What was Squaresoft thinking with the battle system in Final Fantasy IX?

C

CentroXer

Banned
What a step back it is from Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII. The first offender is the lengthy camera rotation before the battle starts. It is slow and clunky. In general, everything is very slow. Then you have Trance, which is the limitbreak system in Final Fantasy IX. It's a meter that just fills over time, and It's poorly implemented, which is baffling considering they nailed it with in the earlier games. You have no control when to trigger Trance at all. Sometimes it triggers just a second before the battle is over or at times when it's completely unnecessary to use it. Then the characters have nothing that rivals Omnislash or Lionheart. Instead, most final moves are doing just a maximum of 1X 9999 damage. The summons is possibly the slowest in the series (and most useless) I remember the ARK and his Eternal Darkness summon that took forever to complete for a measly 9999 dmg. Yes the final summon cannot exceed 9999 damage, lol. The learning system (equip abilities) is all-right I guess, but it wont make up for the other flaws.

It's unfortunate, because all other aspects of the game is top-notch. I have no complaints at the characters, music, gameworld or story.
 
The battle system is slow, no one disagrees with that. Summons are useless in tons of FF games other than wanting to see the animation.
 
I think you can turn off or shorten the summoning animations, but, yeah, it's a slow game. It's still the best Final Fantasy, though. Chocobo Hot and Cold, the music, the characters--all fantastic.
 
The only wrong thing about IX are the loading times due to the PS1, that's the game that most needs a port to anything, the only one from ! to X that hasn't gotten it.
 
It's very slow, and would be much better on a machine that could pump the frame rate and speed up a bit. This is well known, yeah, and a shame. I'd never want a remake of FF9 (I think it's nearly perfect as it is) but an emulated version or upres that had a higher frame rate, faster loading times & as a result faster pre-battle pans (which are there to disguise the load) it'd genuinely improve the game massively.

Can't say I have many issues with the way you learn stuff, trance, etc. It's designed to be a more simple, conservative (S)NES-reminiscent take on FF, and I'm behind that. I also don't mind the numbers being smaller; another 9 on the end doesn't really make it any better necessarily.

It is very slow though.

Kalnos said:
The battle system is slow, no one disagrees with that. Summons are useless in tons of FF games other than wanting to see the animation.
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FF9 was actually the first FF to implement half animations on summons, too, so if you press a button within a second or whatever of it starting you get a much shorter animation that lasts more or less the same length as your average spell but still makes sense as one end-to-end animation, a nice touch.
 
I personally loved the trance system and how it, as a battle mechanic, was integrated into the overall plot instead of being another ludonarrative dissonance like in the previous games.
 
And yeah, trance is pretty irritating since more often than not, it gets triggered when it'd be useless to use.
 
I like to think it was during the time developers realised they could make things flashy and cinematic, gameplay included.
 
Yeah, despite it being my favorite Final Fantasy game, the battle system is so slow. I know you can speed it up in the options menu but I don't recall trying, does it speed things up significantly?
 
FFIX was definitely a misstep in terms of game design, but it tends to get glossed over because the art direction and character designs were a very refreshing breather from the urban/scifi tone which VII and VIII had. It's extremely slow, the systems aren't very interesting, the ability system falls into a nostalgia trap where it tries too hard to feel retro without really feeling tightly balanced or particularly fun to mess around with.

Out of the three PS1 FF games, I would say VIII definitely takes the cake for having the most experimental and interesting systems. There might be a lot of broken stuff, but at least it was trying new ideas which I felt mostly worked and were very fun to actually play around with. Draw meant that there's no "MP", but instead your stock of spells are based on either how well you have prepared and saved up before a given battle, or how effective you are at balancing between attacking the enemy and restocking the available spells in that battle.
 
duckroll said:
FFIX was definitely a misstep in terms of game design, but it tends to get glossed over because the art direction and character designs were a very refreshing breather from the urban/scifi tone which VII and VIII had. It's extremely slow, the systems aren't very interesting, the ability system falls into a nostalgia trap where it tries too hard to feel retro without really feeling tightly balanced or particularly fun to mess around with.

