Requirements
Wonderful Wizard of Hell: Beat Master Quale, Hades, and Ozma.
A Song of Fire and Ice: Complete Chocobo Hot and Cold.
Character screenshots
Wonderful Wizard of Hell: Beat Master Quale, Hades, and Ozma.
A Song of Fire and Ice: Complete Chocobo Hot and Cold.
Character screenshots
Random comments
After finishing FFIX, I find I have a love-hate relationship with this game. Some aspects, like the character development, was the best of the series so far. Others, like the side quests, were seriously designed not to entertain, but to torment. I know a lot of people liked Chocobo Hot and Cold, but I personally could not stand it.
You may notice the large level discrepancy between the first three and Quina. This comes from the randomness associated with leveling on Yans. I have learned to hate those things…passionately.
Character award: Beatrix
Okay, so Beatrix is a temporary playable character, but she’s still getting this award. You first encounter Beatrix as a recurring boss whom you can never defeat. After a few turns she just reduces your entire party to 1 HP and then a cutscene plays where she decides to let your defeated asses live for some reason. You really get the feeling that she’s just dealing with your party like someone’d deal with an annoying group of fruit flies – by absent-mindedly swatting them away. In-game, she’s known as “Beatrix who felled 100 men” (single-handedly) and quite honestly, I don’t think that’s too much of an exaggeration. After her character development, you get to play as her protecting Alexandria and can see her destroy waves of enemies by herself first-hand.
Villain rating: epic fail
Necron is this random guy that shows up and wants to destroy everything. No backstory, no motive, nothing. He makes some random comments and fights you. He is also basically Neo ExDeath (same goal and same ultimate attack; Grand Cross hurts like hell), but Neo ExDeath had all of FFV’s story building up to his appearance. Necron has none of that.
If you want to consider Kuja the main villain, I’d bump this to “good,” as Kuja actually has some depth. Kuja shows fear, something very few villains in general do.
Gameplay rating
Oh do I have beef with the gameplay. The ATB RUNS DURING ANIMATIONS which is EPIC FAIL. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s stupid when you put an enemy to sleep to prevent its counter, summon something, and it wakes up before the summon ends, countering you anyway. Now there’s a way to prevent this: set the ATB to “wait” and leave a menu open during the animation, but it’s still a horrible flaw. To prove I’m not just griping over this, you can also cheese the system by having Auto-Regen and then summoning Ark. By the time that long-ass animation ends, everyone will be at full life.
Also, the airship is really, really slow.
Difficulty rating
This is the hardest PSX Final Fantasy. There is a strict damage limit at 9999, no matter what. There are no multi-hit moves, so a character must cap at 9999. There are no proper Ribbons, so no way to defend against all status ailments. This was true in FFVIII as well, but enemies in FFVIII didn’t spam status effects and Treatment was available from GF Siren. In this game, status ailments are plentiful. They even made new ones, such as Virus (one of the most annoying moves EVER).
About the superboss: People told me Ozma is the most difficult superboss in the entire series, with the possible exception of Yiazmat in FFXII with the 50 million plus HP. This is…partly true. Ozma is random. It can spam Meteor and Curse, which means even a level 99 party with fully maxed stats will probably die in under a minute. Or, it could spam Doomsday, which means it may kill itself eventually.
Storyline rating: good
FFIX has a pretty deep and lengthy storyline, but its true strength lies in the character development. FFIX has the best and most developed characters in the entire series. It’s really a shame that the battle mechanics were so FUBAR.
Quote award
“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Necron
Necron is such a dumb villain he can’t even come up with his own lines; instead, he steals them from Yoda. To drive the point home, he can’t even steal a proper villain line. Yoda is like the epitome of the Light Side in Star Wars. Ugh. Epic fail…though I will admit that the line itself is pretty cool.
Quote award (take 2)
“I once killed a hundred knights single-handedly…to me, you two are nothing more than insects.” – Beatrix
I don’t really have to elaborate on this, do I?
Overpowered award
You need to be very specific with your party to be overpowered. Your party must consist of Zidane, Quina, Freya, and Steiner. Then, you do these four things:
Now Zidane’s Thievery does damage based on how many items you’ve stolen in battle (and his Speed stat, but manipulating the former is much easier). Quina’s Frog Drop does damage based on how many frogs she’s caught. Freya’s Dragon Crest does damage based on how many dragons you’ve killed. Steiner’s Shock damages based on his Spirit stat (I think…). This means by doing these four things, you can use these skills for an easy 9999 damage each time. You might be saying that this is nowhere near as overpowered as the previous games…and you’d be right. It’s hard to be overpowered in this game. Also note that even with this setup, Ozma can still use Meteor/Curse on you for really quick death. Finally, you need these four characters specifically…I only used Zidane and Quina out of the four and I never bothered to power-up their special moves.
