Final Fantasy IX (Switch)

Spoilers!

So I continued with the next Final Fantasy I had on the Switch and what do you know, there is a fast-speed option here as well, the 12 hour challenge gonna be a piece of cake... 

*12 hours later*

... wait, I haven't even cleared the first CD portion of the game... this will take a while I fear.

Back when this game was released I remember that they discussed this game on Swedish gaming review show on the public channels and I think that was the first time I heard about Final Fantasy and I remember looking at it and being enthralled by the visuals. They showed stuff from the first part up until the escape from the evil forest. We didn't have a playstation so we never got it until we got the Playstation 2 and my parents gave me this game (together with VIII, VI, V, IV, I and II) one Christmas/birthday (for the record as mentioned other times, my birthday is fairly close to Christmas, but not on Christmas so I have a problem separate when I got what). The intro music fantastic, graphics looks good and I played it until the desert palace which broke me. I restarted this game so many times due to getting stuck at different places. I've only finished this game once before and this time I did it with a guide to do stuff that I normally doesn't get. For example the Chocobo mini game and the Mog Central.  So let's get started.

The game begins with Zidane, human monkey (?) that together with his bandits friend are gonna use a theater play to get into Alexandria Castle and kidnap Princess Garnet. Meanwhile Vivi, a black mage, tries to get in to the Castle to watch the show, but he finds out he has a counterfeit ticket so sneak in with the help of some rat boy. During the play Zidane enters the castle with his friend Blank and stumbles upon the Princess that tries to run away. Steiner, the Captain of the Knights of Pluto are sent by Queen Brahne to find Garnet and tries to stop the kidnapping. They end up on the airship where the play is played out and after some hi-jinks escape, but not until their ship is badly damaged by the cannons of the castle. The ship lands in the evil forest where Vivi and Garnet has been thrown off. Zidane and Steiner tries to save them and as Blank comes to the rescue while everyone else from the ship have escaped the forest they run out, but not until after Blank was turned to stone with the forest after pushing Zidane out of harms way. 

They are at the bottom of a valley and this world is special in that it is covered in mist which creates monsters, but is also the source of fuel for their machines. They have to climb to a mountain top where they find a town where they discover a black mage factory, since they apparently create them from the mist. They board a cargo ship and travel to Lindblum, the capital of airships. During the travel they have encounters with the Black Waltz, powerful black mages that have been sent out to bring Dagger (which is the undercover name for Garnet) back to Alexandria. In Lindblum it's revealed that Tantalus, the group Zidane worked with, was sent by the regent Cid to rescue the princess from her mother since the king died, queen Brahne became more eratic and was making deals with a weapon merchant that sold her the black mages. Cid unfortunately had been turned into an oglop (some kind of insect) by his wife Hilda when she found him cheating on her. Zidane hits the town and meets up with an old friend Freya from Burmecia that enter the traditional city hunt and Zidane joins her. After the hunt an almost dead soldier from Burmecia breaks in at the award ceremony. with news that Bumecia is under attack by Alexandria. Cid can't do much at the moment since he must gather his forces before he cam help. Zidane, Freya and Vivi decides to go, but at the bamquet before leaving Dagger put sleep weed in their food so that she and Steiner can return to Alexandria in order to stop queen Brahne. Zidane sets out and meet Quina, a quan from Qu marches that is this games weird character. At Burmecia Zidane overhears queen Brahne's plan to attack Cleyra, the sister city of Burmecia where the king of Burmecia went into hiding.  Kuja, the weapon merchant is there as well and when they protect one of the last Burmecian soldiers from Beatrix, Alexandria's finest general, they are left for dead as Kuja flies of on a dragon ending disc 1.

She hits hard

Now, in Final Fantasy VII the first disc ends on Aeris death. I gotta say, VII have a better start. More intense although they try here, but it just doesn't feel as important or dire. There are things I like more in this game though. The ability system is nice where equipment gives you different abilities depending on the character and if you get enough AP you can learn them permanently. Of course you gotta equip them from a limited pool of points each character have. This creates at least for me a reason to play every character since you don't get that unless you level up. Bad thing is, this took me between 35-40 hours to complete and then I had 3x speed on. I recalled when playing that I probably spent 120 hours to finish it the first time and the reason are the slow gameplay. They move like they walk in mud and the battles drag, but the reason for that is probably due to the player needing time to execute orders to counter the enemies attacks. I hardly needed to change speed playing VII, but here it was a good strategy to get things done without being steamrolled by the bosses. Also, sidequests suffers from the same problem as the condor strategy game, return again and again without knowing when it's supposed to. Especially the Nero family sidequest in the end. On one hand it was funny reading the lines, but the problem was that it took place during the endgame where after every story point you need to return outside and back to Lindblum (my guide said Alexandria so thanks for that) breaking the story. Also, you have 8 party members, 1 must always be Zidane, and only active party members gets EXP, meaning that some will always be left behind. Not even a trinkle down like in VII. 

