:: Reviews :: Rants ::

Final Fantasy IX continues the Final Fantasy series, by none other than Squaresoft.

The plotline of Final Fantasy IX can be easily forgotten because of the storywriter's attempts to bring in new story concepts. The game itself is very random with the storyline, and you find yourself going against a prime enemy about every 30 minutes. By the third disc, you've seriously forgotten what the main goal of the game is, and you sort of lose initiative to beat the game altogether. The beginning of the game suggests to restore peace in world of Gaia, so we'll stick with that storyline for now. In all honesty, I believe the storyline should have been scraped, and taken more time to write up a better one. The game had too many numerous instances with the story line that tried to bring elements back from previous games, such as Final Fantasy VII.

I enjoyed the gameplay of the game for the most part. The battle system was similar to the previous games, however, Squaresoft decided to to allow four characters available in the battle system. It's a change from previous Final Fantasy games, and is kind of helpful knowing you have one more character to spare. The game also uses the Active Time Events System, it's cool because it allows you to split up your party so that you can search multiple towns simultaneously. In all, I was very happy with the gameplay.

The graphics featured in Final Fantasy IX are lovely. There are numerous Full Motion Videos through out the game. The scenic design itself wasn't too bad, the game tends to use a lot of green in it. They used lots of sparkles (I like sparkles.) and that's always a plus. The character design could have improved. I'm not sure what Squaresoft was trying, but they thought making all the people the size of midgets would be cool, and giving your main character a tail, and making another one of your side characters a rat. Yes, a RAT. Not only that, your bad guys had serious problems as well, the first enemy at the beginning of the game, well, I'm not sure what you could classify her as. And another character, was a complete girly boy. I don't know, but I don't really think that gives the character the complete elements needed to fill the function of your enemy. Instead, you find yourself laughing hysterically at all the bizarre characters... it'd kind of sad.

I have never been displeased with the Final Fantasy scores. Nobuo Uematsu always does a superb job with composing the score, adding all sorts of elements into it. Some lovely songs with a definite classical element added to them, are Rose of May, Eternal Harvest, and Vamo' alla Flamenco. The music gets a 10/10 and is probably the best reason as to why you should give this game a try. If you happen to see any Final Fantasy IX mp3s for download, I highly suggest you download some. The piano collections to FF9 are a bit of a struggle to find, but are definitely worth the download.

This game lacked the elements to be a good game. It's storyline needed a lot of work, and the character design should have been reconsidered. With those two main elements being weak, it's hard for the player getting into the game. The music and gameplay made up a little bit for Squaresoft's mistakes, but only a fraction. This game was a let down to most Square fans, but because this game didn't rack in a lot of money, we have this game to thank for the incredible game that follows, Final Fantasy X.