The Silent Protagonist – Final Fantasy IX

Hello, and welcome back to the Silent Protagonist – the little corner of Ready-Up where I write about RPGs. This time I’m looking at the first game I ever played… well… the first console game I ever played.

Regardless of the following stroll down memory lane, it started something new for me. It started my own adventure that has lasted nearly thirteen years.

I remember when I was ten, my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I replied ‘a Playstation’. To my utter disappointment, I recall them saying that Santa had been asked for a lot of them, and they weren’t sure if he could get me one. If you can image the sheer delight when this rather creepy man, who crawls down chimneys, in a giant red suit, to leave presents for good children, left me a Playstation that year, along with Final Fantasy IX, Wild 9, Gran Turismo, and Crash Bandicoot. Needless to say, Santa got a very long thank you letter that year.

It started my own adventure that has lasted nearly thirteen years.

Final Fantasy IX was the first game that I ever fell in love with, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. I also thought it was impossibly hard to beat Gizamaluke, but that’s neither here nor there.

I rushed through the story, without really paying any attention to the character development that I witnessed, or doing any side quests, so I never really got the full experience of the game until I was studying for my GCSEs, seven years later. I’d decided to give it another go and was captivated. I spent more hours than I’d care to admit, getting everybody’s ultimate weapon, learning everyone’s skills (Except Quina), doing as many side quests as I possibly could and defeating Ozma (with some help from Eiko and Final Summon Phoenix), and playing my favourite mini-game to date: chocobo hot and cold.

Some of my favourite memories of playing the game was naming Garnet til Alexandros ‘Garnet’ when they decided to change her name outside of Dali, calling Aldebert Steiner ‘Rusty’ and Freya Crescent ‘Ratchel’. As pathetic as this sounds, it caused much amusement to my seventeen year old self, to have the characters deny this was their name, simply to restate it moments later.

So what’s the story? It’s four disks long, and there is usually one major plot twist per disk. It starts with finding out Queen Brahne is a little bit loopy and the focus of the first disk is all about stopping her ambitions TO RULE THE WORLD. Seriously. Every game needs some power-hungry loon to get the ball rolling. However, that’s before you uncover the fact that she was being manipulated by some white haired, white skimpy-clothed bimbo from another planet. Then you discover that he’s got daddy issues and lord knows what else.

There’s a lot of ups, and a lot of downs during the story. One of the high points for me, was watching Vivi evolve from a character who can only be described as the insecurest introvert I’ve ever seen in a game, to becoming probably the most powerful black mage on Gaia with a new sense of confidence, taking charge of the party when Zidane, Steiner, and Eiko aren’t about. However, despite that formidable power, he still questions his existence, even at the end of the game.

One of the low points of the game for me was the fact that Steiner was a beast of a character. You could probably have won the game with just him in the party as his attack power is so high.

Every character had a Trance state in battle. It took ages to fill the Trance meter, mind you. However, once activated, it altered their abilities slightly until the gauge depleted. For instance, it enabled Vivi to cast two spells in one turn: Dagger to summon Eidolons constantly throughout the battle and Zidane to unlock a new set of abilities. Steiner’s attack value was tripled. In his trance state, even by level 50, his normal attack was doing 9999 damage, which was the max damage. He was a one man army! He seemed as if he belonged in Dynasty Warriors rather than Final Fantasy.

This was more of a ‘Memoirs of Final Fantasy IX’ than a blog about it, but hey. We’ll roll with it this week.

Moral of the post? Final Fantasy IX was awesome and I love it, and so should you. Also, the music rocks.

Next time on The Silent Protagonist, I’ll actually talk about Final Fantasy VI. Promise.

…To be continued…