Squeenix Best Final Fantasy

[Ash]

eh, whatever. I wasn't complaining. Nor was I particularly caring.

So what's the best JRPG/s then, Sir Fur? Since you're so above the actual greatest series of the genre.

Probably Undertale lol.

 

[Damned Registrations]

So what's the best JRPG/s then, Sir Fur? Since you're so above the actual greatest series of the genre.

Probably Undertale lol.

Hell no. I wouldn't even recommend it to anyone. It's good if you'd enjoy a deconstruction of the genre, but it's been overhyped because of memes, rather than it's actual good features.

SMT: Nocturne would be in the running for sure. FFT if that counts. Lufia 2 was amazing for it's time but has some barnacles for sure. Same with Chrono Trigger. Suikoden 1 and 2 have some of the best gameplay surrounding battles in any game period- not the stats/spells shit, which is fairly basic, but things like the dynamic way fleeing/bribery works, or having multiple characters act at once to speed the animations and look way fucking cooler. Breath of Fire 3 might be the prettiest jrpg ever made and has a really cool system for character/party building along with the coolest damned transformation system in any game, period. Man, if anything deserve a difficulty hack it's BoF3, that'd be fucking heaven if a decent one was made. All of the above have decent stories to go along with them, that neatly dodge or subvert genre tropes and are actually interesting enough to care about, instead of generic evil wizard will destroy the world crap. Oh, Crystal Project too, though like FFT it strains the definitions of the genre. It does have the signature combat though.

There's your list of stuff in the running, off the top of my head. I've got other pet favourites too like FF5 or Valkyrie Profile, but I can accept that not everybody is capable of appreciating an epic villain monologue.

 

[Ash]

Thanks for the detailed response nonetheless.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I don't think cutscenes are much of a problem in the FF games of that era. By cutscenes, I assume it's meant both the FMVs(very rare) and unskippable scenes such as the Nibelheim flashback. Certainly not as big a part of the game as in Metal Gear Solid which, by the way, was very innovative in everything it did in that regard and people were rightly impressed, at least as far as the first game goes. What's actually tedious in FF(and JRPGs in general) is the repetitiveness of the random encounters, particularly having to watch the battle start/finish animations, the level up screen and the fade in/out(I guess those technically counts as cutscenes); the running around in towns that don't have a lot of content (Juno, Balamb Garden) and clicking through generic dialogue with NPCs just so you don't miss anything. If the games weren't so pretty and had such great music it would be hard to bear, but it turns out they are and they do.

Balamb Garden not a lot of content? Another Triple Triad denier has outed himself!

All town exploration segments are rather short and almost never outstay their welcome for me. I even enjoy talking to every NPC, aside from the rare few which have a slow animation before the text appears. the world is super interesting and tasteful humor is very common. Looting these towns is always worth it. And you may find secret passages or side quests too. Every town also often has multiple unique gameplay element too: some mini-game, puzzle element, side quest.

You said Balamb, well, let's go with that then: There's a few draw points (some hidden), some 20 or so people to optionally play cards with, a few with unique cards which is the important part. Training center is great for...well, training and growth, contains some unique enemies with unique drops and high AP. There are a few magazines scattered for weapon upgrades and limit breaks. a few sidequests are started here. It's nothing spectacular but it meets a baseline level of reward and engagement, shits all over every other JRPG I've played (but not cRPG). I never not enjoy it.

Battle start/fin is problematic to varying degrees depending on the game. 5 and 6 are super fast. 7 & 8 a bit slower but it doesn't bother me. 9 is horrendously slow and a stain on such a great game.

Hey man, not fair! I DO love Triple Triad. And I love Balamb Garden, it's a special place.

I admit there are better examples in FF8 for pointless running around: the other Gardens, for starters, and Esthar, although that seems like they had something else in mind originally. Balamb Garden has much more interesting content, and it's a charming place. You still run around a lot, though.

