Final Fantasy IX

Oddly enough I did enjoy Chocobo Hot and Cold over any other mini game. I dont know why FFXI took up Tetra Master, FFVIII started the card game thing and I liked playing cards in that game more than in IX. But anyway, I've just recently started playing this game again. I'm enjoying it more than I felt I did the first and second play throughs, which were at least a couple years ago.

The characters were quite creative and they have grown on me now more than they did before. It was refreshing to see a main character not so bogged down in tragedy or emo-ness. To me, character's like Vivi, Freya and Quina are priceless. I found some little things quite funny too. Such as with the incident in Cleyra where it's assumed everyone is dead, but they just move on without Quina. Then he/she randomly shows up again but nobody really seems to care all that much. And it happens two or three times in the story. I guess I just appreciate Quina's free spirit in wanting to catch fish over saving the world.

I've tried to defend Kuja over the years with people attacking him for looking like a girl. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't see many bashing Kefka for dressing up like a clown, I had a more difficult time getting over the clown thing than a guy showing his belly button. Story wise, I enjoyed it, it made me want to keep going. Unlike FFXII where its doing one mundane thing after another then two days of leveling and traveling later, finally the story moves along. I did feel that it was a weaker FF in terms of the epic we tend to be used to seeing with FF's. Not that the things with Kuja weren't epic, I just felt the thing with Sephiroth in VII or Sin in X was done better. That and Necron was a joke, but I have great love for good characters, so I wont hold the game against that one thing. I don't hold FFX to Yu Yevon after all.

 

Actually, Necron is bigger than you would think initially. He is basically the Iifa tree's true form.

Think about it. The Iifa tree is supposed to block the flow of souls back to Gaia. Garland said that they did not truly defeat it. Only "saw the back of the tree". Memoria is located above the tree. So let's say that rather than the party being near death, Kuja actually killed them. Where would they end up? Face to face with the true form of the tree. The thing actually blocking the flow of souls. And as soon as they defeat Necron, the tree starts a rather violent death. Coincidence? I doubt it.

As for the review, I completely agree. FFIX is my favorite FF game, and Vivi is my favorite FF character. There was plenty of comedy and light hearted moments in the game, but it never made the game feel cheesy at all like many of the "comic" moments of FFX (*cringes*). The ending is also the best ending I've seen in any game of the series. You get to see a glimpse of where every character ended up. And while some people may bash the fact that Zidane managed to survive, that happy moment is balanced out by the fact that Vivi, easily the most popular character in the game, is dead. And that bit at the Iifa tree where Zidane kneels before Garnet saying "Your Highness, the abduction is over" is one of my favorite lines. It was just so perfect. The game felt complete. It felt ended. Unlike FFVII, where I sat there thinking "what happened?"

And Chocobo Hot and Cold is most definitely the best side quest ever. So much to do. and it's also by far the most rewarding, considering all of the items you get from chocograph and dead pepper locations. Not to mention that if you do the entire quest with the beaches, you can heal completely at any beach.

 

Hmmm...

The game was a good one actually, the battles, the story, the characters, Quina was an ok character to me, mainly because it was like an outside of the story character, food and food lol, when I got once bored of the game, I used to train her.

 

I love Quina. I guess people are just so obsessed with the dark emoness of Cloud and other FF heroes that a character that actually functions as comic relief has to be horrible. I love comic relief. I found myself laughing just about any time s/he was one screen. I love when s/he says s/he's gonna cook Beatrix for breakfast, XD.

I didn't use her much in battle though. I'm sure the blue magic was useful, but it was too much of a pain in the ass to lower an enemies HP enough without killing them so Quina would actually be capable of eating them, and then hoping that you could learn something from them. I just couldn't be bothered.

I bother to visit every beach. Buying tents may be easier, but it's also much more expensive, and by the end of the game you have to use at least 2 or 3 tents just to get your characters to full HP/MP. Personally, I prefer to save my tents for dungeons and such where I have no choice. Going to each beach actually doesn't take that long. It takes you no more than 5 minutes, if not less. For something that beneficial, I can take 5 minutes to do visit all the beaches.

I actually find it ironic that you can't be bothered to go to the beaches, but you can be bothered to get Quina's blue magic. That's much more of a pain than the beaches are.