9 gets worse past disc 2 after the fat ass butt ugly smurf queen gets blown up by bahamut, the plot sort of just disappears and then gets retarded when they get to Terra, the best thing about the game is the budget dedicated to the art assets.Final Fantasy 9 done.
It was alright but the writing remained subpar overal. Entire plotlines and personal dramas never get resolved, or hastily so and forgotten forever. CD4 in particular is hot garbage, it's time to conclude the story, not to throw random new ideas and characters that make no sense and received about the same amount of care and depth as half the main cast got... that is to say, next to none.
For example, the stupid slapstick knight was the first character to really bother me but after watching the intro video, I somehow trusted Japanese writers (lel) to do the obvious and have him grow by finding his balls instead of forever being someone else's footstool, ideally culminating in CD4 with him being either independent of the princess or even confrontational. There are even dioalogues somewhere in the midgame that seems to hint at it being considered at some point ("have you ever lived for yourself instead of taking orders?"), but of course it never goes past that, he remains an unfunny submissive dumbfuck until the very end.
I don't want to lambaste it too badly because it was still a reasonably fun experience, with many beautiful locations and a good sense of adventure... but it's still a jRPG, with all the vapid dialogues, empty characters and wasted plot that comes with it. Yet another "classic" romanticized just because people who should otherwise know better played it back when they had a full head of hair.
The areas are small and empty? Sounds like you're not exploring enough or are still in the early game. Blight Town and Anor Londo are huge, for example.
I did quit precisely at Anor Londo.
There's also the hidden area in the swamp, which you may or may not enjoy depending on how you feel about platforming.
Interesting. I assume you mean this? https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon.net
Looks like you're on the casual side of the Dark Souls audience (people who mostly want the Dark Souls formula as a vehicle, not an end in itself), so I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy 2 and 3 much more than 1.
Yes, that's the version I am playing now.
How so? It has a short, linear "bottleneck" right in the middle of the game (Sen's Fortress to Anor Londo) but both before and after that bottleneck it's totally non-linear, you always have several paths to go down and you can do them in whatever order.
Again, how so? Combat mechanics are more or less quite simple and stripped down to basics, I don't know how you'd call that gimmicky.
The levels are as big as they need to be, and the only level I would come close to calling empty would be anor londo, precisely because it's not small.
Almost every area is primarily populated by enemies you won't see anywhere else.
What do you mean by this? Majority of characters have some agenda or quest that they carry out, excepting merchants and the crestfallen warrior (who's basically a hint kiosk).
Because lack of casual/easy options is a huge part of the formula?
I began to write a reply, but dropped it.
Yeah, I've completed it.
