SamTheSalmon
2 reviews liked by SamTheSalmon
Final Fantasy IX
2000
FF9's presentation is really fucking good. The music is great as always, the graphics are quantum leaps above FF7, and the English script is very, very good. The story is outstanding and pulls you in right away, the characters are all great, and the Active Time Event system gives you plenty of time with them. The gameplay is almost awesome, with a lot of nice streamlining and a brilliant ability learning system that actually gives equipment more weight than "This sword make number go up, discard old one and use this one now". I also appreciate how generous the game is with level-ups, minimizing the amount of grinding.
FF9's combat is really fucking slow. It's the only thing holding me back from giving this a higher rating. Battle sequences begin and end with several seconds of loading, animations take so stupidly long that your attacks get pushed far back in the cue, and even at max speed, those ATB bars seem to take their sweet time filling up. I've seen people complain about the unreliability of ATB before, but this is the only FF game where I seriously felt it was an issue. Even with speedup in an emulator, the fights are so slow that I can only assume the speed at which they play out was some technical compromise to keep the battle screens looking as good as they do. Combine this sluggishness with random encounters, and dungeons can be a slog at times, even when they're well-designed.
Still a great game, and the ending was really beautiful. I just wish the battles didn't test my patience.
FF9's combat is really fucking slow. It's the only thing holding me back from giving this a higher rating. Battle sequences begin and end with several seconds of loading, animations take so stupidly long that your attacks get pushed far back in the cue, and even at max speed, those ATB bars seem to take their sweet time filling up. I've seen people complain about the unreliability of ATB before, but this is the only FF game where I seriously felt it was an issue. Even with speedup in an emulator, the fights are so slow that I can only assume the speed at which they play out was some technical compromise to keep the battle screens looking as good as they do. Combine this sluggishness with random encounters, and dungeons can be a slog at times, even when they're well-designed.
Still a great game, and the ending was really beautiful. I just wish the battles didn't test my patience.
This review contains spoilers
I'll be honest, MOMO and Albedo carried the first game for me, I liked xenosaga episode 1, but the gameplay and dungeon designs were just terrible, the enemies were insanely annoying, and although the story had some very good moments, was more formatted as a prologue.
This game does not share basically any of those issues. Really. The only complaint I have for this game is that in the last two dungeons, the on foot enemies are annoyingly bulky. That's about it.
They massively cut down the dungeon length, and added some decent puzzles to them, I wouldn't say that they are a highlight or anything, but they are tolerable enough for me not to harm the game's ranking for it.
The story is a giant upgrade though. The Jin Margelius fight at the beginning is already a lot more gripping to me then the alien's invading the ship. and Jr. can carry a story a lot more than Shion.
Albedo is simply just peak, he's a highlight in every scene that he's in. Same with Momo, and the game is absolutely filled to the brim with scenes of those two.
Jin is a very nice addition to the cast, and his relationship with Shion is a pretty interesting dynamic to have.
Oh also the final boss is kind of a joke. I mean he's foreshadowed and does a few things in the story but his fight was very easy, and he just isn't that threatening as a villain because he lacks ties to the characters unlike everyone else.
The combat system is very poorly explained, but once expanded on, it's actually around on par with some of the other xeno-games. The mech combat is simple, but unlike xenogears, healing them is easily accessable, so I found them a lot easier to stomach. It's not peak combat or anything but it's a pretty solid fun combat system that can get me to all of the peak story bits. Incredibly sleeper game.
This game does not share basically any of those issues. Really. The only complaint I have for this game is that in the last two dungeons, the on foot enemies are annoyingly bulky. That's about it.
They massively cut down the dungeon length, and added some decent puzzles to them, I wouldn't say that they are a highlight or anything, but they are tolerable enough for me not to harm the game's ranking for it.
The story is a giant upgrade though. The Jin Margelius fight at the beginning is already a lot more gripping to me then the alien's invading the ship. and Jr. can carry a story a lot more than Shion.
Albedo is simply just peak, he's a highlight in every scene that he's in. Same with Momo, and the game is absolutely filled to the brim with scenes of those two.
Jin is a very nice addition to the cast, and his relationship with Shion is a pretty interesting dynamic to have.
Oh also the final boss is kind of a joke. I mean he's foreshadowed and does a few things in the story but his fight was very easy, and he just isn't that threatening as a villain because he lacks ties to the characters unlike everyone else.
The combat system is very poorly explained, but once expanded on, it's actually around on par with some of the other xeno-games. The mech combat is simple, but unlike xenogears, healing them is easily accessable, so I found them a lot easier to stomach. It's not peak combat or anything but it's a pretty solid fun combat system that can get me to all of the peak story bits. Incredibly sleeper game.