Obviously, you also have the loading transitions, due to all the different pre-rendered areas. Western games like Fallout didn't have that problem, the town was just a bunch of buildings in the same map. Then you have the JRPG dialogue. A lot of NPCs love telling you their life story. Often you have to wait for the animations to end. Something about their lost son, or their love of fishing, even though it's not connected to any quest. It's a different approach, not bad necessarily, it can work to great effect, but it requires a degree of patience that obviously many people don't have.

 

[Ash]

Hey man, not fair! I DO love Triple Triad. And I love Balamb Garden, it's a special place.

I admit there are better examples in FF8 for pointless running around: the other Gardens, for starters, and Esthar, although that seems like they had something else in mind originally. Balamb Garden has much more interesting content, and it's a charming place. You still run around a lot, though.

Obviously, you also have the loading transitions, due to all the different pre-rendered areas. Western games like Fallout didn't have that problem, the town was just a bunch of buildings in the same map. Then you have the JRPG dialogue. A lot of NPCs love telling you their life story. Often you have to wait for the animations to end. Something about their lost son, or their love of fishing, even though it's not connected to any quest. It's a different approach, not bad necessarily, it can work to great effect, but it requires a degree of patience that obviously many people don't have.

It's interesting you bring that up, as it is Fallout 1 towns that lack content in my eyes. zero interactivity/gameplay stuff outside of NPC interactions and side quests, and are also a fair bit uglier, though the art is still nice. FF towns are better. Walk in and loot the place, finding hidden secrets etc is fun, play cards with people, there is usually at least one unique gameplay event per town, and they are quick to process the majority of the time; often brief visits in passing which I definitely like (though there is for sure some lengthy main-story bits in some towns of course). Life story? dialogue is short. Most NPCs spout a mere two lines and then done.

Personally I never considered the screen transition time problematic. It's like 4 seconds? Yeah I definitely think your patience is low. Only FF9 pushes it for me, with its battle intros etc. And FFTactics. Also really pushes it.

Galbadia Garden is largely pointless to explore first visit yeah. It has a draw point here and there and a few other things but its content doesn't match its size. Good example. It also doubles as a dungeon later though and it does this better (it locks doors, thereby creating a maze. Still not a great dungeon though, but acceptable).

Esthar is also not for exploring. You use the elevator services to transport you between shopping/palace/exit. That's it. The city is otherwise a maze for the lunatic pandora event. Unfortunately though, it takes exploring esthar at least once to discover this. Much less painful on replays. Anyways, FF8 isn't a great example of level design, though it shits on most JRPGs. Not a bad one either, with some good stand-out bits, but most other games in the series do it better. There is indeed a little too much running around in 8. I probably suffered this far less because of my strat guide use as a kid.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I don't want to single out FF8 for that, of all things. I don't think most JRPG fans even noticed it. The worst RPG I can think of for running too much in towns is Summoner for the PS2, and that's a Western game. I didn't get very far into it, the town design put me off so much--just way larger than it needed to be. And no JRPG I know has such an exasperating town/city as Vivec in Morrowind, it's basically a giant torture device for the player.

So much for facile JRPG and WRPG comparisons...

I gave Fallout as a counterpoint, because it's the most obvious example. Arcanum is very similar and packed much more content in their one big town(that they managed to finish), and there is a lot of things to do in each screen. Obviously two different design philosophies (and budgets). Arcanum has a larger problem with its linear dungeons, but that's already going off topic.

Anyway, this started because someone said FF has too many cutscenes and that puts him off the games. I replied that cutscenes aren't a problem, but you waste a lot of time with other things. My point about about running around too much was crudely made and you predictably nitpicked it, which is fine. It's not really a specific FF8 problem or, as you pointed out, even much of a problem when the game has acceptable density of content (obviously this doesn't always happen). A better argument would be that running around a lot + frequent loading screens(in the PS1 games) + seemingly pointless flavor dialogue exasperates some players, and I'm often in that camp. I actually love the PS1 FFs, but I need to be in a very specific mood to play them.

