Final Fantasy IX Review

The deliberate retreat into medieval fantasy could have been a curtain call and it turned into the most emotionally direct game in the series. Vivi is the reason. A black mage who discovers he was manufactured, has a fixed lifespan and cannot stop the others of his kind from switching off in front of him gives the whole game a quiet grief that the theatre troupe framing and the bright colours never undercut.

Zidane is a thief with an easy charm that hides the same question about origin, and Steiner is a joke that the writing eventually takes seriously. The ability system is the best compromise the series found, learning skills from equipment so gear choices matter without becoming a spreadsheet. The costs are the load times and the battle speed, which were slow on the original hardware and are the single most common complaint, plus a final antagonist who appears far too late to mean anything. Everything before that last hour is close to flawless.