I feel a bit different about this one. I come from a long time of Final Fantasy fandom, and FF9 did NOT impress me.
I didn't really like it very much at all when compared to most other FF titles. I feel like FF9 and FF11 didn't really seem to fit in the main series very well. FF9 was the least adventurous the series had ever been and seemed more like a Crystal Chronicles game rather than a true numbered Final Fantasy game. On top of this, it was the first game in the series that faced sharp reductions in content, only this game disn't have the technological advancement excuse of FF10 and FF13's content reductions.
To expand on what I mean by "least adventurous":
1. Plot structure - it lifted the plot structure from Final Fantasy 7 and dumbed it down - start off in a populated zone, and then spend most of the rest Ifthe game chasing a white haired villain, who has a link to the main blonde haired character's youth, around the world... Only FF9's world was mostly an empty wasteland, while FF7 had many interesting locations. There were plenty of obscenely empty and boring locations in FF9 that sometimes felt like they took hours to complete (Like that Moogle girl village and the Lifa Tree).
2. No original gameplay, the battle system is a dumbed down version of past FF title, and was far less customizable. It didn't do anything original in minigames, as it essentially lifted Triple Triad from FF8 and made a more vanilla feeling game that was more tacked on and far less rewarding, and called it Tetra Master.
3. There were no interesting scenes that were just completely crazy, such as when Cloud goes into a Mafia Don's house dressed in drag in order to infiltrate the base of operations. Zidane had a tail and was otherwise a cutout of a Disney character archetype pasted on Goku from Dragon Ball.
When I say it feels more like a Crystal Chronicles game, that is because of how it focuses on the Vanilla Final Fantasty Fantasy.
Finally, when I say the game was the first that faced sharp content reductions... From Final Fantasy 1 to 8, each ame world was more grand and expansive than the last, there were more characters, more and bigger towns, and more things to do in each game.
For example, by the time we got to FF8 we had:
• Multiple Arcologies (Balamb Garden, Trabia Garden, and Galbadia Garden) that doubled as a School campuses, Balamb Garden even had an Internet and a blog section where Selphie would record her experiences in the game from her perspective... Years before blog existed. I should mention, the Gardens can move as well.
• A techno-environmental paradise which contained artisans in the form of Shumi village
• A hippie town in the form of Fisherman's horizon which was built on a giant railroad bridge crossing a vast sea .
• A wealthy roaring 20's themed city in the form of Dollet.
• Deling City, capital of the Galbadia Empire: A WW2 era city which has a built in early mass transit system in the form of early busses, that you can take from place to place around town.
• A steam era city in the form of Timber, which is full of trains, which you can take to various cities around the world, some routs even lead through a Chunnel type passage, such as when traveling to Balamb Town. Timber is also home to a newspaper printing house, you can pick up issues through the course of the game.
• There's also the spectacularly massive metropolis of Esthar, which has access to automated malls, and a space port where you can travel to the nation's space station. While also an Empire, generally their presence is limited to their own continent since the new Democratic government came into control.
• There are also Balamb Town, a luxurious seaside town, and Winhil which is based more on rural life.
FF9 reduced from this to three real towns in the form of Alexandria, Treno, and Bloomingdale. Treno has an interesting feature in that it is always night, but ultimately the town feels more like a mesh of Zozo and Jidoor from FF6, and less interesting than the two: as Jidoor is also the staging point to reach its Opera House a little to the south where one of the most iconic scenes in videogame history takes place. with a few village type locations that barely feel like towns: one with Dwarves, another with Black Mage dolls, and a Library. FF4 remains the only FF game that gave Dwarves proper treatment!
In many ways, FF9 is the first Final Fantasy game which really disappointed me, and is also the least likely game outside of FF11, FF13 and NES FF2 that I will ever return to play.
FF9 ultimately had a more quaint feeling of a Final Fantasy spinoff, lIke Crystal Chronicles or Mystic Quest Legend. It made no attempt to push any boundaries, and was in many ways much reduced from the boundaries pushed by past games in FE series.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