About the dialogue, surely in every JRPG I've played there's some guy sitting by a fishing boat who loves to tell you how he loves the sea and how he feels the currents carry with them the dreams of a bygone era but he's just an old man now and the world has changed. Well, it's a Japanese game! I like it in moderate amounts, but I get why some people don't.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I've played them all, starting with FF1 on an actual NES that I bought for $40 as a kid from a store called White Mart, and FF 10 is my favorite.

Idk, the story just really worked for me, and I'm not even a storyfag. I really enjoyed the plot reveals, even when you know the twists it's fun to see the characters play off each other. There was an economy to the writing forced by the localization's limitations, compared to modern word-vomit you see everywhere. The turn-based combat is also solid and the sphere grid is a unique (if a bit tedious) leveling mechanic.

I like FF8 the best out of the PSX trilogy; FF7 just looks like eye cancer I can't stand playing it any more, and FF9 is boring.

Out of the SNES games I'll take FF6 any day. FF4 is too basic and while the job system in FF5 is tasty, I think the AP you get from fights is so low you barely get any abilities unless you *really* grind, and I usually don't mind grinding.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

SShot is difficult to acquire and incredibly ineffective compared to things that you can get far, far more easily

My most recent playthrough of FF5 Pixel remaster I found Sshot/Rapid fire + Two-handing the Brave Blade provided the highest damage output for melee. Any other weapon or dual-wield and the damage drop off was too severe; not worth it. Getting the Brave Blade is pretty easy, keeping it at max damage is annoying though. The real question is if you want to spend all the hours grinding an otherwise useless class, for a casual playthrough ranger is not ideal. The pixel remaster has auto-battle and fast forward that makes grinding much easier though.

 

[Damned Registrations]

SShot is difficult to acquire and incredibly ineffective compared to things that you can get far, far more easily

My most recent playthrough of FF5 Pixel remaster I found Sshot/Rapid fire + Two-handing the Brave Blade provided the highest damage output for melee. Any other weapon or dual-wield and the damage drop off was too severe; not worth it. Getting the Brave Blade is pretty easy, keeping it at max damage is annoying though. The real question is if you want to spend all the hours grinding an otherwise useless class, for a casual playthrough ranger is not ideal. The pixel remaster has auto-battle and fast forward that makes grinding much easier though.

Sshot works out to x2 damage multiplier, assigned randomly. A dancer with the armour that makes sword dance pop up more often has a 50% chance of doing 4x damage, and you can pick your targets and steal hp/mp when you get the 'bad' results. And if you want more steady damage, simply berserk the character. The damage per turn will be lower, but you'll get so many more turns by not having to waste time entering actions it'll pay off, especially with a fast, hasted character. Magic sword does even better in the lategame if you know the enemy weaknesses, and all of this pales completely in comparison to giltoss, which does just obscene amounts of damage right out of the box. Chemist and bard each allow for ridiculous cheese as well, though to be fair the bard doesn't come online until very late, aside from vs undead.

I get it, watching your ninja attack 8 times in a row is really cool, but the math just doesn't check out unless you were running into the damage limit, in which case you clearly could have gotten by without the grinding. If I were going to grind, I'd do it as a thief for the tasty agility bonus for mastering the class and all the nice innate passives.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Two-hand, not dual wield. Single weapon. Double the attack power of the brave blade, four hits. No ninja needed. I had magic sword on my Ninja, Flare sword adds flat damage to everything even without weaknesses. Gil toss is great for random encounters but obviously doesn't hit more than once per target, and costs money that you have to grind for.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Two-hand, not dual wield.

Yeah I know that Two hand is basically strictly superior to dual wield. But my point is that SShot is just good for style points. Just use dance. It stacks with all the things. Use it with a twohanded sword and sword magic for like, times 32 damage or something. Or, again, just use berserk and haste if it's a boss. ATB is bullshit and is stealing half your turns with animation time.

costs money that you have to grind for.

