Original Release: Sony Playstation, 2000. Version Reviewed: Sony Playstation, 2000.
THE PLOT:
Zidane is a thief working with the Tantalus theater troupe, which is actually a cover for a group of bandits. The group plans to use its upcoming performance in the Kingdom of Alexandria to kidnap the beautiful Princess Garnet. To Zidane's surprise, Garnet is eager to be kidnapped, which should make this easy.
It proves to be anything but easy. Bumbling guard Steiner follows the princess onto the airship, and they somehow pick up a clumsy young black mage named Vivi at the same time. While escaping, their airship is shot down on the orders of Garnet's mother, the hideous Queen Brahne. It falls to Zidane to lead the princess to the neighboring kingdom of Lindblum to complete his assignment, with Steiner threatening him and bickering with him every step of the way.
In the course of their journey, they discover more black mages that look like larger versions of Vivi. They don't speak or respond when spoken to, and they appear to have been manufactured. This worries Vivi, and he becomes even more anxious when people in other villages respond to him as if he is a threat.
Garnet fears that her mother is plotting something terrible. Vivi wonders what role the black mages play in this. And when their paths intersect with a mysterious and powerful wizard named Kuja, Zidane starts to suspect that the stakes are bigger than they've imagined...
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| Zidane meets, and is smitten by, Princess Garnet. |
CHARACTERS:
Zidane: He's instantly attracted to Garnet, and he spends the length of the game flirting (somewhat awkwardly) with her. Despite being a criminal, his basic decency constantly shines through, notably in his protectiveness toward both Garnet and Vivi. Additional dimensions are revealed in the story's second half, and he does get pushed past the "rogue with a heart of gold" archetype. Really, though, after two games of brooding loners, it's something of a relief to have a protagonist who's able to laugh at himself and others and who isn't afraid to make an idiot of himself.
Princess Garnet ("Dagger"): Her mother's behavior has grown increasingly erratic, which has prompted her desire to escape the castle. She hopes that if she talks to her "Uncle Cid," ruler of Lindblum, that he'll be able to do something, though she doesn't really have much of a plan beyond that. She initially enjoys the adventure, and an early cutscene shows her grinning ecstatically as she swings from a castle parapet to the theatre ship. That joy does not last. When her mother's actions start resulting in deaths, she berates herself for leaving, wondering if she might have influenced the queen's behavior had she stayed. Her guilt keeps growing throughout the story, with her only truly throwing it off near the end.
Vivi: When the first hour of gameplay focused on a childlike figure who kept falling over, I groaned. It felt like I was being forced to endure the misadventures of an unwanted comedy sidekick. It quickly becomes apparent that there's more to him than that, and I don't think it's an overstatement to say that he's the heart and soul of the game. Once he meets the black mages, he begins questioning first his origins and then the nature of his existence. By the second disc, it's the moments with Vivi that emerge as the most memorable and emotional in the game. Huge credit to the artists, by the way. Even in cutscenes, Vivi's face is no more than a black circle with two gold eyes - and yet somehow, his body language and posture are able to convey a tremendous range of feeling.
Steiner: The bumbling palace guard does qualify as a comedy sidekick. He's pompous and often dim, with both Zidane and Garnet seeming to put up with him as they go from place to place, and his reactions are regularly over-the-top. His main interaction with Zidane in the first half is to threaten him, and he seems to think it magnanimous to advocate for life imprisonment instead of execution for the thief. Even at the start, however, he treats Vivi with absolute respect, and it's clear that he defines himself through his sense of duty, which slowly infuses a certain dignity into him. He's also easily the best combat unit in the game. By the end, if you're equipping him well and keeping up on his abilities, he should be regularly inflicting max damage per turn.
Other Companions: Other party members join as the story unfolds. Freya is a knight from the Kingdom of Burmecia who has had previous dealings with Zidane and who seems to generally trust him. Quina is a creature whose only purpose in life is to discover new foods; its combat gimmick is that it gains abilities by eating monsters. Amarant is an assassin who joins Zidane after losing a fight to him. Eiko is a young girl who is the sole survivor of a village of summoners; at base, she's the best healer in the game, though Garnet can be made her equal (while also doing more damage in combat). All are firmly supporting characters, but they all get a couple of strong moments.
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| An ongoing true/false quiz is one of many, many mini games. |
GAMEPLAY:
The basic gameplay is largely the same as previous entries. You explore areas to discover items, secrets, and mini games. When the character you're controlling finds a certain spot or interacts with a certain NPC, then the story advances.
There are a lot of mini-games and side quests, more than in previous entries. I will freely admit to not completing all of them. I delivered the Mognet letters, found the Stellazzio coins, fought all the monsters in the Treno shop/arena, and finished the talking mouse's quiz. I did not dig up Chocographs, however, nor did I hunt down every "friendly monster" in the game, nor did I jump rope or run races with the kid in Alexandria. My total play time clocked in about 60 hours. A player barreling through only the main plot could probably finish in half that time; someone wanting to complete absolutely everything would probably spend close to 100 hours.
Suffice it to say, there's plenty to do in Final Fantasy IX. And if one or more of the mini games doesn't strike you as fun, then at least most of them are optional.
COMBAT:
I played the PS1 version, which means I did not gain the benefit of any of the rereleases' Quality-of-Life improvements. Unfortunately, without those improvements, Final Fantasy IX has the most annoying combat in the series thus far.
