The Final Fantasy?
'Course not!! Kill off a series like this? Squaresoft would have to be run by a bunch of manic-raving lunatics to STOP making Final Fantasy games.
They have already promised us Final Fantasy ten, eleven, twelve etc...
But we are not here to talk about what's going to happen. Back to current events, and that means Final Fantasy IX!

Characters
If you compare Final Fantasy IX's character's to that of FF8 or 7, you will realise that firstly, they have ditched the 'grown-up' look of FF8, and returned to the fun, 'anime'-style characters of 7 and 6. Also, instead of having lots of serious characters, the characters look like a collection of participants in the local 'dress-up-like-a-weirdo-for-charity' day. Zidane, the lead character, frequently described as 'monkey-boy' has got a large extruding tail, which sometimes during the game, he uses for comedy effect, and it generally 'wobbles' up and down as you walk along. He also has a different attitude to the game. Where as Squall might say "I just don't care." and Cloud would say "I just don't give a damn about the planet." and "Whatever.", Zidane is a much friendlier character, and his mottoe is "You don't need a reason to help people.". This keeps in touch with the much warmer game atmosphere that Squaresoft have been trying to make...
Yoshinori Kitase (director of Final Fantasy 8 and 9): "As for the general imagery, FFVII was dark, weird... All sorts of darkness! We wanted to leave that behind because we already id the darkest of darkest with the previous game [FF7]." "It was quite a concious group decision to move to this very bright side.".
This will explain the lightening up, both in terms of humour, and graphical style between version eight and nine.
Back to FFIX: the characters also include a princess (Garnet), her 'loyal, serving knight' Steiner (frequently described by Zidane as "Rusty" because of the armour...), a "dragon knight" from the country of Burmecia (Freya), a frog-obsessed wierdo that likes nothing better than a good meal (even if it is sand) - that be Quina, a black mage that's escaped from the mechanical mage army (Vivi), a young girl who has a mysterious power (Eiko), and a large red-headed bloke who was originally a bounty hunter (Amarant). That breifly describes the characters. Part of the fun of Final Fantasy IX, is not reading through my Epinion, but actually seeing how the various characters develop through the different places they visit.

The Magic System
Always the crux, make-or-break part of the interface and design of a new Final Fantasy is how easy it is to use the magic system. With Final Fantasy 9, the weapons and magic are interlinked, more so than Final Fantasy 7 and 8. This is because each weapon, armour and accessories contains spells and abilities that can be learnt. What is also quite good is certain people get certain things out of each item. For example, Zidane can't get a 'summon' spell out of an accessory, but he might be able to get a thieves ability out of it.
Unlike Seven, when you equip a piece of armour or a weapon, you learn the abilities from it, and then you can say goodbye to it. For example Vivi wouldn't need to keep an early piece of armour because it has a spell he needs. Each spell / ability has a certain amount of AP you need to get that skill. So once you have got the AP (around 35 for the majority of middle-of-the-road spells), you can unequip the equipment and upgrade! Also, one important part of the magic system is the fact that you get "magic stones" as you level up. And each special ability you get (many of which include resistance to status changes such as Poison, Heat and Venom to name but a few) uses up a few of these points. So the higher the level, the more special abilities you can have!

Cash, moola, dosh and dinero.
Like in the real world, if you want to rest (at an Inn), buy healing items, buy weapons, upgrade your weapons (throught the network of synthesist's shops), bribe people, or generally buy or sell anything, you need money. Unlike on FF8, where every X number of steps you took got you a salary payment, which can be increased by doing theory tests, on FF9, they return to the original setup. Whenever you win a battle, you steal some cash from the opponent. That cash in turn, you can spend on new weapons. Also, (this isn't reccomended) you can sell weapons and items. Why don't we reccomend this then? Because, if you do then sometimes you need your crappy weapons to synthesise in to good weapons. Other times, you might forget to get a certain ability out of a weapon, so we say it is worth keeping weapons, or saving them up for a throwing escapade (using Mr Amarant!!) which will inflict a large amount of damage on the opponent. But whatever you do, dont throw expensive weapons at weedy little flies..

