This game is a must play for anyone who even remotely likes turn based RPGs.  Final Fantasy is my favorite series (tied with Zelda), and FF9 is my second favorite FF after FF7.  As much as I like FF7, I really thought that the series uses futuristic sci-fi too much.  The nice thing about FF9 is that it dials it all back to a more pure fantasy setting.  This is when Squaresoft was at the top of their game, and yet it's the only FF from this time period that is in a pure fantasy world.  

But FF9 is also a Fantasy/Scifi merger >_>.......

Zidane, Kuja, Garland, and all the G-Nomes are effectively aliens.  Terra is their planet. Not to mention Kuja Gnomes are manufactured husk entities, very scifi.

What?  Somehow I missed this detail.  Of course this is one game where I kind of ignored the villain, because I couldn't get into his part of the story as well.

Which is very common I find.

I ask people who think FF9 is their favorite what the story is even about and most are stumped lol. 

That is ok tho, like I said in my previous post, the game thrives off of it's visual appeal and charm, less so on it's ability to tell a story. Vivi is one of my top 5 FF characters. 

Things people frequently forget or Don't understand in FF9

-Quinna, the Giant lickatung looking creature with the sick Blue Magic spells.

-Necron, the games actual final boss who seemingly came from left field. Very bizarre encounter after so much buildup for Kuja.

-Kuja and Zidane are brothers

-Kuja was a prototype for Zidane, both are creatures known as G-Nomes who are manufactured beings imbued with power used to eradicate life on a planet like Gaia(Game's main setting) before siphoning it's life force to bring the real sleeping denizens of Planet Terra back to life.

-Terra is an overall strange planet that was suppose to be long dead, but Garland keeps delaying it's natural decay by destroying other planets to keep it alive. I imagine this connects with the seemingly random Necron battle, as the God of Death demanded what it was owed after so long.

-I guess one of the game's main themes is "Transfer of Power". Kuja's whole issue is that he finds out after he completes his task of weakening the planet's defenses that he was built with an expiration date. As a prototype G-Nome he was built with too much power to just reside with the rest of them. Kuja is a 20 something boy who finds out he is on borrowed time and decides if he must die so must everything else in one giant self destructive haze.  Zidane takes pity on Kuja because nothing is worse than a young person's sense of immortality being shaken/broken. Honestly, Kuja is one of my favorit FF Villains.

-Another theme is Life creating lesser life. Garland created GNomes just as Kuja created Mages. Mages are the real saddest story because they were developed with singular purposes and were never designed to last for very long. Vivi is special and lives far longer than most....but will ultimately live a short life.

-Last theme, "DEATH"! All things must die, some things quicker than others. Quality of life is about the way you use your time given. Immortality is maddening and unsustainable. Nothing does, or should exist forever. This is actually a reoccuring theme in many of the Playstation Era FF games. FFVII had the Life Stream representing the flow of life, death and rebirth. FF8 had Ultimecia trying to creat "Time Compression" so that the world would stop changing and she could remain as she is and was forever....fear of death/loss. FFX is really ALL ABOUT DEATH and the idea of immortality through one's memories of those lost. 

Thanks for explaining all of this.  Now I feel like I should go back and play FF9 again soon.   

The thing is that I always thought I understood the story though.  But I had previously thought the main story was between Zidane and Garnet with Vivi having a very significant subplot.  But Kuja always seemed thrown in there at random.  Now I need to go back and pay more attention.  At any rate, FF9 seems to lack sci-fi elements on the surface.

I'm assuming you finished it on Switch. Does the Switch version have good anti-aliasing, or is it just as much of a jumbly mess as the PS1 version. I'm asking, because I'd like to be able to replay those games without the eyesore that was PS1's terrible anti-aliasing. And I'm thinking about getting FF7, 8, and 9 on Switch. But I already own them on PS1 soooo. 

Couldn't agree more with this. 

FF9 is such a wonderful experience, I loved it even though I played it for the first time only three years ago.

It holds up fine, so long as you play it on the PS1 or PS2. The Switch/PC/PS4 version is just a port of the mobile version. And that version is a buggy mess.

I'm not encountering any of the "buggy mess" that I'm aware of on the Switch, but I do have to ask if the Active Time Events are going to continue throughout the game. They're really disruptive and make it difficult for me to stay engaged in the game.