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[SneakyStephan]

The only ff game I couldn't finish.
Furthest I've made it was to the point where the cities started getting destroyed and that was on my 4th attempt to play through the game over the years.

 

[Spacejaws]

Why not? Why is there a cap in the first place. I always hated things like that.

I guess its a Final Fantasy staple. Once you start hitting 9999 you pretty much can kill anything in the game you are OP. I know X locked then break limit behind an ability and I think thats pretty cool, VIII had Lionheart? Didn't that break 9999? And I think XII did something but I can't remember.

Infact isn't it just a JRPG staple? A throwback to the old stat calculations that wouldn't break 9999 for whatever reason? I'm not too sure but it's bot something I feel should be noted as a criticism. Plus FFIX's theme was a throwback to the old JRPG style so you should give it's non limit breaking damage a pass just for that

 

[taybul]

To me it felt right. They wanted to go back to using sprite graphics and so it didn't surprise me that they'd use a less complex ATB system. Still my favorite FF. For what it may have lacked in the battle system, it more than made up for with the story, music, characters, etc.

 

[Mit-]

I spent more time drawing magic from enemies in FFVIII than I did fighting all battles combined in FFIX.

Nothing about FFVIII is better than anything about any FF game other than it's main battle music.

I loved the AP system in IX. My love for it is the only reason I have anything to like about FFX-2. Trances were indeed dumb but I still had infinitely more fun with IX than I did VIII.

 

[wmlk]

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.

The battle system gave you time to think which I always appreciated, but when you offset that with the dozens upon dozens of fodder enemies you battle before a meaningful one, it kind of loses its worth.

It's unbelievable how much I tuned into Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross (which were extremely forward thinking considering FF still had random encounters) just because I could see the enemies on the screen before battling them. FFIX has quite possibly the most charming adventure in anything IMO, but when the adventure itself is turned into a drag then it's a major problem.

 

[Blackquill]

Game needs a remake to fix the slow battles.

Actually the game needs just a HD port with faster battles. The game has aged so well it doesn't need a remake.

 

[theSlacker]

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.

Both of them seemed to just disappear from the story by the end. I guess Freya seemed to get some closure to her story arc in ending cutscenes but it still seemed off and unfinished.

 

[APZonerunner]

Yup, wasn't FF9 for PC announced back in the day?

It was never announced for PC as the Eidos deal to make the PC versions was only a two-game deal, though it's now known that the game early in its life to-and-froed between PS1 and PS2 before PS2 stuff was concrete. There's also this weird outlier where Square actually talked about PS2 remakes of 7, 8 and 9 back in 2000/2001, seemingly in an off-the-cuff way in E3 interviews - a few big outlets had quotes on it at the time, and Gamespot even has some stories about it in their archives - and then the projects were never again mentioned. Have always wondered what happened there. I do imagine they probably spoke before they'd done any actual work and then realized what a huge task doing 7/8 would be, balked, and quietly cancelled.

 

[HolyBaikal]

I kind of liked the combat... well, maybe I liked most of the other things more.

I like how it reminded me of Final Fantasy IV.

 

[Man God]

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.

I love the ability system. Nice and simple, makes collecting armor and weapons worthwhile. FFTA uses a version of it as well and I love it there.

 

[Shahed]

My main problems were how aggravating the slowness of it all was, and the fact that Trance popped at complete random, even getting in the way at times. The rest of the game is magnificent, but the one thing you see and interact with most often is nigh on unbearable.

 

[Korigama]

If you replace FF IX with FF XII I'll agree with you.

I'd consider XII's battle system considerably better than IX's, particularly when accounting for Gambits. That said, I didn't always like its combat either.

 

[duckroll]

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.

In theory, but in practice the way skills are designed it's never an actual concern. Maybe really early on, but at that point you wouldn't have learned many abilities anyway.

 

[deoee]

How does it run on the PS3 compared to PS1?