Or you could just sell some of your junk. At level 10 it'll do up to 3000 damage for 500 gil. That's like... half the cost of a phoenix down. Or 1/30th of a brave blade sale. More realistically... coral and flame rings each sell for 25000, and the game showers you with tons of crap weapons you'll never want to use because it has so many classes. By level 50 it'll be up to 9000 damage for 2500 gil. Defense applies (You'll lose maybe 5-15% of that damage on tough targets like Shinryu or Exdeath, but some have literally 0 even lategame), but a lot of other stuff like evasion and buffs do not, nothing is immune to it (Well, Omega, but only because of silly defense stat), and it can hit multiple targets at once.

Also, the gil turtle cave is a thing. Giltoss is BROKEN. It'd be boring, but you could totally just kill every boss in the second world with a party of 4 samurai and they'd win on the first turn in 95% of fights. Yeah it costs gil, but you can get enough to bury everything in the game with way, way less grinding than it takes to get Sshot and twohand and a full strength braveblade. Oh, and you can use it alongside a shield to make you evade like half the attacks in the game.

Most powerful doesn't mean the biggest number in my book, it means victory with the least effort.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I've played them all, starting with FF1 on an actual NES that I bought for $40 as a kid from a store called White Mart, and FF 10 is my favorite.

Idk, the story just really worked for me, and I'm not even a storyfag.

Well, now I've seen everything. Goddamn.

 

[Ash]

Yeah...guy is a storyfag in denial. "I'm not a storyfag but I liked 10 best, because of the story, and despite the decline to gameplay e.g no open world & more linear levels, mini-map JUST IN CASE, reduced interactivity with the environment and a reduction in miscellaneous gameplay events/modifiers throughout the story (cloister of trials (puzzle) is an example of one type, and they are a bit painful), torturous mini-games that make all prior mini-games look monocled..."

eh, I can't throw more at it than that. It's still not a terrible game. I like 10 too but it is decline. Story is...whatever. It's certainly unique and with merit. But no matter how good it may or may not be I can't get over the decline in gameplay, visuals, and more subjectively the overall style: introduction of voice acting, too much narration to the player by Tidus, various factions and locations are kind of gay, especially anything to do with bevelle or any summoner that isn't Yuna. Also Tidus. People talk shit about Squall and Cloud? They're both chad compared to Tidus. Also Cloud and Squall are both underrated anyways. Unfairly shat on.

When it comes to story alone though, 6, 7 and 9 are definitely my first picks. 9 probably being the winner.
Then I'd still pick 8 and even 5 over 10. 5 has underappreciated value in how lighthearted and to the point it is.

 

[Ash]

Also I am butthurt about the poll. FF6 is a great game and while I consider it qualifying as gameplayfag-approved, the first 1/3 of it is quite painful in that regard. Not without gameplay merit, but ultimately too on rails storyfag mixed with shitty basic combat.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Eh, FF6 combat is easy, but the combat is one of the more interesting ones in the series for a first time casual playthrough. Lots of cool unique character abilities, like Gau's rages, Cyan's sword techs, sabin's blitzes and Mog's dances, all of which have more interesting mechanics than bog standard spellcasting. I can see why people would enjoy it if they're not into difficulty or character building. And FF6 was probably a peak of the series for equipment options. Just a metric fuckton of cool items, most of them tucked away in little secrets scattered around the world. I'll take stuff like the valiant knife, offering, gem box or even wall rings over a weapon upgrade that grants neglible extra damage on a character that never attacks any day. FF7's materia system would have been cooler in theory, but most of it is utterly useless without massive grinding.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The easy part is why you can fuck around with the options. If a game is hard you settle for the boring but practical options.

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy/Parties

 

[Ash]

Eh, FF6 combat is easy, but the combat is one of the more interesting ones in the series for a first time casual playthrough. Lots of cool unique character abilities, like Gau's rages, Cyan's sword techs, sabin's blitzes and Mog's dances, all of which have more interesting mechanics than bog standard spellcasting. I can see why people would enjoy it if they're not into difficulty or character building. And FF6 was probably a peak of the series for equipment options. Just a metric fuckton of cool items, most of them tucked away in little secrets scattered around the world. I'll take stuff like the valiant knife, offering, gem box or even wall rings over a weapon upgrade that grants neglible extra damage on a character that never attacks any day. FF7's materia system would have been cooler in theory, but most of it is utterly useless without massive grinding.

