After the worldwide breakout now-in-3D sensation of FFVII, and the more experimental, out-there FFVIII, FFIX returns to the same style of adventure as the older games. The tone and setting is a lot more traditional fantasy as you journey around the world of Gaia that is shrouded in mist (and mystery). The first half of it really did remind me of the structure of FFIV and how your party members are often swapping in and out as the story progresses and sometimes you'll even play as other members off doing other things. Eventually though you do get more free reign over the world, the ability to pick and choose your party members, and in my opinion is where the game starts to fall apart a little bit.

Gameplay-wise it is your standard ATB. Bars fill up and each combatant takes their turn, and Limit Breaks have been replaced with the Trance gauge. A secondary bar fills up under various circumstances and it augments that characters appearance and allows them to take some unique actions. Zidane gets access to his powerful Dyne skills, Vivi the black mage can do two black mage spells a turn, and so on. It's definitely an interesting take on Limit Breaks, and I thought the Trance designs were very cool. Of course too, the main gimmick is the ability system. Each piece of gear has different abilities or spells attached to them that different party members can learn. Use that gear for long enough and the party member can equip the ability regardless of if they are wearing the gear. On paper it seems like a nice idea, but especially once you have your full party it just becomes cumbersome to check every piece of gear with every party member. It really feels like the game just wanted to encourage the player to focus on zeroing in on their favourite three party members and forget about the rest. If they really do remake this game, I hope this gets a massive amount of QoL to not make it so cumbersome to interact with.

The story itself is alright. There is a recurring theme of finding meaning in one's own life, and that shines through in some of the characters (Zidane, Vivi, Garnet, and Steiner in particular) but sadly everyone else feels like they are missing the rest of their arcs. I love every playable character to varying degrees, but I wish I got to know half of them better.

The world itself feels quite compact. The various towns and dungeons you do go to are gorgeous thanks to the lovely 2D background art, but I was really surprised that there weren't more things to go see and do as part of the story especially after FFVIII which felt comparatively massive. On the topic of artstyle too, I never did get used to the human 3D models (particularly in the many pre-rendered cutscenes). The shape of their faces imposed on the sort of chibi models drifted into uncanny valley for me, so I really just felt all the budget (and storage space) that went into those could've been better used anywhere else.

While it has perhaps sounded like I have been overly critical of Final Fantasy IX, I do think it is worth playing for FF fans. There is a solid soundtrack as always, cool bosses to battle, and if I really want to be honest Vivi alone is worth it - just maybe wait for that rumored remake.

I didn't expect to like FFIX as much based on what I knew beforehand as I did. It's just so charming and full of heart, the soundtrack is one of the best ever, it really feels like a fairy tale. I loved it in the end.

I really came to love most of the cast even if most of their arcs are unfortunately undercooked in the end, it was partially made up for me by just how inherently likable they were. I so wish Freya especially would have gotten more than she did, by design she is one of the most intriguing party members in the series to me. We love mysterious rat dragoon ladies... You can unfortunately really tell that some cuts probably had to be made along the way, with characters but also with some sections towards the end. The game crumbled a bit under the weight of its own ambition I suppose.
But on the other side of the coin we have Garnet who is among the most compelling characters in the entire series to me, I loved seeing her journey. Vivi is a bean too - I really think whoever decided to take the OG black mage design and make a lovable little blorbo out of it was a genius. Kuja is incredible as well and really helped by how much actual screen time he gets. Easily my favorite FF villain of the PS1 era, maybe among the top in the general series too. His themes are also just really good, I really loved whenever he was on the screen. Unfortunately he doesn't quite get the final boss sequence he deserves, VII and VIII easily beat that one, but the true final battle made me sweat at 10-30 levels below everyone else I've seen do the battle, so I had fun with that at least..?

Gameplay-wise, FFIX is hardly anything special, but in a way I took a lot of joy out of its relative simplicity in itself, it has its own charm and sometimes it's just what I need. Going in I also expected some absolutely miserable dungeons based on criticisms I had commonly heard and I ended up finding none of them anything worse than inoffensive? The worst the game got was some of the sidequests and those are technically optional, so I can't really complain too much.. Having a couple fuckass sidequests does feel a lot like part of the series that I actually love in its own way, I just wish it wasn't basically every single big one aslkdjl. In the end this didn't really drag down the game too much for me though, it was just an incredible journey that I came out liking so much more than I ever thought I would. It also made me cry at the end and things that do that always get higher up in me by default. I'll be thinking about this game a lot in the future. It's far from perfect, but it has so perfectly taken in my entire heart.