Final Fantasy 9 PS1 Review

Well here it is. The final fantasy 9 review. I can still remember the time when I had finished final fantasy 7 and 8 was in the works. Final Fantasy 9 is a welcome edition to the play station series in general. From the exception of final fantasy 6,7 and 8; 9 takes a place in medieval times, where knights are honored and bandits and thieves are scorned. Especially from Steiner, (the knight) in which Zidane and him both have arguments due to the fact the main character is a bandit and learns the ways of thief type skills. This basically makes Steiner hate him and in turn, they periodically rant at each other. It makes for a sort of cops and robbers comedic display in that Steiner doesn't like bandits. Around halfway across though, Steiner learns that Zidane can be trusted and he begins to get less stubborn.
Battle and game play wise I have to say that it's pretty awesome and has different battle mechanics from most the rest of the series. Since the main character is a thief, they emphasize his skills a lot in the game. Some of his command abilities should even be used a lot; especially the "Steal" command and in boss fights you have the choice of either stealing or dealing which means dealing damage. It's all up to you, but don't expect to steal high class weapons and armor in a boss fight in one attempt. It is certainly not as easy as drawing magic in final fantasy 8. And most bosses aren't really hard, except for a few fights. If you do get a chance to steal all the equipment from the boss in one fight though, you won't need to buy stock from the next area in town. It's kind of good to steal what you need too, because some items are only boss exclusive. So you need to take that into consideration too. Speaking of which, each character has their own trance mode. You go into trance when the red bar fills up and of course you can select your turn when the green ATB gauge fills. But when you trance each character doesn't necessarily have to have a command to choose which most of them do. Steiner is the only one who doesn't. His trance consists of him dealing more damage than usual, so his commands stay the same.On one good note of the game also, is that I like the fact that everyone has their own commands in battle, and some people can only use certain action and support skills which have a red and blue diamond respectively. Steiner goes into trance in one of these pics....

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To learn commands is not always going to be a walk in the park, and grinding is a key factor to learn every possible ability and skill that you can possibly learn. To "USE" a certain action or support skill you need to have the player equipped with the weapon, helmet, armor, armlet and accessory that has the particular skill to use. And you can use it any time you want unless you take off the piece of equipment. To "KEEP" the action or support ability skill you have to wear the armor and fight monsters until you gain enough "AP" to "master" the skill. It's a pretty standard affair, and some skills you'll have to actually play the game pretty thoroughly if you want to get abilities and commands that are more superior than others. I forgot to mention the fact that you can have an ability but you need to activate it with mystic stones that lay dormant inside yourself. As you level up though you will be able to wield more stones, so that you can equip more abilities or abilities that cost higher stone points. And getting every piece of equipment to do that could be time consuming. But if you want to rush through and not learn skills at all, by skipping abilities and just using the best armor and weapons possible right when you get them; you can do that too. I wouldn't recommend it because of all the status effects you can prevent. This really is basically how you upgrade in the game.

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There's other features like chocobo hot & cold and the world map which has a nice scenery to it as well. And other quests as well.
There is mognet, which is a service of delivering mail between moogles. (which also save your game.) and Festival of the Hunt.

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The game deserves a 10/10 along with final fantasy 7 and final fantasy 8. Hopefully you will enjoy the game as much as I did. It's a game worthy of the Final Fantasy name and worth playing through until the end.
Very good game.