to every Final Fantasy game you have ever played if you are familiar with it at this time, where every character is characterized by his own background through combat, a typical black and white mage, a thief and a warrior that you start off with may sound boring initially but they put a twist to it where based on the characters' bonds, they can fuse their powers and use them as one such as black magic attack. Weapon abilities are also introduced in FFIX where for every weapon a character uses, the can learn abilities based on the said weapon relevant to their capable skills. Limit breaks also make a comeback here in the form of Trance abilities and are also very interesting aside from boosting the characters attacks and defenses. Some trance abilities are skills and others give passive abilities such as double white magic or double black magic, so on and so forth. Of course there are the usual experience boosting stats from leveling up for the characters, so the only way to focus on learning abilities is through weapons and assigning passive abilities similar to the junction system in FFVIII through the armor found throughout the game such as abilities preventing silence or poison or cover. Boss fights are interesting and are a lot of fun in my own opinion but excuse me if I may go on a rant here, but the most frustrating part, as satisfying it may be initially is that when you have the thief, Zidane as your main character, and you steal from a boss, you most likely will get a rare item or a weapon that will be available 3 or 4 dungeons later and most of the time in my case, Zidane steals the weapon after at least 50 tries and by that time I am either bored to death or I have used up all Hi-Potions and potions through the passive Auto-potion skill.

Running through the fields and dungeons are the second most interesting feature of FFIX after the combat, where your surroundings and the scenery are easy to engage with and it is fun to explore through puzzles and points of interest as well as hidden items and treasure chests lying about. To me, FFIX was definitely an upgrade to its previous entries and its aesthetics were more pleasing to the eyes than FFVIII was. The soundtrack was as lovely as all the previous ones although the combat tracks were of a lower quality compared to the previous entries.

Final Fantasy IX is probably one of the most fun games of the series and I would replay it endlessly without finding it boring one bit. Not only is the story engaging and involving but the side quests add a lot to the story instead of being optional for the sake of being optional. The only purely optional sidequest was the chocobo quests and these were the most fun for me where it adds a twist to treasure hunting throughout the world map. I am lucky to have mentioned this entry when it is shortly ported to PC, something I have not expected to happen a decade ago but now it barely makes any difference. You can find FFIX on mobile devices and Steam nowadays and I easily urge you to play it if you have not already. I've been a half asleep Ahmed with you and I find this game to be awesome, so go ahead and play it until I ramble on another game in the series. Till next time.