Final Fantasy has been a series of games which I have enjoyed playing for years. Although each game has been a unique experience, I can say that from each I came away with a good feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I had experienced something worthwhile. Final Fantasy IX was no exception, and like it's predecessors, my remembrances of this game will remain firmly with me and be retold to my progeny, and their offspring like old war stories and treasured accounts of yesteryear. I have completed the game from beginning to end and now is the time when it becomes necessary to critique and review what level of excitement as a gamer I achieved while playing this game.

Amidst discussion regarding Final Fantasy IX, I have seen it likened to being a very "charming" game. I found few adjectives that probably better suit this game beyond "charming." Final Fantasy IX brings back much of what made the past games like Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI, and revives that experience in the modern era, with an epic contemporary Squaresoft taloring of excellent plot development, dialogue and graphics. The entire game itself really iterated that notion of a retrospective, a reflection on the way things were and an anticipation for things to come.

What complaint is there that can be mentioned about Final Fantasy IX's graphics? Talk about walking in water, this game achieves miracles on a severely out of date system. The original Sony Playstation has continued to supply gamers with some of the best games ever made, much as the Super Nintendo did toward the end of the 16-bit era. Although Final Fantasy IX's characters were more fantasy like and less human than those we've seen in Final Fantasy VIII, the detail even in their polygonal renders was a marked improvement over the previous game. Yoshitaka Amano's character design was exquisite. The game transitions flawlessly between full motion video and still pre-rendered backgrounds. It even manages to integrate polygonal characters on moving FMV environments successfully. Team Squaresoft really has it together. What's more, I improved the graphics considerably by using my Playstation 2's "Texture Smoothing" capability. I can honestly say that it was up on N64 appearance, with what would seem to be more polygons displayed simultaneously if that's possible. Spell effects were what you expected them to be. Summoning cinemas were not an encumberance in this game considering they are not used as frequently as the past two FF games, and their Animations were shorter. I never really was annoyed by the summon animations being long, but FFVIII required you to summon so many times and it made it monotonous.

I can say that Nobuo Uematsu's score on this one was a little better than FFVIII's but it just seems that he is at a plateau lately and there's really not much more you can do with 16 Channel MIDI anymore. There were some catchy themes that I like, like the Black Mage Village, Melodies of Life theme vocal and otherwise, some of the Medieval sounding Harpsichord stuff, but there were a lot of sleepers like the Overworld Music that could have been a little more epic like the Overworld for FFVI (The best Overworld Theme of all time) and FFVII. I've noticed that a good portion of Nobuo's themes and scores for FFVIII and FFIX are kind of subdued. It would have been nice if there was what I would call, BIG BOSS music more often. The boss music in this game was a little weak and should have been a lot more dramatic. If Nobuo put his mind to it, I wouldn't be surprised if stuff equivalent to John Williams' legendary Star Wars themes would emerge. Who can't hum the Star Wars Imperial march? Music like that becomes part of Americana.

I've got to give credit to the gameplay simplification over Final Fantasy VIII. I liked Final Fantasy VII's materia system myself, and Final Fantasy IX kind of is a return of this way of doing things. As your characters level up, you can equip a specific value of crystals to an attribute gained by wearing a certain piece of equipment. As each character gains AP that specific attribute like Auto-Regen and Auto-Haste is learned permanently. Various character specific equipment like daggers, stalves, and swords enable new character specific abilities. If you have ViVi and Steiner in your party Steiner has stronger attacks and can use his own MP to have ViVi cast a spell on his attack. This was a neat "buddy system" idea that I thought that they should have implimented a long time ago. The game is no pushover in terms of challenge. I found myself encountering the game over screen several times when characters were not leveled up enough and I was clobbered. There are a lot of creatures that will cause maximum damage and leave you with 1 HP. This game also puts you into various unique gameplay situations like having to equip your crappiest weapon to do the most damage in an upside-down castle and having to defeat a monster with only one character. I myself didn't get into the card battle the first time playing though the game, but from the few games I played of it, I can say that it is somewhat easier than Triple Triad was. I can't tell you how much I cursed that "Random" rule and attempted so many times to get it banned. There are many other side quests like the secret behind the failure of Mognet, the quest for the Excalibur, getting all the "Stallazzios," and chocobo raising that is bound to keep the replay value on this RPG way up there for a good while. The only thing that bugs me about this is "time" required things, that you have to REPLAY THE ENTIRE GAME to get if you missed it.