I own the PSN version but never played it on the PS1 x)

 

[120v]

i could be wrong but i think most of the staff on FFVIII went on to FFX, and this leads to a lot of differences in FFIX... i never found the battle system much different from the last two games. whatever flaws it may have had i probably overlooked because of the return to four characters and skippable summons... loved that

 

[Stumpokapow]

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.

Isn't one of the problems that people generally don't risk equipping something weaker, they just swap to the weak item, grind out the ability fighting trash mobs, and then switch back to the most powerful item going forward?

Like, I know that technically you can not do this, but because the incentive that drives learning the ability is number of battles fought rather than difficulty of the battles fought, most people are going to choose grinding over risk, right?

 

[Spacejaws]

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

I remember reading about a PC port in a PC mag back in the day, I want to say it was PC gamer and they included a few pics one of which was Zidane lighting the candle at the start of the game but the images looked like they were probably ps1 screenshots.

Did a quick search and Mobygames mentions a cancelled PC port due poor sales.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/final-fantasy-ix

I remember this because I held off buying it waiting for the PC port, I had VII and VIII on PC and no ps1! Wasn't until about 2 years after release that I got to play it.

 

[APZonerunner]

Isn't one of the problems that people generally don't risk equipping something weaker, they just swap to the weak item, grind out the ability fighting trash mobs, and then switch back to the most powerful item going forward?

Like, I know that technically you can not do this, but because the incentive that drives learning the ability is number of battles fought rather than difficulty of the battles fought, most people are going to choose grinding over risk, right?

I think pretty much all RPG systems except those that scale can be gamed like this, though. People are in this thread praising FF8 but that's a game you can completely break by spending three hours on Balamb shore grinding AP and Fish Fins. In both cases there's a lot of fun to be had by playing the game 'properly'. (Though arguably FF8 is more fun when you completely rip its systems inside out in an unintended manner, even if the route to do that involves a few hours of soulless grinding.)

 

[AwShucks]

I only ever played FF9 once because while I remember enjoying the majority of the game I got to the very end and went "what in the fuck".

That said, I don't remember outright disliking the combat system. From memory it did seem much more traditional than how 7 and 8 were done. I really should go back and play it to see if I can appreciate everything before the final boss, then just stop.

 

[Colonel_Hapablap]

I really liked the simplicity of ffix compared to the drawing system of ffviii.

Turn on cheats and allow 100 draws, then It might bea little more comparable...

 

[uncredited male]

FF9 and Chrono Cross were two games I think would have massively benefited from being PS2 titles.

I remember boss fights where I would spend 30 minutes just waiting for Zidane to actually steal the damn item.

 

[jon bones]

It's not the best FF combat system, true. It's a little too simple and a little too slow to hold up, but the rest of the game is what makes it a classic.

Maybe the best video game romance & cast of all time.

Almost certainly the best video game bros of all time:

 

[Prototype]

Not a popular opinion but I hated 9. The battle system, character design, limit system, ect.

For me this was the start of the decline of FF, 12 was a momentary glimpse into what a good FF could be again, but that was really the end.

 

[Spot]

I enjoyed the story and characters (except Quina) and liked learning new abilities from weapons.
The irritating slow battle speed scares me away from another replay though.

 

[pants]

Final Fantasy IX's battle mechanics and system made it unplayable to me. I still wonder how I finished that POS.

Dont even get me started on that ability/equip bullshit

 

[Zukuu]

Just set it to fast?

 

[duckroll]

I think pretty much all RPG systems except those that scale can be gamed like this, though. People are in this thread praising FF8 but that's a game you can completely break by spending three hours on Balamb shore grinding AP and Fish Fins. In both cases there's a lot of fun to be had by playing the game 'properly'. (Though arguably FF8 is more fun when you completely rip its systems inside out in an unintended manner, even if the route to do that involves a few hours of soulless grinding.)

Yeah I don't think it's worth comparing how broken systems can be if you put your mind to it. Pretty much any system which offers any options at all can be broken. I find it more worthwhile to just examine how interesting a system is in terms of what it offers the player, and how fun it is to mess with those options. FFIX has a very limited growth system compared to most FFs, that's where it fails to engage me. FFXIII also suffers from this problem significantly, and probably in a worse way. Crystarium was super boring, and the weapon customization system was totally brain dead.

