I got a PS2 recently, and I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy IX from the library soon afterwards. I meant to talk about it on the podcast, but never got around to it. So I’m posting my thoughts on FFIX here.
After a bit of a slow start with long, show-offy cutscenes of the now-bad-looking graphics, the game picked up with a plot involving pirates kidnapping Princess Emo Super-Babe. I was rather surprised at this. Plot? In a Final Fantasy game? Awesome! I never liked the fact that FFI and FFVI had no real plot whatsoever, so I was glad to see that the transition to 3D attempts to remedy this situation.
However, I was greatly disappointed to see that it has THE EXACT SAME FIGHTING SYSTEM as Final Fantasy VI. The crappy fighting system where enemies attack you constantly, but you can’t attack back because there are weird timer bars. And I’m not sure, but I think that half the time, I attacked my own characters instead of the enemies. Final Fantasy, you need some sort of in-game tutorial system to explain how battles work. Either that, or switch back to the FF1 battle system, which got the job done.
Battle system aside, the game was gearing up to be interesting, and I wanted to see what happened to the pirates and Princess Emo Super-Babe, but I couldn’t save my game. It turns out that the PS2 is backward-compatable, but the PS2 memory card isn’t. Lame. Looks like I’ll have to play Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 instead.
