Game Thoughts: Final Fantasy 9
I have a very deep nostalgia for Final Fantasy titles -- specifically for 7-10 which I played as a teenager. These works made a fairly a large impact on my life and my artistic tastes.
I'm not normally one to replay long games, and have recently had trouble finding joy in traditional random-encounter JRPGs, but after recently opening a few packs of Final Fantasy Magic the Gathering cards and pulling a Vivi card, Final Fantasy 9 was calling.
I don't think I would have made it through the game without the Memoria mod, so I want to highlight how much that helped. Besides helping upscale and widescreen the graphics, it enabled a few cheats for some of the groan-inducing minigames (frogs, jump-rope), as well as options to change the awful card system to the Final Fantasy 8 game, make battles actually turn-based (battles pause when a character has a turn) and enable quick buttons to double the game speed and turn off battles temporarily. I shamelessly used all of these, and even switched on "9999 damage every hit" a handful of times when I needed to grind.
The game opens on an incredible high note, and I was honestly impressed with how much cutscene there was compared to combat in the game (this experience may have been aided by the mods).
In all honesty the overall story for the game is a mess. Playing as an adult is definitely a very different experience than playing as a teenager, and the gaps in logic and terrible story pacing definitely don't hold up when compared to modern game storytelling. I clearly remember being upset as a teenager by the scene where Blank is petrified, but he'd only had a handful of appearances prior to the scene. The iconic Black Waltz bosses just kinda show up without any meaningful setup, and the ending fight is basically nonsense.
That said there's a lot that does hold up! The characters are designed well, and the ones that they bothered to write for stick with you. Vivi, Zidaine, Eiko, and Steiner all have interesting stories to tell or development arcs and Freya and Amarant have undeniable aesthetic coolness that sticks with you (even if they get little real development.) Dagger is honestly mostly a prop for Zidane and Steiner's personalities, and I don't know what the hell they were thinking with Quina design or story-wise, but I'm a sucker for a blue mage so they were in my party most of the game.
It's a great cast, and there's plenty of memorable characters and places and events throughout the world -- so even though the overall story was a mess. Taken as small vignettes instead of an overarching weird story it was very cool and a lot of fun. The music was also top-notch, even if some of it felt less impactful than I recall due to the mid writing of some scenes. I still absolutely adore the overworld theme.
I come away a little disappointed that one of my sweetheart teenage-year games isn't the masterpiece I remember it being, but simultaneously refreshed by an overall fun playthrough of a classic JRPG that still has a tonne of heart.