 

[MissDeviling]

Just set it to fast?

Fast is still slow as hell.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

There is a patch that speeds up the atb but I don't think it fixes the prefight camera taking forever.

9 is still better than 8 and 7

 

[Mr. RPG]

Final Fantasy IX is perfect.

First post wins again.

Aeana is spot on about the battle system and the skill learning system.

 

[Lng0004]

FF9 gave us Vivi. Enough said.

 

[Cerity]

I spent more time drawing magic from enemies in FFVIII than I did fighting all battles combined in FFIX.

Nothing about FFVIII is better than anything about any FF game other than it's main battle music.

I loved the AP system in IX. My love for it is the only reason I have anything to like about FFX-2. Trances were indeed dumb but I still had infinitely more fun with IX than I did VIII.

If you spent hours and hours drawing in 8, you did it wrong. Play triple triad, if you don't want to deal with it, card monsters.

 

[Azelover]

I'd consider XII's battle system considerably better than IX's, particularly when accounting for Gambits. That said, I didn't always like its combat either.

There were good, innovative aspects, but in terms of good ol' Fun Factor, it just wasn't there.

I could have lived with Gambits, and whole nine yards, but having the bosses not give you any experience was IT for me. I worked my ass off defeating those bosses, including pushing my luck on those quickenings, and you won't give me anything? Oh no...

 

[badcrumble]

A lot of FFIX's decisions - especially the way Trance works - are semi-sensible reactions to the way that the Limit Break systems worked in FF7/8 - Trance is set up to discourage people from the common tactic of hoarding Limit Breaks and spamming them on bosses for an effortless kill (something that was also a problem for FFX). But it ends up just being a weird feature that never quite finds its role in things.

The problem with FF9's ATB actually isn't that it's slow - though it is, and that's annoying early in the game - it's that it doesn't have a pause-timer function.

FF4 and 5 pause the timer anytime an action takes place, even normal attacks (you can see this by watching the ATB bar).

FFVI sped things up a tiny bit by not having the timer pause during regular attacks and simpler spell animations, and introduced something that's essentially an animation queue - if several inputs are bunched together, they'll just play out in sequence, not right when your command is entered.

The pause-timer function, in turn, allowed for more elaborate animations in FF7 and 8 - limit breaks and summons pause the ATB while they're playing out so they don't cause issues in the animation/turn queue.

FF9's problem is that the timer never pauses during any animation ever - so during longer battles or following any particularly long animation, you're still queuing up more turns (which further delay the animation queue, ad infinitum). This is why FF9 alone suffers from the problem of having your actual turns play out sometimes over 60 seconds after selecting an action, often when the action is no longer context-appropriate (hello, Heat status effect). This is also why auto-Regen is so overpowered in FF9: you keep regenerating every second even during immensely long summons, so simply deliberately slowing the battle by bringing in the longest animations possible will keep you at full health basically all of the time.

It's an objectively bad design decision and speeding up the ATB speed doesn't fix it.

 

[kenta]

I played through FFIX earlier this year and while the battle speed was indeed the hardest thing to adjust to, I found I acclimated to it surprisingly quickly and before long I didn't notice it at all. So if you really do *want* to play through the game, suck it up and you'll be having a great time soon enough

edit: oh hey badcrumble

 

[jotun?]

I wasn't able to get anywhere in FF9 due to the Stealing skill and OCD/completionism

 

[synce]

>A step back from FF8

u srs bro

There's nothing wrong with it aside from speed, which you can fix with a cheat code to speed up ATB gauge

 

[Fusebox]

Now imagine it running at 50hz.

I replayed IX recently and the battle speed didn't put me off anywhere near as much as the draw system in VIII.

 

[Korigama]

There were good, innovative aspects, but in terms of good ol' Fun Factor, it just wasn't there.

