Return to its Roots?

[Xanatos]

(minor minor spoilers)The main reason I point to, to illustrate its shortcoming is the scene in Regent Cid's Throne room. If you go into there and check out the line of Cid statues along the wall, you would expect that they would relate to the Cid's of earlier games. In fact they're even labled Cid III, Cid VI, and so on, and even go so far as to tell you what each one is holding. So you might think they'd be holding an item relative to the game they appeared it, but no. One of them has a harp. There wasn't one Cid who had a harp. So I wonder what the point was of including these statues, including text to explain them, but in a game that's suppose to reference it's own history, they would fail to actually provide a link to it? It was just puzzeling, and while not a big deal, for me was indicative of the whole game.

****ing unbelievable, Cid statues, really!!!! What's the point of the statues? This is surprisingly simple, there is no point. Let me explain you a little bit, Cid IX is a current king of Lindbum and he lives in the castle so normally as any other castle there should be statues or pictures of former kings. Don't really know how could anyone (who have actually played former FF games and know the big difference between all of them) believe that those are Cid's from former games. They labeled them for one simple reason, maybe because there were eight kings before current Cid and I don't think it's smart to call every King just Cid. This is just something they wanted to add that will represent Lindbum, I don't understand what's the big deal with the statues.

Games like IV, VI, VII, & X had far better characters. In IX, the Rat Lady, Quina, the big Red-headed dude, and the little girl summoner at the end, were all toss in characters. None of them really mattered that much to the larger story, and the Red-Headed dude esspecially was introduced with a lot of haste that made little sense. I'm not really even sure why Quina was there, although again she was fun. Compare that to VII, where every character mattered, or VI where all 14 characters mattered.

Before you start to compare the characters you should at least known their names. I must say that I agree with you about Quina and Amarant but I really don't understand why did you mention Freya and especially Eiko. If you played the game you should at least known that Eiko plays major role in the story. Oh and I agree with you about FF VII, Vincent and Yuffie were so important that they were actually an optional characters. Oh and I also must agree with you about the FF VI that Bigfoot Umaro had to do everything with the main story, Mog also and especially that Mimic Gogo...

Also on the down side, the game was too linear for far too long. I was on disk 3, before I really got to do what I wanted, about 60 hours in. And the side games in between were few and far between. Jumping rope 1000 times, and bidding on potions at the auction house, just weren't all that stimulating when compared to breeding & racing chocobos in VII, or drafting Blitzball players in X. Maybe you liked those, and maybe you didn't, but they were involving none-the-less.

I found the reveal of what was really going on to be very intriquing, however it was a rushed explanation in the final few hours of the game, and I could never quite figure out what value there had been in delaying the answer for so long. I think I would have enjoyed the answer much better if I had gotten at least a strong hint to it way earlier in the game. As it was, most of the main enemies were dead and gone, and I'd never found out why I was even fighting them.

You needed a hint, you're joking right? First of all, every and I really mean every FF game has a complicated story which you follow and everything becomes clear slowly through the game. Every game including FF IX has a hints which become clear only when you finish the game. Your main goal was to find and beat Kuya because he was the main villain at that moment. And by searching for him you come across to more relevant part of the story. Unlike FF VII where from the start you know what to do and who's the last boss (which is boring if you ask me) in FF IX you need to travel to find some facts because you don't get everything served at the beginning, the same concept has FF VIII.

I will agree with you that most of minigames in FF IX are pretty dumb but what's so fun in breading chocobo's. I was only doing that because I wanted to collect those four materias and needles to say it's was too annoying.

The game sits above Final Fantasy's I, II, V, and IV, in that order for me, and is what I would consider par for the course for a very esteemed franchise. For me I'd spend my money and time on VI, VII, VIII, X, and XII much quicker.

And I would spend my money on FF IX, VIII, VI, IV, II rather than on FF VII, so what's your point. FF IX like every other game has positive and negative things and I'm sure that you understand that.