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[Go_Ly_Dow]

I hate FF9. Bad character design, disney like story. Worse Final Fantasy in existence. I'd rather watch the FF15 dudes have an orgasmic four some with each other.

The themes in FF9 are a lot darker than Disney work.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

FFIX aged way better and became a bigger cult game. FFIX also has Jim Henson elements.

 

[DragoonKain]

FFVIII was coming off VII and IX was coming off VIII. That's pretty much the reason. I think VIII is really underrated by people and would love a remake, but I think IX is the better game. IX is one of the greatest games I've ever played. Last truly great FF I've played tbh. No coincidence that was Sakaguchi's last real work on FF before he left Square. The series stumbled once he left and as far as I'm concerned, never recovered. That's not to say there haven't been good FF games since, I loved Rebirth and liked FFX a lot, but it wasn't the same without Sakaguchi. He has a unique style and flare for RPGs that is not easy to recreate.

 

[rubik's dude]

FFIX aged way better and became a bigger cult game. FFIX also has Jim Henson elements.

Totally, FFIX isn't just a nostalgic FF trip, it's also 80s Jim Henson dark fantasy coded. It's charming as hell.

 

[wa600]

Imo Final Fantasy VIII aged way better mechanically (at least before the remasters came out). You could obtain Diabolos rather early in the game and learn half-encounter and no-encounter from him and adjust your experience the way you wanted to. Getting stuck in a jrpg and having to figure out where to go next while being interrupted by random encounters every few steps is one of the worst experiences.

Final Fantasy IX is probably the slowest jrpg I have played in my life (finished at least ~70 jrpgs). Every start of a new fight it takes 10-12 seconds going from black screen to camera zooming around and then it takes another 5-6 seconds for the atb to fill up so you can finally give commands. Also the command queue seems completely broken. Like I would select a command for every character, then the game would wait a few seconds, then the enemy attacks, then another 6 second wait, then the exact same enemy attacks me again and then my characters finally decide its their turn. This can lead to really frustrating moments because the turn order is so difficult to anticipate. For example I'd give a command, the enemy casts 'Heat' on this character and all I can do is watch my character die after that character acts.

This is hopefully timestamped (at around 4:06) to give an example of how long it takes for the fights to load in IX (no idea who that guy is, its just the first playthrough I found):

 

[ULTROS!]

Tbh, I think the theme of FFIX wasn't a seller too. I mean medieval FF doesn't get that much hype compared to non-medieval FFs (see FFXII and FFXVI vs X, XIII, XV).

 

[TGO]

Er, it was easier and faster to get broken characters by drawing spells, it even seemed encouraged by the game as it was much less hassle to find one enemy to repeatedly draw from (and there was 0 reason to not reach max draw once you start) vs grind a gazillion battles, as tedious as both are.

You could only draw a limit amount before "nothing to draw" or "draw failed"

 

[Knightime_X]

Literally the only reason I purchased ff8 was because I thought it was going to be like ff7 only more updated.
fuck no, they changed too much of what made ff7 great.

To me, ff8 will always be one of the worst games in the series, only slightly better than ff2 NES and slightly worse than ff5

 

[Alexios]

This is hopefully timestamped (at around 4:06) to give an example of how long it takes for the fights to load in IX (no idea who that guy is, its just the first playthrough I found):

That doesn't look meaningfully different to VIII (and potentially a bit faster in the regular screen transitions, or not) to make one good and the other bad. Just something you had to deal with back then given the 2x disc drives to enjoy the pretty pre-rendered graphics and pretty battle 3D graphics.

And like you said it's all largely fixable for all the games for anyone playing modern versions or emulating the original.

 

[SkylineRKR]

This is funny really.

I completed the remaster yesterday, had a blast playing FF VIII during the last couple weeks. I spent the entire game Attacking and... that's it. All you have to do is Draw spells, junction your G-Forces to have the most abilities to which you can associate spells and you are good. Never use Magic, never use G-Force. I used my first G-Force on one of the twelve bosses in Edea's castle lol. Played a ton of the game using Mad Rush. Genki -> Mad Rush -> wait to win.

Also only Squall was level 100. Others were level 50~60ish. This is a RPG where you can do very little combat. No awful grinding. This is a very rare case for a RPG.

Such a great game and system. But you definitely needed the time investment at first. And the game is SUPER annoying at constantly switching your characters, and in some instances, it simply removes your junctions lol. At some point you can play Edea, and when the team changes, Edea is not available to switch your setup as well. So many miss-steps, but still a super fun experience overall !

Yeah this is true.

GF are time wasters and if you play the game as intended, their entire purpose is their ability slots, not their attack or anything. And I guess, you could cast a GF to make them eat an incoming attack, which is actually more benificial if the GF affinity is low so the bar goes slower. Its a bit counter intuitive, like a lot in this game.

All you need is attack, and perhaps spam limits in Aura or critical health. But VII, IX and X aren't different. In FVII your attack, esp, 4x cut, will quickly outdamage about everything else. IX caps at 9999 (except Ark?), which means there is no point to use anything other than dragons crest, Thievery (once you max both), Shock etc with each character. Trance is useless at this point. X is eventually about Quick Hit, though it takes a while to get there.

In FFVIII its also very easy and quick to grind the entire party to level 100, which isn't a bad idea vs Omega who is level 100 anyway. I always hate character switching in RPG, because bringing the wrong or being forced to use underused characters can lead to a lot of frustrations. IX is also notorious with this on I think it was disc 3.

 

[xenosys]

It all went downhill since Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square. His vision was indenspensible to the brand.

They can still make great ones, but none as legendary.

His vision almost bankrupt the entire company with that terrible movie release.

 

[hinch7]

His vision almost bankrupt the entire company with that terrible movie release.

Doesn't take away his previous works as a producer, writer and director. The games were in severe decline after his departure. At least in the mainline series.

 

[Power Pro]

Doesn't really surprise me. I was starting to feel like PS1 was old news at that point in time, and I remember thinking "It's a PS1 game? But the PS2 is coming out" yeah...stupid teen me

 

[elbourreau]

Man... How much I love FFVIII ! Would dayone a remake so much !