I could have lived with Gambits, and whole nine yards, but having the bosses not give you any experience was IT for me. I worked my ass off defeating those bosses, including pushing my luck on those quickenings, and you won't give me anything? Oh no...

Truth be told, I focused more attention on the hunts made available throughout the game than the bosses. Even before I finally decided, "hey, this isn't so bad" (which took years of playing on and off, and completing Xenoblade first before appreciating it), I thought those were pretty fun. I never really gave any consideration to lack of experience points earned from bosses until just now. For me, I didn't enjoy it originally thanks to picking every action for each party member manually, making things far more tedious than they needed to be.

 

[MissDeviling]

I wasn't able to get anywhere in FF9 due to the Stealing skill and OCD/completionism

Stealing made me hate Zidane so much.

 

[DirgeExtinction]

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

Wait, what? Is that true? If so, that sucks so bad.

I've only played a little bit of 9(stopped during that first blizzard location, fighting that leviathan thing).

 

[MoxManiac]

I remember cheering the first time I played FF9 and seeing four character parties back. That always felt like a downgrade in 7 and 8.

 

[Azelover]

Truth be told, I focused more attention on the hunts made available throughout the game than the bosses. Even before I finally decided, "hey, this isn't so bad" (which took years of playing on and off, and completing Xenoblade first before appreciating it), I thought those were pretty fun. I never really gave any consideration to lack of experience points earned from bosses until just now.

Perhaps that's due to not playing western RPGs. I've only played Square RPGs and then Phantasy Star and a couple of other Sega RPGs, and I'm used to a very traditional style.

I can tolerate FF IX, FF X, but XII I didn't get, and I'm sorry to those people who love it, it's just my taste.

 

[Cert.in.Death]

FFIX is an ode to the franchise, both in style and substance. I also don't see how FFIX is a step back from anything VII did, other than having dedicated roles for characters.

 

[Korigama]

Perhaps that's due to not playing western RPGs. I've only played Square RPGs and then Phantasy Star and a couple of other Sega RPGs, and I'm used to a very traditional style.

I can tolerate FF IX, FF X, but XII I didn't get, and I'm sorry to those people who love it, it's just my taste.

Actually, Deus Ex aside (both Human Revolution and a bit of the first game), I still don't have much WRPG experience. I've always leaned more toward JRPGs, though I focus more on Atlus titles than Square Enix these days. But yeah, it's understandable that XII is a bit more polarizing. I picked it up back when it launched in 2006, but didn't actually care much for it until last year.

 

[jett]

The slowness of this game makes a replay an unbearable experience for me.

 

[To Far Away Times]

It's way, way better than FFVIII.

Probably about as good as FFVII, but for different reasons.

 

[Octavia]

I'm just not a fan of 9. It was a cool one time experience, but I've only ever been able to stand going through the game once and get bored in every repeat attempt. I just liked the freedom of customization in 7, 8, and 12.

Worse is the fact that there's no half encounter/no encounter skill like in FF8 just prior.

Yeah, this was such an amazing future. It's a shame this isn't in every RPG since then. It makes those oldschool type of games much more tolerable.

 

[Cerity]

Perhaps that's due to not playing western RPGs. I've only played Square RPGs and then Phantasy Star and a couple of other Sega RPGs, and I'm used to a very traditional style.

I can tolerate FF IX, FF X, but XII I didn't get, and I'm sorry to those people who love it, it's just my taste.

Eh, it just depends, I've played a bunch cRPG's yet I never really used tactics/scripting in them as I usually prefer to have full control over each of my characters. XII (IZJS) clicked for me as soon as they gave you control with the gambits, I still think it's the most forward thinking SE have been in terms of jRPG gameplay. On the otherhand I just can't get into Xenoblade's system.

 

[Koozek]

Funny how FFIX was originally planned to be the fastest FF to date, but was held back by hardware limitations^^
Never noticed how slow it was back in the days, to be honest. Always been one of my most favorite FFs. I just love the charming characters and how heart-warming the art and music is