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Final Fantasy IX |
Final Fantasy IX is a role playing game for Playstation released on November 14, 2000 in North America, developed and edited by Squaresoft (now Square Enix). This is the 9th part of the mythical saga of Japanese RPG called Final Fantasy. It is also the last episode of the series that have been produced for the first Playstation after Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII. This opus revives the atmosphere of the first Final Fantasy, offering a heroic fantasy world putting aside the cyber punk style.
The story begins when the whole castle of Alexandria celebrates with great pomp the anniversary of Princess Garnet. The Queen Brahne, who reigns over the kingdom of Alexandria, and want to conquer other countries by force, invited a theater troupe in order to assist to her favorite play for the occasion. The actors then arrive aboard their theater ship. But they are in fact a band of kind-hearted thieves named Tantalus, who want to kidnap Princess Garnet in order to calm down the madness of Queen Branet. Good timing, as the princess tired of his life in the castle wants to leave on adventure and discover the outside world. Then she attempts to escape during the first part of the show, but was quickly unmasked by Djidane, a member of the Tantalus troupe. She then asks him to kidnap her, which was the aim of the Tantalus bandits from the beginning. But Steiner, the head of the Knights of the Queen, in charge of watching over the young princess, sees everything and starts to pursue Djidane and Garnet. The Queen Brahne ends up realizing the kidnapping of her daughter, enters in a rage, and launches an offensive on the Tantalus' theater ship. Djidane and his Tantalus friends try to flee, dragging along them the princess, Steiner, and Vivi a young black mage who was found accidentally on stage after having infiltrated the castle to attend the performance. Finally the theater ship is severely affected by the explosion of a bombo sent by the queen, and crashes in the forest on the outskirts of the city of Alexandria. Then it is the beginning of a great adventure for Djidane and Princess Garnet.
Therefore the player takes control of Djidane the young thief with a tail. He will be accompanied during his adventure by many other characters. Whose are the princess Garnet, who will be nicknamed Dagga in order to remain incognito, Adelbert Steiner, who is obliged to follow the princess in all her adventures in order to protect her, Orunitia Vivi, a mysterious young boy who can cast black spells, Freya Crescent, a female rat dragon knight from Bloumécia, Kweena Quen, a strange creature of the Qu race, who wish to become an accomplished gourmet, Eiko Carol, a young girl raised among moogles, and Salamander Coral, a strong taciturn bounty hunter. This eclectic group of heroes will then stand up to face the tyrannical Queen Brahne, and eventually discover that a greater evil that lurks behind her, in the person of Kuja.
The battles of the game reuse the ATB (Active Time battle) system. This system helps to define the attack turn of each character controlled by the player thanks to a gauge that is filled during the clashes. Once the ATB gauge of a character is filled, the player can trigger an action (attack, casting a magic spell, use an object, steal, etc'). There is however some small differences in the battle system in this episode compared to the previous ones. Here the player can fight with 4 heroes simultaneously. Each character has his own skills which are related to his job: Djidane being a thief, he is the only one to have the ability to use the steal command, while Vivi specializes in black magic and Kweena in blue magic, which consist from attacks by enemies, for example. Each character is unique and has its own way to combat.
As in previous parts of Final Fantasy, the characters gain experience points after each battle won. They grow in level, which increases their characteristics (HP, MP, attack, defense, intelligence, etc'). However, the characters can acquire new skills and other techniques of fighting only through their equipment. Thus they have to equip new weapons and armors in order to learn new skills to expand the range of abilities for each character. But to finally learn a skill you must first masteries it thanks to skill points earned during the fights.
Like any self-respecting Final Fantasy episode, Final fantasy IX provides a very large number of side quests. These quests can tell more to the player about the background of each character and the universe of the game.
With Final Fantasy IX Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of the series) sign the episode that he considers to be closest to the idea that he have about the term "Fantasy". It must be said that the universe of this enchanting episode is furiously successful, all magnified by the musical compositions of Nobuo Uematsu at the summit of his art. One could blame the game design somewhat childish, especially regarding to the characters, but Final fantasy IX contains really mature themes, such as a profound consideration about the concept of "death".
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