The encounter rate isn't any worse than in other games, and it's actually lower than most of the Nintendo-era ones. But, at least in its original PS1 form, the combat is slow. Each battle has the camera swirl around for about 12 seconds before the fight starts. Over hundreds of encounters, that 12 seconds adds up to a teeth-grinding irritation. Early in the game, there is also a lag between ordering a character to do something and them doing it, though this becomes less of an issue as you unlock skills such as "Auto-Haste."
Skills such as that make the late game battles far more enjoyable than the early game ones. Also, if you keep up on your skills, Final Fantasy IX is relatively easy. But those 12 seconds per battle are enough in themselves to make me wish I had purchased a rerelease with a speed up option instead of the "PSOne Classic."
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| Princess Garnet feels guilt over her mother's actions. |
SOUNDTRACK:
Another Final Fantasy, another gorgeous soundtrack. This 24-year-old game's music score is more varied and has more depth than most movie soundtracks. As per usual for the series, there are different themes for each character, each major area, and even for different battles. The world map music is an instrumental version of Melodies of Life, the end credits song, with other variations in varying tempos occurring in cutscenes and story moments throughout the game. The song itself is a lovely piece, its lyrics perfectly suited to the story and themes. Oh, and the music all fits nicely with the storybook presentation.
At this point, I think it would actually surprise me if a mainline Final Fantasy game didn't have a wonderful soundtrack.
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| An enemy watches the group's escape to Lindblum. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
"Living in the village with everyone fills me with joy. The joy of living with them far outweighs the fear of death. Isn't it the same with you? Traveling with your friends gives your life meaning."
-Black Mage no. 288, with a lesson for Vivi.
At first glance, Final Fantasy IX resembles nothing so much as a fairy tale. In contrast with the more realistic style of Final Fantasy VIII, this game's art is patterned after storybook illustrations. It's bright and colorful; many characters have exaggerated features and expressions; the main character has a tail, while another main character has a black circle for a face with two gold eyes. It's as if after two entries that were predominately sci-fi, this game wanted to make no mistake in cementing the "Fantasy" part of the "Final Fantasy" title.
The characters' personalities seem to reinforce this as a whimsical tale, even a silly one. The main character is sarcastic. Vivi falls over for comedy effect quite often; Steiner is over-the-top in pretty much every way. Even the evil queen seems mainly to be a comedy caricature, complete with jester sidekicks who invert each other's sentences.
The first major break in this tone happens midway through Disc One, when a minor early boss takes a drastic action during a cutscene as the heroes look on in horror. This, and a follow-up moment involving Vivi, are a tipoff that this isn't going to end up being so simple or lightweight. That gets buried for a bit in some comedy antics in Lindblum - but once the characters leave Lindblum, the tale starts to darken. And why not? When you get down to it, fairy tales are pretty dark.
Structurally, the story somewhat resembles Final Fantasy VI in one respect: As with that game, you could subdivide this it into two stories. Disc Two largely closes out the story that began with kidnapping of Princess Garnet, while Disc Three represents a new start as Kuja - who mostly keeps to the shadows in the first half - emerges as a full villain.
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| The endgame takes place against a surreal landscape. |
Settings are varied. Alexandria is the typical medieval fantasy kingdom. Lindblum is an industrial center, with airships connecting various districts to each other. Cleyra is a city that exists atop a giant tree. There's also a village of black mages who gained individual awareness and who now live in seclusion, surrounded by a forest. Toward the end, the game takes players to ever more fantastical areas, with the endgame occurring in a surreal world that is created from fragments of the characters' own memories.
The plot is well put-together and extremely well-told. Even more impressive are the themes. Characters grapple with questions about consciousness and memory, life and death. The black mages are artificial, and yet some of them become aware and form their own community - only to have to come to terms with a finite existence when some of them begin "stopping."
"Black Mage no. 288" never gets a name, but his ruminations are memorable. At one point, he tries to explain to a newcomer the purpose of a cemetery - that it's not for the dead, but rather for the living to remember them:
"We'll never forget you. We'll remember you every time we stand at your grave. And we won't let the fear of death, which each of knows, stop us from living our lives."
These are weighty ideas usually more explored in literature than in video games. It's startling to see such a direct confrontation of them in a bright, colorful fantasy that at first blush looks like it should be filled with Disney characters.
The story is well told. But long after I've forgotten about the machinations of Queen Brahne or Kuja, it's the themes that will resonate. That, and the simple sight of Vivi, staring up and absorbing a horrifying sight in that mid Disc One cutscene - an image that, in the simplicity of its design and the complexity of its context, could about stand in for the game as a whole.
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| Vivi witnesses a horrible sight, and the previously light tone changes sharply. |
OVERALL:
Final Fantasy IX was a commercial success, but its sales on release were far behind those of VII and VIII. Time has been kind to it, however, with it emerging as a favorite within the franchise. I've seen many people refer to it as a masterpiece, and... I'm going to agree with that sentiment.
It's a bit of a slow burn. I was anything but gripped by the initial stages. It only really grabbed me after that cutscene with Vivi midway through Disc One. After that, I started to connect with it, and that connection grew throughout.
I'm going to distinguish this from saying that the game gets better as it goes. A replay of the first part of the game reveals that it's setting up its tonal variations and themes right from the start. It doesn't so much improve as reveal itself. Characters who seem silly are shown to be either monstrous or tragic. One apparent comedy relief character shows dignity and strength; another becomes the heart and soul of the story. And throughout, the themes gain in depth in a way that's impressive and ultimately quite moving.
Final Fantasy IX is an excellent game and an even better story. I'd also rate it as a genuine artistic achievement.
Overall Rating: 10/10.
Previous Game: Final Fantasy VIII
Next Game: Final Fantasy X
Next Release: Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within
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