Anyway, what's really going on in the story is that Kuja activilly tries to stage conflicts between the different nations and Alexandria and their grieving queen was an easy target. Plan was that Brahne wanted to rule all nations and was gonna use Kuja's black mages to get it together with the eidolons (summons) that Dagger possessed within her. Even going so far to sacrifice her. Zidane reaches Clerya which is destroyed by Brahne who was able to get Dagger and extract her summons. Zidane and friends escapes to the airship Red Rose and finds out about the order to kill Dagger so they teleport to the caste where they meet up with Steiner and Marcus, another Tantalus bandit that have the cure for Blanks petrification, that just escaped the dungeon. Zidane breaks in to a hidden basement and rescues a sleeping Dagger, but as they are about to leave are confronted again by Beatrix that subdues them, but when the order of killing Dagger comes she hesitates and questions the queen. She teams up with Freya and Steiner to give Zidane, Dagger and Vivi time to escape. This scene is awesome and the music on point. They escape by the secret tunnel that Dagger tried to enter the castle with and ends up near Lindblum where they meet Ramuh, the god of thunder that gives Dagger a stone that will teach her the summon Ramuh. They leave and at that time Lindblum is attacked and conquered by Brahne. Zidane reaches Cid that tries to keep the situation under control and they decide to strike at Kuja since without the black mages they can strike back. They reach Qu marches and meet Quina again and finds a tunnel to another continent where they meet dwarfs, find a village of black mages that awakened and hides from humans. Also the ruins of Maiden Sari, the city of summoners that was destroyed by a disaster 10 years ago. There Eiko, the last of the summoners lives with a bunch of moggles. She gets kidnapped by a mercenary that have harassed them on their way to the continent by the order of Brahne that wants the stone Dagger has. Another mercenary, Amarant frees her, but only because he wants to fight Zidane due to beng humilated by him some years ago. Zidane beats him and he joins them. They enter the Iifa tree and lears that mist are a byproduct from the tree as it siphons souls for some unknown reason. They defeat it and takes away the mist from the world. Outside Brahne's navy have arrived to fight Kuja since he is a threat to her dominance. As Alexandria summons Bahamut, the king of dragons, a giant eye in the sky appears (like the one that destroyed Maiden Sari), takes control of Bahamut and destroys the navy and kills Brahne.

You're the Queen? I never voted for you!

Dagger is to be crowned queen, but Alexandria is attacked by Bahamut, controlled by Kuja. Steiner and Beatrix (that seems to have fallen in love with each other) protects the people of the town while Dagger is drawn to a tower where the four stones of the kingdoms that Brahne gathered unleases Alexander, a summon that... is the castle? They never explained what it was, all I know it have wings that protected and destroyed Bahamut. The eye appears again and destroys the summon Alexander before Kuja can take control of it and we get to see Garland, the other big bad of the game. Zidane rushes up the tower and saves both Eiko and Dagger from the crumbling castle and they return to Lindblum. After turning Cid into a frog they set out to find Hilda since she is the only one that can return him to his self and they need him to build new airships to be able to continue search for Kuja. They travel to the black mage city where the mages have turned to Kuja since they have a limited life span and believes that Kuja can give them that. The last ones point to a desert and arriving imprisons all and Zidane have to go to Oeilvert to get a stone for Kuja. There it tells the story of Terra, a world destroyed and that they await to be resurected. Zidane returns, the others escape, Eiko gets kidnapped and rescued together with Hilda. Cid is restored and you now have an airship and can travel everywhere and the destination is Ipsen Castle where you get four mirrors and the location of 4 temples of the elements where the mirror needs to be placed in order to open the way to Terra. Done, enter Terra and it is revealed that Zidane is actually from Terra when they find the gnomes, other human monkies that are created the same way as the black mages and Kuja as well. Garland was created to ensure that Terra would survive by merging the planets, in that endeavor he created Kuja to wage war and siphon the souls so that Terran souls could take over the planet, but when Kuja grew to big for him Garland created Zidane, but Kuja tried to dispose of him and stranded Zidane on Gaia. During the confrontation with Garland Kuja takes control of the Invincible the airship that is the eye in the sky and uses it to overpower Garland and kill him. But Garland reveals the final piece of information that pushes Kuja over the top and that is that Kuja's days are numbered just like the black mages and gnomes he despised so much. Zidane evacuates all the gnomes to the black mage village and return to Terra that have been reformed by Kuja as he travels to the Crystal from where the universe sprang from in order to destroy all the universe as revenge. On the way you get an air battle with Nova Dragons as the sky fleets of Lindblum arrives and blows up the dragon while Beatrix and the knights of Pluto save the Inivincible with the airship the Red Rose. Zidane fights his way through different memories while the voice of Garland explains the story and fight of the four fiends that also guarded the different temples. You fight Kuja and then out of nowhere another boss shows up that want to bring the universe to zero appears that you still win over and then is teleported away. Cid picks up everyone up, but Zidane stays since he hears the voice of Kuja who was the one that teleported them back to Gaia and enters the Iifa Tree where the dying Kuja awaits and they reconcile since they both suffered as instruments of destruction.