I think you may have misread. I was criticizing the first 1/3rd of the game, its gameplay, and yes, its combat, during this third only. As with most FF, the gameplay starts simple and gets progressively more complex the longer you play, but the exception here with FF6 is it takes a really long time (9 hrs?). Before you get some espers, get to form your own party properly and have more than a few to choose from, have enough equipment and relics to be able to actually personalize and so on. Before that the combat is spam cure/fire/autocrossbow/blitz etc without much variables, thought or strategy involved.

After that 9 hrs, combat and gameplay on the whole rapidly ramps up in complexity and becomes far more interesting. It really is the turning point after you get the espers, with the Magitek factory as the very next level (level design is suddenly more complex, though Zozo is still an interesting test), espers (stat building/summons/magic learning), the airship (exploration freedom), can form your own party and switch at any time from the cockpit (combat dversity/freedom), you are starting to form a sizable selection of equipment and relics here and so on (battle tactics and build diversity).

Anyways, no other good FF takes this long to get going gameplay-wise. FF5 for example you get your first set of jobs within an hour, and can start building as you like. Second set of jobs after around 3 hours. There's secrets like Shiva in a certain town (can be a tough boss too), and Ramuh in an overworld forest. The fireship is an awesome dungeon with a tough boss and not as far-in as the magitek factory. Similar case for FF7 and others. FF6 just takes painfully long to get involved and level up to gameplay-fag approved, that's all.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, I agree FF6 starts off slow, but I think as early as Narshe river it starts to get interesting. Locke has a cool segment, as does Sabin who meets new inteersting characters. I, uh... can't remember the third one. Edgar? ...checking... oh right it was Terra sneaking into Narshe. That part was crap. But after that point you've already got some interesting pieces of gear like the genji glove, earrings and black belt.

FF7 doesn't really kick off imo until like... the airship? Even after you escape midgar you're still blocked by arbitrary walls to prevent you from sequence breaking, it's not even terrain based. You can select your party sure, but who cares? Barret, Red and Tifa are all basically the same character, they have more or less the same stats and even their limit breaks are interchangaeble until Red gets lunatic high. It's basically only a question of if you want Aeris in the party for healing or not. 8 and 9 just never kick off imo, everything regarding character customization is just too obvious to find what's optimal or worse yet is such a marginal difference it's irrelevant.To be fair my memory of FF9 is hazy, I only ever finished it once and was thoroughly disappointed by it in pretty much every way. It's my least favourite game from 1-12. 8 I at least gave a second playthrough, but if anything it soured me on it even further.

I'll agree FF5 deserves to win the poll. It's got the best gameplay hands down, and pretty much every FF game is some flavour of nonsensical clusterfuck when it comes to story anyways. I think FF6 had the best one, but that's not saying much.

 

[Ash]

FF7 doesn't really kick off imo until like... the airship?

It kicks off immediately. Materia combinations are continually growing. Shinra HQ for example is awesome. Lots of puzzles, exploration and choices; actual level & gameplay design. But that's a constant throughout most of the 90s games except 4 and the first third of 6 (though as you say, it still has some good bits like locke's scenario). The moment you leave Midgar you get to choose your own party and switch any time, and there is some optional stuff around (learn matra magic, some choco farm crap, learn beta, ransack Kalm). It's still quite tame, but continually growing one equipment piece, materia find, party member join at a time, but what makes it beat FF6 is consistently decent level design - even the first dungeon, train graveyard is cool with some basic puzzles and hidden treasures. There's misc gameplay like optional stuff to do from the start no matter how minor. What's saving this battery the shopkeep gave me do, that can be used when you return to midgar, maybe? What happens if I order sushi or BBQ? What if I rob this kid's stash of 1 gil after frobbing his door multiple times? Don't miss the Turtle Paradise posters! How many Fire Materia should I buy, anyway? (answer = none, but you probably want to buy at least 1 each of the other starter materia). It's nice that there's endless random gameplay events, like the adventure game-like prompting and choices of the crossdressing segment, and timing puzzles when climbing the junk to the plate above.
Even bomb detonation countdowns make things more exciting, or throwing barrels at the turks. Anything but the standard linear hallways and endless talking of other JRPG franchises.

