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Final Fantasy 9 comes to PC (and smartphones)

Artyoan

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 16, 2017
Messages
624
Okay, so I just got done with this game and thought I would spew some hindsight/random thoughts about it. Some of these might have answers and I missed it, mostly just speculation or musing on my part:

*Spoilers obviously*

-Hades was originally supposed to be the final boss according to concept art and his in-game model has the Terra eye symbolism all over it. From a visual standpoint he's a much better final boss than Necron. Why would they change this?
-Blank has his eyes covered, Beatrix is missing an eye, a summoners horn is like a third mind's eye. What is the eye symbolism supposed to represent for Terra and the bottom of the Invincible? What about the triangle 'tri-force'?
-Necron makes more sense if he were just some optional boss somewhere. He's fought at the bottom of a coliseum shaped arena which would seem appropriate if he were to be at the bottom of Ipsen's castle. Why? Because it would fit the shape of the building and Ipsen's Castle was also all about perverse backwards logic. Shit weapons are better, the castle is upside down, and Necron's logic is that life wants death and to live is to die.
-The point at which Zidane and company move to the Outer continent is when the game goes downhill. There should have been a separate adventure going on with Freya, Steiner, and Beatrix just as the early parts of FF9 had Steiner/Garnet going back to Alexandria while Zidane and company were going to Burmecia and Cleyra. Splitting up the parties with concurrent events was great.
-Kuja's redemption arc seemed out of place or at least needed to be way more obvious in-game. When Zidane says that Kuja 'gave them hope' and had teleported them out of Memoria, I must have missed that. They did get out but I don't recall a direct link of that being Kuja's influence until its just asserted after the fact.
-Garland seems to fear the eidolons but has the Invincible which had no problem assimilating Bahamut and destroying Alexander. What was there to fear?
-The covering of mist of the entire world on Disc 4 is not only horrible for exploration purposes but I'm unclear on what caused that? Was it Terra souls spreading out over Gaia because Kuja destroyed it? Or were Gaia souls being jettisoned out of the Iifa tree?
-Speaking of the Iifa tree, we kill the boss tree even though it says it does not die on that day. It does, but Garland makes it clear that there is a non-physical component of the tree that lives. Makes sense. So why have a physical component of the tree at all if its still working? Why does the mist shut off for a while?
-Only having one boss fight when you split into four groups for the elemental shrines is obvious cut content. The bosses even all show up in the final dungeon for some reason. So the models were finished but the shrines weren't.
-Beatrix was woefully under developed and disappears multiple times with no explanation. Steiner banging her was great though.
-Cut Amarant out entirely.

What I would change:
-Make Hades the final boss but change his story. Terra represents life trying to live but devoid of purpose. This contrasts with Gaia in which it's people are living with a purpose. Terra kills its own crystal by not giving it new memory and a soul cycle. Gaia has a flourishing soul cycle and new memories. Have Hades be some entity that has attached itself to Terra's crystal and which devours not only Terra but whatever Terra assimilates. Or he could even be the Terra crystal itself after despairing regarding its own fate and impending death. So its like a constant 'despair and death' that is spread by a people who no longer have a purpose. It would be thematically appropriate and requires just dialogue changes so as to foreshadow it and a final boss switcheroo.

I'm sure I'll think of more while I parse my thoughts. Decent game and I wholly respect anyone's opinion if they regard it as the best Final Fantasy, but similar to FF8 I'd like to know how much was cut in the end and how it ended up as it did development wise.
 
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Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Necron is your typical "completely irrelevant to the entire game and randomly pops up at the end as some 13-year-old representation of CHAOS EVIL DOOM" boss. But by the same token, I don't think that ruins anything, the real story of the game is about Kuja/Zidane and Zidane/Dagger around themes of belonging and growing up and friendship, and both receive an appropriate denouement. The Garland and world switch plan stuff is just foil.

Kuja teleporting clones out & the world being covered in Mist is very well explained in game, I'm really not sure how it's possible to miss it. Maybe you just zoned out for a while?

The game is definitely more finely choreographed in the earlier moments, and then loses a lot of the story cohesion to become an open world sidequest simulator, rather like FF7. Some of the area design aesthetically is really great, though, like the exterior to Ipsen's Castle or the talking faces archive. Really a cut above.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,614
Necron is supposedly a manifestation of the recurrent "death" theme of the game, and IIRC the Japanese original (as translated to English by some anon) is more on the nose about this. But this is as plausible a final boss as fighting a final FINAL boss called "Loneliness" in a game about friendship, i.e. still completely out of nowhere.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Necron is supposedly a manifestation of the recurrent "death" theme of the game, and IIRC the Japanese original (as translated to English by some anon) is more on the nose about this. But this is as plausible a final boss as fighting a final FINAL boss called "Loneliness" in a game about friendship, i.e. still completely out of nowhere.