Some time later we are back in Alexandria, Tantalus once again are gonna play the play from the beginning of the game. Dagger is queen, Eiko have been adopted by Cid and Hilda, Vivi has died but left a couple of kids, Steiner and Beatrix seems to have gotten together, Freya rekindled her love with her amnesiac boyfriend and as the play goes on Zidane is revealed to have survived and we get a romantic reunion as Dagger runs from her throne to jump into his arms. *sniff* I'm not crying *sniff*

*sniff* Alright I'm crying *sniff*

Loved the ending, except for the final boss. I must have power leveled a lot last time since I can't recall that it was this hard... or maybe I just leveled so much that I had enough Ability points to cover all statuses that are the biggest problem with the boss. Hate auto-death spells and apparently no armour to protect one self. Overall, a good game, it really charms me with all the references from earlier game like, Garland who was the first (and *spoiler* last boss) of the first game. The boss before Kuja looks like Chaos from the first game. The four fiends make a comeback and Dagger, a white mage is first seen in traditional Final Fantasy white mage clothes and Vivi looks like the old black mage. And the first complete party is a thief, knight, black mage and white mage, just beautiful. They referenced Joseph from the second game and one of the last dungeons are named Pandemonium like the one from II. Several items bear the name of important NPCs from III, I think the name of the last airship also is from that game. The two worlds and moons are from IV and the whole Clergya and Burmecia plot feels like the attacks on Damicya and Fabul. Also the dwarfs are back and the airfleet turning up to save the good guys at the end is the giant of Babel all over again. V... well, there is that boss that is a book, also travelling between the worlds and uniting planets feels a bit like the plot of V, but place four mirrors and enter a teleport was pretty much taken from I. A tree boss might be a reference to the final boss of that game. Could be that I haven't played through V all the way through in a long while since I jumped from IV to VII. Gilgamesh was mentioned in the game. I believe the scene where Kuja kicks Garland of the ledge is inspired by Kefka shoving off the Emperor of the floating continent. The name of a ring is named after an esper and I believe Terra might be not only another name for earth (like Gaia), but also one of the main characters from VI. You have an auction house and finally can get your hand on a model of an airship without a snot-nosed brat get his rich daddy to buy it from him. Now VII, they mention Cloud twice and for VIII you got the card game and one mention of Squall. Now music references, the volcano track is inspired by a track from I, I think Beatrix theme is taken from II and maybe the love theme is inspired by the same from VIII. Overall the music is fantastic.

I love this game with all it's references and call backs, especially now when I played all games. It's a bit slow in the gameplay department, but fixed in this rerelease. The mini-games like Chocobohunt was actually fun in the speedup version since they don't take forever and I think the games with that feature, but I like it. I actually got the card game as well this time and I actually won most of the games, but the guide mentioned that it wasn't that rewarding besides PS4 trophies... which the Switch doesn't have. The game was basically made for someone like me that liked the fantasy part in Final Fantasy and wasn't that keen on modern or cyberpunk final fantasy (which since finishing VII makes me rethink that point). Beside being a game that heavy romanticize the fantasy genre, it does have themes of being alive, having a soul and that life and death is part of it. Vivi tackles with the knowledge that he is a puppet creation, but have free will and that his time is limited. Zidane never thought of that until he is struck by the realisation he is also a construct. Even Kuja, but as the voice at the end mentioned. Kuja gave them hope in that he was the first that went against his purpose, akin to a Paradise Lost Lucifer who went against god. Also, friendship, but that is pretty much always a thing. If I ever do a run through all Final Fantasy games I might go for the cheats to speed up since who have 40 hours to spend on these kind of games anymore?