Probably the most important aspect of any RPG is the storyline. I've got to say that Final Fantasy IX's storyline was very good. Can I say it was better than Final Fantasy VIII? A better answer would be that it's just as good but it's a totally different experience that in itself makes it more memorable in my view. This game has a setting that is post-industrial revolution/victorian era. The characters athough superfically cartoonish are very defined and unique (Quina, Freya, Eiko), even so unique they they could be considered bizarre. The plot development is well done, but there remain some questions about the ultimate motivations of individuals like Garland and I thought Freya's character wasn't defined enough. The plot later in the game gets a little deviant from the original implied direction but the unexpected is sometimes the spice of life. There does seem to be a better emphasis on comedy in this game especially with scenes of Zidane grabbing Dagger's ass and saying "Oh, Soft" and ViVi and Zidane taking a leak in Madain Sari, Zidane's cracks on Steiner calling him "rusty," Quina's incessant quest for food and rediculous likeness, those nutty Scotty sounding guys in Conde Petie that say "Someday, Ah want tae travel the world wi ma duggy!" and "Jenny's a bonnie lass, is she no?" the sillyness of the moogles, etc. There are many times that this game is more lighthearted than the previous games that sometimes exuded an ambiance of sterility and oppression. This game was a good refreshment and very charming in many respects. The only thing that might have put a blemish on an otherwise perfect story was the oddities that transpired at the end of the game. The storyline seemed to get a little unfocused and there were certain things I wish I could have seen more of. Was Kuja an ultimate villan? I've seen aspects of Kefka and Sephiroth in Kuja, and he was at least a little more defined that Ultimecia from Final Fantasy VIII. Still, he just wasn't a guy you love to hate. Yeah, he killed people and destroyed Alexandria, but he more or less was a wounded character to begin with. Aside from his overt feminity he seemed more psychotic than willfully evil. There's a difference. He more or less was on a temper tantrum because he wasn't perfect like Zidane and his existance was finite. It's hard sometimes to diferenciate the fine line between mentally unstable and intelligently evil in developing a character and it would seem that Kuja's personality didn't develop all the way into either direction. Some characters are just out to turn people into slaves, torture people for personal enjoyment, kill loved ones, those are the kind of diabolical monsters that could motivate a protagonist to act. At the end of the game, I gained this feeling that was implied by the very tenets of the Final Fantasy IX experience that this was a game that exists at a crossroads, in many ways it was a retrospective on the series history, and in the end of the game it became a prelude toward tomorrow's adventures. If you remember a line from the play at the end, "No Clouds or Squalls will stand in our way!" - this is obviously a referance to FFVII and FFVIII. The complete experience of Final Fantasy IX was a remarkable one worth retelling and playing again. Good RPG's don't fade away, they just age honorably and become repeated by others for many years to come.

I spent a good 10 days on Final Fantasy IX, leveling up characters, getting into the plot of the game and enjoying every moment. Of any of the modern 3 FF's we've seen on the Playstation, I will concede that this is probably slightly better than Final Fantasy VII. This may get debated for some time, but I have to say it was a good game. If you own the Playstation, or Playstation 2, this is a must have game. In knowing that this is a prelude for whats to come, the question arises as to what Squaresoft will bring us. There is a movie coming soon by Squaresoft entitled Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Will Final Fantasy X be based upon this movie? What new frontiers will Squaresoft traverse in the coming decade? Squaresoft could someday have the potential to become as influencial as Disney became, in fact there are indications that these two might be partnering up on some projects.

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