...A couple bits really suck though, namely the Flashback at Kalm or the CPR mini-game. Still, first third of 7 destroys first third of 6 for the most part. Combat-wise, it's probably a toss-up but at least the characters are builds of your choosing, party member selection of your choosing, enemy skill learns that YOU acquired and so on. Also there is no super tough Midgar Zolom equivalent in early 6.

FF6 on the other hand has crap like Mt Koltz which is entirely linear and non-interactive outside of maybe 1 chest, Ghost Train (still some cool gameplay nuances here as I mentioned before, but it's very basic), The military base (nothing except shitty forced combat), the Narshe Mines where the most interesting thing is the stupid 3 party moogle battle mini-game...thing (serves as a tutorial for the later more interesting one with Kefka I guess). It's just shit and in complete contrast to later game content that is actually good. Props to South Figaro bits and Zozo though. They're worthy.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

To be fair my memory of FF9 is hazy, I only ever finished it once and was thoroughly disappointed by it in pretty much every way. It's my least favourite game from 1-12.

What didn't you like about it?

 

[Ash]

It took Triple Triad from 8 and made it a pointless distraction

Otherwise yeah, I also want to know. Especially given the furries.

It's a great game, though its weakest aspect is surely the combat, and I think this guy is squarely combatfag, with an emphasis on difficulty.

Just download FF9 unleashed :shrug: fixes the difficulty but sadly not the awful battlespeed.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

If I'm not mistaken the PC version has a speed-up? Might be getting my shit mixed up tho, been a while.

It's a great game, though its weakest aspect is surely the combat

Yeah this is the only thing X did well, too bad it was wasted.
As far as IX goes, for me it ticks all jRPG boxes (some stand-out chars in Vivi and Steiner, globetrotting, fairytale/techno vibe, whimsy and drama) and it ticks them well; it really feels like a throwback/loveletter to FF (never mind it turned out a eulogy...).

 

[Falksi]

I mean, I agree FF6 starts off slow, but I think as early as Narshe river it starts to get interesting. Locke has a cool segment, as does Sabin who meets new inteersting characters. I, uh... can't remember the third one. Edgar? ...checking... oh right it was Terra sneaking into Narshe. That part was crap. But after that point you've already got some interesting pieces of gear like the genji glove, earrings and black belt.

I just recently replayed it, and agree with Ash, it's a drag until you get a nice chunk of espers. Up until that point almost every battle including boss battles (apart from the Kefka fight and the odd Monster-In-A-Box) is won by spamming your then-members special ability. Edgar's tools and Cyan's Quadraslash in particular break the game.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I'm so glad I don't give a fuck about jRPG combat, really takes a load off ya know

 

[Damned Registrations]

What didn't you like about it?

Like, everything, just about.

I hated all the characters except Freya. Mostly because of the retarded bobblehead art direction, but the actual characters themselves did nothing for me either- Steiner was a moron, Xidane (was that the name?) was a non-character with no motivations or connections to anyone, which is also true of Amarant and Eiko. I mean, at least Eiko had a hometown I guess. Vivi, Garnet and Freya were the only ones that had a story around them, a reason to actually be doing things. But Vivi's was needlessly obtuse, Freya's just ends halfway through the game, and well... I just didn't care about Garnet because her story made little sense, just randomly her parents became evil or some shit. Nadia did the estranged princess thing way better, actually having a good reason to be torn between adventure and home. Quina was just weird and gross.

As mentioned, I loathed the artstyle. It felt like a parody of the SNES games I liked.