Final boss: Necron, the random nihilist of complete and utter randomness
After finishing FFIX, I find I have a love-hate relationship with this game. Some aspects, like the character development, was the best of the series so far. Others, like the side quests, were seriously designed not to entertain, but to torment. I know a lot of people liked Chocobo Hot and Cold, but I personally could not stand it.
You may notice the large level discrepancy between the first three and Quina. This comes from the randomness associated with leveling on Yans. I have learned to hate those things…passionately.
Character award: Beatrix
Okay, so Beatrix is a temporary playable character, but she’s still getting this award. You first encounter Beatrix as a recurring boss whom you can never defeat. After a few turns she just reduces your entire party to 1 HP and then a cutscene plays where she decides to let your defeated asses live for some reason. You really get the feeling that she’s just dealing with your party like someone’d deal with an annoying group of fruit flies – by absent-mindedly swatting them away. In-game, she’s known as “Beatrix who felled 100 men” (single-handedly) and quite honestly, I don’t think that’s too much of an exaggeration. After her character development, you get to play as her protecting Alexandria and can see her destroy waves of enemies by herself first-hand.
Villain rating: epic fail
Necron is this random guy that shows up and wants to destroy everything. No backstory, no motive, nothing. He makes some random comments and fights you. He is also basically Neo ExDeath (same goal and same ultimate attack; Grand Cross hurts like hell), but Neo ExDeath had all of FFV’s story building up to his appearance. Necron has none of that.
If you want to consider Kuja the main villain, I’d bump this to “good,” as Kuja actually has some depth. Kuja shows fear, something very few villains in general do.
Gameplay rating
Oh do I have beef with the gameplay. The ATB RUNS DURING ANIMATIONS which is EPIC FAIL. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s stupid when you put an enemy to sleep to prevent its counter, summon something, and it wakes up before the summon ends, countering you anyway. Now there’s a way to prevent this: set the ATB to “wait” and leave a menu open during the animation, but it’s still a horrible flaw. To prove I’m not just griping over this, you can also cheese the system by having Auto-Regen and then summoning Ark. By the time that long-ass animation ends, everyone will be at full life.
Also, the airship is really, really slow.
Difficulty rating
This is the hardest PSX Final Fantasy. There is a strict damage limit at 9999, no matter what. There are no multi-hit moves, so a character must cap at 9999. There are no proper Ribbons, so no way to defend against all status ailments. This was true in FFVIII as well, but enemies in FFVIII didn’t spam status effects and Treatment was available from GF Siren. In this game, status ailments are plentiful. They even made new ones, such as Virus (one of the most annoying moves EVER).
About the superboss: People told me Ozma is the most difficult superboss in the entire series, with the possible exception of Yiazmat in FFXII with the 50 million plus HP. This is…partly true. Ozma is random. It can spam Meteor and Curse, which means even a level 99 party with fully maxed stats will probably die in under a minute. Or, it could spam Doomsday, which means it may kill itself eventually.
Storyline rating: good
FFIX has a pretty deep and lengthy storyline, but its true strength lies in the character development. FFIX has the best and most developed characters in the entire series. It’s really a shame that the battle mechanics were so FUBAR.
Quote award
“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Necron
Necron is such a dumb villain he can’t even come up with his own lines; instead, he steals them from Yoda. To drive the point home, he can’t even steal a proper villain line. Yoda is like the epitome of the Light Side in Star Wars. Ugh. Epic fail…though I will admit that the line itself is pretty cool.
Quote award (take 2)
“I once killed a hundred knights single-handedly…to me, you two are nothing more than insects.” – Beatrix
I don’t really have to elaborate on this, do I?
Overpowered award
You need to be very specific with your party to be overpowered. Your party must consist of Zidane, Quina, Freya, and Steiner. Then, you do these four things:
- With Zidane, steal a huge-ass ton of items throughout all the battles in the game.
- With Quina, catch a huge-ass ton of frogs from the Qu Marshes.
- Kill a huge-ass ton of dragons.
- Take Steiner’s Spirit up as far as you can (or, in other words, give Steiner a huge-ass ton of Spirit by equipping proper items).
Now Zidane’s Thievery does damage based on how many items you’ve stolen in battle (and his Speed stat, but manipulating the former is much easier). Quina’s Frog Drop does damage based on how many frogs she’s caught. Freya’s Dragon Crest does damage based on how many dragons you’ve killed. Steiner’s Shock damages based on his Spirit stat (I think…). This means by doing these four things, you can use these skills for an easy 9999 damage each time. You might be saying that this is nowhere near as overpowered as the previous games…and you’d be right. It’s hard to be overpowered in this game. Also note that even with this setup, Ozma can still use Meteor/Curse on you for really quick death. Finally, you need these four characters specifically…I only used Zidane and Quina out of the four and I never bothered to power-up their special moves.
Final boss: Necron, the random nihilist of complete and utter randomness