Transport
It's difficult to write a review without spoiling a chunk of the game for you, but let's just have a little chat about how you actually get around. Right at the beggining, you are stuck as a bipod, a simple, two-legged creature, which can walk and run. This leaves you vulnerable to attacks of the unfriendly kind. But later on in the game you get a few different options when it comes to transport. First and formost, there are chocobos. These are large yellow birds that you can train to do the leg-work for you. The various styles of chocobo increase with training: firstly you start with a "field" chocobo which can walk around grassy areas. Then you can train up to get it to different levels "mountain", "shallow water", "sea" and best of all "flying". Flying doesn't mean everywhere though. You can only take off and land in a forest, but seeing as you just find the nearest forest to you, you can literally go anywhere using a chocobo. Still, if you are using a sea-faring chocobo, you can only land via beaches...
Then, you can also get ships (the Blue Narciss), and airships (the Hilda Garde 3 and the Invincible), which allow you to whizz around the map very quickly and easily. Also, the Hilda Garde 3 and the Invincible come with auto-pilot. You open up the large world map, find the place, and bash a button. Your airship will align itself the right way and then make haste towards your destination. Useful!

Plot
This is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of any Final Fantasy release, is what is the plot like, what is the dialogue like? Well, wheras FF8 simmered in mediocrity, the plot in FF9, is a whole lot more ingenious (albiet a tad wierder though...). For a start, you start off as a thief on a theatre ship, run by a giant bloke called Baku. He is the leader of the thieves/actors group Tantalus, and they try to kidnap Princess Garnet from her fat, evil mother, Queen Brahne. They succeed in doing this (via a nice long FMV, and lots of interactivity). The opening to the game gives you a taste of the amazing qualities the characters possess. Where Final Fantasy 8 left off with the Laguna dreams, you come back to with the multiple changes in who you are controlling. For a few minutes your controlling the Tantalus crew (including Zidane), and then your suddenly controlling Vivi, then your controlling Steiner. This gives a "team-spirit" feel to it all, as if the people you are controlling are going to come together: like the Squall / Laguna thing in FF8.
What really makes the story, is when Princess Garnet says openly to Zidane that she WANTS to be kidnapped. And then later on, you find out that her Uncle actually sent the Tantalus crew in to safely kidnap Garnet from her scheming mother! The lack of information you get is good, as your playing along without rhyme nor reason, and then slowly the facts start to come out...
This style of play is continued through much of the game, where you control certain people, then you swap over. This is aided by the cinematic Active Time Events (or ATE's), which you can optionally watch.

Extras
The Extras that exist on this game include the card game (not dissimilar to that of Final Fantasy 8), but seems slightly more difficult to pick up! There is also the Mognet quest. You have a mission to deliver letters between the various moogles around the world, and there could be a reward for delivering them all... Good fun, as you can read their letters when you deliver them. This even aids in repeating the storyline for those who miss it, as within the next few parts of the storyline, the various Moogle letters bring back some elements that you could of missed out on.

Going Backwards through Snesland.
If you look back over the previous games, you can spot many similarities between people.
"The Mysterious Garland" from FF1 tallies up with the wierd mixed up crack-head Garland from FF9. The general story line of FF2, of an emporer summoning up black mages to fight for him, prophesices the general storyline of Kuja's dark summonings. The various Elemental Shrines hark back to the days of FF5: "Shrine of the Wind Crystal" etc.

Breaking the Limits, and moving on to the world of Trance...
With FF7, they had the original Limit system. With FF8, they changed it so that when you got down to a small amount of health, they gave you a powerful attack. Now, with FF9, they have gone back to the original Seven system, albiet not as well. With 7, the power in Limit breaks was that you could save them until you needed them. Wheras with 9, as soon as your Trance bar gets to maximum, you automatically go in to Trance. This is annoying, as if you are working up to a big boss fight, you want to KEEP your best attacks for it, wheras with this system you could waste your Trance on someone who is pretty darn useless.

Less time for Attacks!
On FF8, the exceptionally pretty GF attacks got boring after about 5 or 6 goes, and one wishes they would take what seemed like 5-6 years to do. On Nine, the summon (or eidolon) attacks seemed to have been shortened to a slightly more managable level, with most attacks taking up to 10 seconds. Occasionally (on a chance of about 1 in 9), you get a slightly longer version, which rightly so warrants a longer damage. But, even being the best eidolon in the world doesn't mean having a 2 minute attack...

So what else could I wish for?
For FFX, there are a number of 'tacky' little additions that would make the game EVEN better...
* Wardrobes...As groovy as the characters look, I still think that a tacky, sports-game style, "grab some new costumes for Zidane" feel would extend the gameplay just a tad, and make yet another sub-quest: get all the different outfits for everyone.
* Even better integration between FMV and in-game graphics. With the PS2 graphics engines, this should get even better. They seem to have slacked off having so much in terms of FMV intergration in to FF9.