Yes, that's the trope. Seemingly they just don't realise that painting a giant grotesque carnival horror and calling it DEATH or LONELINESS or EVIL is just maximum cringe. I personally see the final conversations with Kuja as the 'true' ending. But Kuja himself is a better character because of the relation with Garland. That's Garland's role, rather than Garland being cool or interesting in his own right (he isn't). Without that he's just some kind of weird traveling thong salesman.
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,156
I just see it as one more excuse for great music, one last challenge, one last statement on the game's existential dread theme, and hey, we're in an area that is an interdimensional rift. Gotta have some something truly out of this world. So it comes out of nowehere. So it is somewhat disconnected from the main story. So some may view this as "immature" storytelling and event planning. I don't really consider it as such though I get the mass-butthurt. The story feels complete, but the gameplay doesn't (Kuja is too easy for a final boss, though they could have just made him harder but whatever). one last fight and character struggle doesn't hurt. To me it adds to the game. Sometimes in life shit comes out of complete nowhere unconnected to any other event or drama going on your life, slaps you in the face and ruins your day.

The real crime of FF9 is its slow-ass battle speed and slightly inferior RPG systems compared to what the series had got going with the four previous games. A classic otherwise.

edit:

-Only having one boss fight when you split into four groups for the elemental shrines is obvious cut content. The bosses even all show up in the final dungeon for some reason. So the models were finished but the shrines weren't.

Yeah the shrines are p.disappointing also. They should have each been proper dungeons as in FF5. I imagine that was the original concept but then the team got rushed along or some higher up said "no, we're going in a new direction and this hurts muh storyfaggotry pacing".

Your points of criticism otherwise often doesn't make much sense.
 
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Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,614
Necron is supposedly a manifestation of the recurrent "death" theme of the game, and IIRC the Japanese original (as translated to English by some anon) is more on the nose about this. But this is as plausible a final boss as fighting a final FINAL boss called "Loneliness" in a game about friendship, i.e. still completely out of nowhere.

Yes, that's the trope. Seemingly they just don't realise that painting a giant grotesque carnival horror and calling it DEATH or LONELINESS or EVIL is just maximum cringe. I personally see the final conversations with Kuja as the 'true' ending. But Kuja himself is a better character because of the relation with Garland. That's Garland's role, rather than Garland being cool or interesting in his own right (he isn't). Without that he's just some kind of weird traveling thong salesman.

Yup. I don't know what the hell they were thinking, I think the game's ending is marred by Necron when Kuja was great on his own.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
(Of course, the real true theme of FF9 is how Kuja is a flamboyant, theatrical, thong-wearing fellow whose signature tune is dominated by unmistakeable Queen drum riff)

 

Jigawatt

Arcane
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
3,409
Location
in a desert, walking along in the sand
The game is definitely more finely choreographed in the earlier moments, and then loses a lot of the story cohesion to become an open world sidequest simulator, rather like FF7. Some of the area design aesthetically is really great, though, like the exterior to Ipsen's Castle or the talking faces archive. Really a cut above.

This pretty much echoes my sentiment. The story and a bit of the logic begins to fall apart in the middle of disc 3 but I can completely forgive that considering the visual design and music is so on point.
 

Ialda

Learned
Joined
Oct 13, 2019
Messages
124
(Of course, the real true theme of FF9 is how Kuja is a flamboyant, theatrical, thong-wearing fellow whose signature tune is dominated by unmistakeable Queen drum riff)

Visual kei was a thing in Japan in 2000, sadly.
 

Hassar

Scholar
Joined
Dec 6, 2016
Messages
208
Get if Quina Quen.
The game is definitely more finely choreographed in the earlier moments, and then loses a lot of the story cohesion to become an open world sidequest simulator, rather like FF7. Some of the area design aesthetically is really great, though, like the exterior to Ipsen's Castle or the talking faces archive. Really a cut above.

This pretty much echoes my sentiment. The story and a bit of the logic begins to fall apart in the middle of disc 3 but I can completely forgive that considering the visual design and music is so on point.

I don’t forgive that but I think most Final Fantasies fall apart once the entire world is accessible and it is suddenly very obvious which areas were underdeveloped in terms of story or content. It’s like the story and scenario writers completely focus on world destroying threats or issues and pacing and substance starts to fall off.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Moguri Mod 4.3 got released a few weeks ago.

https://sites.google.com/view/moguri-mod/

The only difference being that Memoria got updated to the current version. This takes care of some remaining issues, implements borderless fullscreen and switches the X/O buttons around to make X confirm by default.

Speaking of which, in response to this I started the game and played the English language version of FFIX for the first time (because I couldn't be bothered at that moment)

...

Holy fucking shit.

All personality has been robbed from the characters speech. 5 minutes in and this is clearly inferior to like.... any other version. I personally grew up on the German version, which I was still playing until now because its a damn good localization. I at least know that the italian and french versions had more effort put into it than this abomination too.

I'm probably not saying anything revolutionary here, but seriously. For anyone having played the game only in the English version. You fucking missed out.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
Missed out on what exactly? any examples?

Just from the start the Tantalus crew is much more expressive, and thick on a variety of accents. A hotpot of scoundrels. Dialog flows better and with more personality in general too.

While what I've seen of the English version so far falls incredibly flat. I guess Ruby has some southern thing going on, but in isolation that doesn't exactly make things any better.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
I will say Final Fantasy IX is exceptional when it comes to german localizations, so maybe I'm talkin a bit down here, but it still feels so flat.
 

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,647
FF10 port is good, too bad that I fucking hate the story, characters and basically everything about its retarded design. Combat system is good though.
 

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