I have finally completed Final Fantasy IX. It’s hard to explain just how happy I am to have at last found the impetus to complete what I started over 2 and a half years ago. I first wrote about Final Fantasy IX back in February 2022 with my part 1 post. Since then I have mentioned that I wanted to finish the game in my year 4 review and even in my year 5 review. I didn’t mention it in my recent year 6 review because I knew then I was playing the game and didn’t want to put anything bad in what otherwise was perhaps my most positive review to date. It’s not that I find Final Fantasy IX a bad game that I wanted to persevere. It is I think a combination of things that has prevented me from getting on with it, most notably that I have on 2 occasions been severely sick and have suffered several bouts of bad mental health.
The truth is Final Fantasy IX is one of the best games I have ever played. The story and soundtrack is particularly excellent, not to mention the goose bump inducing cinematics. It was the last Final Fantasy game to be released on the PlayStation and as such I believe the developers managed to utilize every last bit the console is capable of. The graphics was about as good as it gets before the PlayStation 2 entered the market several months later. Here are some of my favourite screenshots I took of the cinematics.
One thing I mentioned in my part 1 post is that there is a lot of optional content such as side quests / exploration / mini games and treasure hunting. I have probably spent about 10-15 hours doing these things but I imagine it would take much longer to do everything. For me the main thing was the main story line and adding Final Fantasy IX to my list of completed games. After over 60 hours of play time, without using any of the cheats or shortcuts the PC version offers, I am able to do just that.
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