Gameplay wise, again, I hated most of the cast. The Summon/White mage thing they had going on was fine, but everyone else was pretty dull. Vivi didn't get any cool spells from what I recall, everyone's Trance skills were utter garbage except Zidane. Battles spent way too much time doing stupid camera zooms and shit, the ATB system has pretty much always been a shitshow in FF games, aside from perhaps FF4 where agility actually made a big difference and varied in a reasonable way between characters. Learning skills and stuff from equipment would have been neat... except they were mostly boring crap and you didn't have enough equipment to be forced into making hard choices, even if you weren't grinding. The card game, as mentioned, was pointless. The chocobo stuff was tedious and also pointless. I mean really, pretty much all the loot in the game was pointless.

I feel like this is the thing people don't get when I complain about the latter games: their treasures don't matter. When you get a Genji glove in FF6, you basically DOUBLE your damage output. For one item. And there are a ton of items just as powerful or more, from weapons to armour to accessories. Finding a new esper is exciting because you not only get use of the esper itself, which can be insanely powerful, but potentially unlock spells for literally anyone you want. FF4 and 5 did this even better because base stats and defense actually did things there, while going from 20 to 60 defense in FF6 is basically cosmetic. But FF6 armours did cool shit like grant images so it balanced out.

I'll pick on 9 here since I've already ragged on FF8 a bunch. I can't remember shit so I just opened a random walkthrough and clicked somewhere in the middlish. Disc 2 Magdalene forest. Sure. No items for two area. Fine. Black mage village.

Autism

Items	Gysahl Greens, Elixir, 2,000 Gil, 843 Gil, Ether, Black Belt, Virgo [Key Item]

Huh that copied nicely. Alright. The first five things are garbage. No, elixirs don't get me randy. Black Belt, what does this do?

Black Belt	Everyone	1	0	Raises Wind-elemental attack Strength +2 Spirit +2	Beast Killer Demi HP+20%

That last section is learnable abilities. Holy shit I would be disappointed to find this. Wind elemental attack? Who even has that? Trivial stat bonuses. The learnable skills are things I would never even equip.

Virgo, IIRC, is part of some annoying collectathon sidequest that eventually gives you an item you no longer need.

Moving on...

Conde Petie Mountain Path​

Items	Remedy, Blue Stone [Key Item], Tent, Red Stone [Key Item], Magic Tag, Tent, Ether, Kupo Nut [Key Item], Tent, Yellow Stone [Key Item], Green Stone [Key Item], Ether

Literally everything there is a consumable or a puzzle component. Snorefest. Oh, and the kupo nut. That's another even lamer sidequest that just pissed me off every time I turned one in.

The boss has an uncommon steal, maybe that will be cool?

Mythril Fork	42	None	High Tide	Steal from Ralvurahva (U), Hilgigars (U) Buy from Conde Petie

So it does nothing special and you can buy it nearby anyways. There's also a RARE steal, which can apparently take hours to get.

Fairy Flute	24	Esuna Haste Regen	Steal from Hilgigars (R) Buy from Oeilvert (Mogshop), Desert Palace (Mogshop)	2	2	2,250

I mean, at least Haste is a good spell, and maybe Regen (it's varied between good and total crap over time, no idea how it fares here) but again, this is shit you can simply buy.

If you missed every single item across that entire section, you would not care. And from what I recall, the entire game is like this. Even supposedly rare and powerful equipment was always just a disappointment. I'm sure something, somewhere lets you learn auto-haste or some shit, but holy fuck, the ratio of time spent looking to finding good shit is all wrong.

I also hated the plot. To be fair, plots in FF games are pretty much always some kind of nested plotholes ending with a fight against some incarnation of evil, but I literally can't remember anything about FF9's plot except the black mages being artifical lifeforms and like half a dozen examples of people being evil for no reason. Like, they're not even trying to amass power or anything. And I think it pulled the 'No wait the REAL villain was my boss all along!' card like 4 times. FF6 is a masterpiece by comparison, and it's about a crazy person rising to power and being crazy.

/rant