So in between my last actual update (over a month ago…) I moved house, changed job, reinvented my life, so I’ve been a little distracted from playing games.

I have however managed to finish FF IX which was a gift for my birthday from a lovely little pet

This game is obviously a PC port and this port is great however it suffers from sharing UI with mobile version so the buttons are big.
This game coming to Steam does however brings with it a few quality of life improvements;

Upscaled character models, NPC models, Menus and Icons. These are all pretty nice and true to form but are let down by the original background art resolution. So firstly, if you plan to play this game, please get the HD background mod pack, it vastly improves the experience, this game is old.

‘Cheat’ options. Some are welcome such as speed up time which can cut through the tiresome bits that you’ve seen multiple times. The battles can be painfully slow at times

Auto attack. R2 on controllers toggles auto attack on/off, during combat you’ll do as it says on the tin and attack with melee every time your ATB fills. Paired with 3x speed you can power level those abilities with ease.

So onto the game.. This game is my fave Final Fantasy game out of them all, it might be something to do with playing it on release when I was young and impressionable, but I just adore this game. On GameRankings it has received a score of 93%, the second highest of any Final Fantasy title, behind Final Fantasy VI for the Super NES. So my love for this title isn’t 100% out of the blue. But let’s be clear on one thing, this game is better than VII.

Compared to Final Fantasy VII and VIII this game is considered a lot simpler, the learning curve is easily grasped, and that the ability system is not as complex as previous installments, this led to some advanced players citing it as childish on release. The games overall themes are very similar to things seen before in Final Fantasy installments, such as evil empires and enigmatic villains although the main/final villain is so far removed from the actual story it’s hard to connect. I don’t think the story is the strongest within the Final Fantasy expanded universe but the mixture of the ATE system which lets you delve deep into the story if you seek it out, the dialogue and traits found within the whole game and rich, amusing and full of humor.

Tetra Master is a card game contained within the game and it is inferior and confusing compared to Final Fantasy VIII’s minigame Triple Triad, as the rules are very vaguely explained in the game and there are no rewards earned from playing it despite its expansive nature. You can spend a long time playing the card game (I always do) but its a poor imitation of TT and the RNG nature makes it infuriating at times.

The game itself have a variety of nostalgic elements, from similar traits for characters in other installments to out and out references to previous games, several times composer Nobuo Uematsu reused some tracks from past iterations of the series. I don’t think this detracts from the soundtrack for this game and I personally think this is the best Final Fantasy soundtrack out there. This and many other elements are part of the overall effort to create a nostalgic title for fans of the older Final Fantasy titles.

All in all I really enjoyed this trip down memory lane, and now I’m more settled into my new house I hope to get some more serious backlog slaying completed!