A decent FF, but far from the best
Let me say this upfront: this is not a bad game. It has a lot of flaws however, even when compared with the games from the same generation (FF 7, 8 and 10 are all superior, in my opinion). I would rate it a 7, but since I am forced to round the score, I'll round it down.
If you don't know Final Fantasy, it's a famous series of JRPGs, with turn based combat, fairly long, involved stories, with each entry being its own story and world (with a handful of exceptions over the years). FF9 in particular is mostly a fantasy setting, although you'll find some steampunk elements thrown in the mix.
The story begins with a group of thieves planning to kidnap princess Garnet of Alexandria. Somewhat surprisingly, the princess actually wants to be kidnapped, and although this is the start, the story quickly moves to bigger stakes, involving wars, powerful magic, and eventually saving the entire planet as you meet new companions and win through the "power of friendship" more or less.
The plot has a lot of problems: especially early on, it mixes comedy elements with serious situations without much grace, but beyond that it's constantly moving at a fast pace most of the time, while also not progressing the main plot forward. Tangents are abundant, often plots come and go in the span of an hour or two, contrivances are frequent, and generally there is a sense that no progress is being made.
The amount of times your characters go to a city/country, you get an unwinnable fight and then the place gets destroyed or badly damaged is astonishing for a single story (at least 4-5 times, sometimes back to back).
We move from villain to villain, often with poor or non-existent character arcs for them (which is a real issue, given some of the connections between them and our main cast), and several members of our own party are little more than caricatures. The story isn't completely devoid of cool moments, interesting characters or ideas, but there is too much fluff and as a result there isn't enough time to make the good parts really shine. The writing isn't great either, but I don't know if it's an issue with the italian and english translations (which made me pause when I briefly compared them, since they even say opposite things at times, at least for minor dialogues).
The gameplay is solid, building from the foundation of the other FF games, but it also has a few issues and bad ideas thrown into the mix. The thing you might notice if you played other games in the series is how slow the combat is. Animations queue very slowly, which is a big issue in a game using the active turn based system like FF. This is especially obvious with some skills like "auto potion" which automatically allows hurt players to use a healing item when they are damaged, but it's generally an issue that afflicts most of the combat, meaning that the enemies often end up taking more actions than you (unless you disable the active system).
The bigger issue is how skills/abilities are unlocked. You are forced to equip certain items, as each item has skills attached to them, and you need to "level up" said skill until you can properly learn it without having to rely on the related item. this causes you to have to give up on certain skills at times, or to use sub-par equipment, or to grind whenever you can until you have everything you want. It's a stiff system, that is not particularly fun and it doesn't really allow players to make real decisions, for the most part. Certain abilites are powerful and fun to combo, at least.
These two problems do not fundamentally break the gameplay or how enjoyable it is, if you like this kind of back and forth tactical battles. The game is a bit on the easy side, but I wouldn't call it a problem.
Outside of the main gameplay loop, the game features several minigames. Those aren't great either, but taken together they still add more than subtract to the game. The best mini-game is a "hot and cold" game, where you dig for treasures with your Chocobo (a brightly colored bird which you can ride around, like a horse). The card game in FF9 is also a bit weak. The rules aren't explained to you immediately, but even once you learn them, the game has a lot of issues, being a bit random and unpredictable. It's not hard (the AI is supremely bad) but it's also not very satisfying in the long run.
Some of the other mini-games are dull and involve tapping buttons quickly enough or with the right timing or chasing and grabbing frogs, of all things.
The music is nice overall (although, again, I think it's a step back from FF7 or 8). The visuals were good for the time (I don't love the style, but it's a personal preference, rather than an issue with the game itself), and this version updates the 3D model without straying too much from the PSX release. I do think they didn't do a perfect job with the backgrounds, but once again it's a minor issue overall.
All in all, it's a game I am happy to have played, but I also don't think I'll touch it ever again (I played this as a teen and now as an adult, and my opinion didn't shift much despite so many years passing). The story simply doesn't hold my interest nor does it tug at my heart strings like other entries, and the gameplay alone isn't enough to justify the time investment, at least for me.
2 gamers found this review helpful