Out of the three PS1 FF games, I would say VIII definitely takes the cake for having the most experimental and interesting systems. There might be a lot of broken stuff, but at least it was trying new ideas which I felt mostly worked and were very fun to actually play around with. Draw meant that there's no "MP", but instead your stock of spells are based on either how well you have prepared and saved up before a given battle, or how effective you are at balancing between attacking the enemy and restocking the available spells in that battle.
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The ability system is actually probably my favorite thing about FF9. I really like it, and I liked that Tales of Vesperia ripped it off wholesale.
 
The slow-as-hellness is all that annoys me of the things you posted. And yeah, the Trance stuff could have been handled much better too but the way it was didn't ruin the game for me or anything. Summons never bothered me, though, but that's really only because I've never liked Summons in most of the FFs. Huge MP cost, ~meh damage.

The game does so many other things great though, which is why I happily suffer through the slowness on replays.
 
Roxas said:
yep it was terribly slow compared to 7 & 8. even slower if you were in europe too :(
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yes I have the PAL version :(

Kalnos said:
The battle system is slow, no one disagrees with that. Summons are useless in tons of FF games other than wanting to see the animation.
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The summons (if we talk about PS1 Final Fantasy) in FF7 and FF8 atleast had a meaning. In FF7, some summons could rack up 100K damage (atleast Knights of the round could). In FF8, you could use the summons to create abilities.
 
The battle system was definitely pretty weak and slow. Also disappointing after how fresh the FF8 battle system felt.
 
Aeana said:
The ability system is actually probably my favorite thing about FF9. I really like it, and I liked that Tales of Vesperia ripped it off wholesale.
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I didn't find it very interesting at all. I'm not a big fan in general of systems where you are encouraged to equip gear to master skills off them. After a while it feels like you're hoarding accessories equip them, fight a bunch of battles, swap, repeat.
 
I suspect that the slowness is in-part also loading and/or performance related since FFIX pushed the PS1 to its limits. It's a giant shame that it never got a PC port because the game looks a lot better than the PS1 can deliver.

I understand why some people don't like the ability/battle system too much, but you also have to remember that the game was a throwback. So the ability system at its core is something much more simplistic than VII and VIII - I think it did a pretty good job straddling that while also offering customization/versatility (also within the confines of the characters having locked jobs).
 
duckroll said:
I didn't find it very interesting at all. I'm not a big fan in general of systems where you are encouraged to equip gear to master skills off them. After a while it feels like you're hoarding accessories equip them, fight a bunch of battles, swap, repeat.
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I gotta admit that the Junction system is more interesting. Especially when I started to realize how to maximize the stats out of it. (used it totally wrong the first time)

It's a giant shame that it never got a PC port because the game looks a lot better than the PS1 can deliver.
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Yup, wasn't FF9 for PC announced back in the day?
 
duckroll said:
I didn't find it very interesting at all. I'm not a big fan in general of systems where you are encouraged to equip gear to master skills off them. After a while it feels like you're hoarding accessories equip them, fight a bunch of battles, swap, repeat.
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I'm a huge fan of systems where the usual "use what's the strongest" is subverted. I find that really boring. Give me reasons to risk equipping something that's defensively weaker.
 
The worst part is Amarant, he might be the worst thing in the series.


He's erased entirely by the awesomeness that is Freya though.
 
The battle system was flawed upon execution with radically different ideas from Ito and Sakaguchi.

It kind of fell in the wayside. It's extremely disappointing for a nearly flawless game otherwise.
 
Whats the deal with needing +9999 damage? I actually quite liked the fact my characters weren't always hitting the damage limit the level and stat progression seemed alot more unique to each character whereas VII and VIII any character could fill pretty much any role. It was balanced for the damage that you did if you had one random summon that did multiples 9999 it might make some encounters too easy.

In all I dont think the problem was the damage output, but I do think in general the battles should have been able to be speeded up. The setting was there but it didn't increase it nearly fast enough but I don't think it needed to be lightning fast like VII or X (I feel VIII's is a very good pace).

I also didnt mind how slowly trance built up but would have loved to be able to trigger it. Those end battle trances suck.
 