A final evaluation.
The saying "one step back, then two steps forward." seems to be quite important here. Square seem to be trying to please lots of people with FF9: the hardcore ex-SNES FF fans out there will simply adore the many frequent moogle / chocbo references, and old-style gaming, and the FF8 refugee will probably not like it as much as 7 & 8. Myself, I fall between both the 5-6 regime and the 7&8 modern sophisticationalist camps. FFX looks like a cross between the two, and FF9 has a warm feel to it. Square seem to be changing direction quite frequently. And with the promised FFXI having Online gaming, like Phantasy Star Online for the DC, might degrade the original Final Fantasy values, they have promised it being a one-off. FFX and FFXII look good, but the Online escapading is not (to me) going to be all it's cracked up to be. What about the wonderfully scripted dialog. We are going to see us all becoming
"SO WHAZZXUP WITH DIS SEPHIROTH DUDE? I HAV JUST BOuGHT a NEw Wapon: the BUSTeR SWoRRRD!!!"
through the FFX regime. Hopefully they will just let others control (in battle) some of your party members while you log on. I am also hoping for a good single-player game as well as the promised online functionings. Me not a big fan of Online Ideas...

I hope that this has informed you a bit better of MY views on the current situations regarding FF9, and the future of the Final Fantasy series. I wonder: European release for Dragon Quest? Star Ocean is apparantely coming out for PS1...

UPDATE - 28/4/2001
Here is what I added as of 28th April 2001!

The Guide
Don't buy this. It's the biggest waste of money in video gaming history. I have to sincerely not reccomend this because it doesn't actually list the secrets, but uses the PC Gaming trick of releasing a shoddy product, and making you go on the internet. The only reason that I would play £12 - £13 to buy a guide is if it told me EVERYTHING about a game, which the FF9 guide doesn't. In the Secrets bit of the guide, it just says "To find out how to do X, go to www.PlayOnline.com". Kind of defeats the object of a guide. Also, I wouldn't mind if the PlayOnline site was actually well designed, but it is a buggy piece of crap, that runs slower than a drug-addicted, near death tortoise with all it's legs chopped off. My advice, don't buy the FF9 guide, but instead get a good little unofficial guide of the Internet, from a site like GameFAQs.com. It's a real shame that they released a guide like this, because the FF8 guide, also a Piggyback publication, was brilliant and listed everything excellently, and the guide to FF7 was good. Fortunately, I didn't buy the guide, but reviewed my mate's copy. Really, it ain't worth it...

Useful Links
SquareSoft.com http://www.squaresoft.com
These dudes actually made this game.

Big-B.co.uk's FF10 page...
http://big-b.subportal.com/games/previews/0101/square/ffx.html
This page has the latest info on the forthcoming game: Final Fantasy X (for PlayStation 2)

PlayOnline.com http://www.playonline.com
If you (stupidly) bought the guide, you can go to this website for everything the guide DIDN'T tell you!

GameFAQs.com http://www.gamefaqs.com
And if you haven't bought the guide (DON'T!), go to this website instead! Free guides to hundreds of good games.

UPDATE 30/4/2001
Thanks "Stratadrake" for your comment about the fact that I missed out a review on the soundtrack and music for the game. My general opinion on the soundtrack is that it is extremely good, even if it is lacking in comparison to that of FF8 and 7 (remember Aeris' Theme, and the Julia tune) but even so, is still extremely moving. Many people have been crying out about the music, but generally I think it is good, but COULD be better. The other thing I am beggining to find annoying is that on FF9 and FF7, towards the end of the game (Disc 3 on FF7 and Disc 4 on FF9), you get really 'dark' music which is really rubbish.

Thanks to all the people who have rated this review and put comments. PLEASE join my petition for SquareSoft to release more of their RPG's over in Britain and the US!! They seem to be under some sort of impression that we all hate RPG's, but for someone like me (who can't really stand other games...), Squaresoft are the PlayStation's saving grace. The main reason I actually bought a PS2 was to play Final Fantasy X, XI (well maybe not, with all their crappy ONLINE ideas), and XII. Please leave a comment on my idea of a petition to release all the Squaresoft series of RPG's in Europe!

Thanks for being the greatest internet community anywhere!!

Tom Morris
Copyright (C) Tom Morris 2001. All rights reserved .

Recommended: Yes