Aeana said:
I'm a huge fan of systems where the usual "use what's the strongest" is subverted. I find that really boring. Give me reasons to risk equipping something that's defensively weaker.
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The ideal solution to that is to attach non-stat based bonuses on equipment which stay with the equipment. Elemental bonuses, immunities, special risk/reward quirks. Attaching abilities which can be mastered from grinding doesn't subvert that issue, it just makes it boring in another way. Shadow Hearts 2 was really good with subverting the "use what's strongest" in terms of equipment, especially towards end game where improving a base stat like defense or offense isn't generally the most effective way to make a character most effective in battles.
 
i didnt like IX when it came out, played it again a few years later, adored it!

Played it again a few years later, ADORED IT!

Its superb, and I love FFVII!
 
The terrible battle system is the only thing that prevents me from replaying FFIX, in spite of having liked so much else about it.
 
duckroll said:
The ideal solution to that is to attach non-stat based bonuses on equipment which stay with the equipment. Elemental bonuses, immunities, special risk/reward quirks. Attaching abilities which can be mastered from grinding doesn't subvert that issue, it just makes it boring in another way. Shadow Hearts 2 was really good with subverting the "use what's strongest" in terms of equipment, especially towards end game where improving a base stat like defense or offense isn't generally the most effective way to make a character most effective in battles.
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But while you have the piece of equipment that teaches the ability equipped, you gain the effect of that ability. So you essentially get what you're asking for.
 
i have always wanted to play this game. i've started it several times throughout the years, and i just can't get far because of the battle speed. i get to an ice cavern and just can't push myself beyond it.
 
If you replace FF IX with FF XII I'll agree with you.
 
Aeana said:
But while you have the piece of equipment that teaches the ability equipped, you gain the effect of that ability. So you essentially get what you're asking for.
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Until you master the ability, then it makes all the accessories which have that same bonus useless. Counter productive, especially towards the later parts of the game.
 
I don't really see a problem with 9999 being the damage cap in IX considering every enemy in the game has less than 60,000 HP
 
If you played FFIX on PAL (50Hz), you might as well have just thrown the disc out of your system. It's absolute trash.

FFIX on NTSC (60Hz) is the optimal speed.

edit: I Want to Be Your Canary is the best part of FFIX
 
CentroXer said:
Yup, wasn't FF9 for PC announced back in the day?
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I don't believe so, but may be mistaken. It just never had the opportunity to get much attention since it was released so late in the PS1's lifecycle - FFX was released a year later and that's where all the attention went.

wmlk said:
The battle system was flawed upon execution with radically different ideas from Ito and Sakaguchi.

It kind of fell in the wayside. It's extremely disappointing for a nearly flawless game otherwise.
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The battle system did some things right; at least because of the strategy you were made to undertake with every character having a set job. Boss fights were also pretty well done in that many of them had certain weaknesses you needed to find and exploit; granted of course it made the game pretty easy if you knew what you were doing, but that's true of pretty much any game in the series.
 
Wasn't FF9 meant to be more traditional in the first place, sort of like a "thank you" to fans of the series before its popularity blew up with FF7 (and subsequently polarized their audience with FF8)? I seem to recall this, but that was a long time ago. For that reason, it's charming and simple to me, but it's not a game I can see myself going back to. Dagger's awesome, though.
 
duckroll said:
Until you master the ability, then it makes all the accessories which have that same bonus useless. Counter productive, especially towards the later parts of the game.
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It's not useless because you don't have to use one of your SP to equip that ability, you can just put the piece of equipment on.
 
Imm0rt4l said:
FF9 is the best final fantasy on playstation.
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I think it's the worst one on playstation. FF7, well, was a revolution back then. It was the first "big" 3D JRPG. FF8 is a great game, and at least SquareSoft tried something else, and the art is still amazing today. FF9 is just a rehash of the older FF's, minus a fun combat system.

Imo, FF8>FF7>FF9
 
I really really liked the ability learning thing on the gear for the game. It fills some sort of completionist need in me in a mindless way, or something. The combat was odd in how like every character could have a max damage easy to use move by the end of the game that made any of the super attacks useless or pointless.

My need to get all the abilities as soon as possible led to the really annoying thing in the game for me; redoing certain fights over and over to steal things. Some of that stuff was just masochistic and I couldn't help myself.
 
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