This post is a April 2026 transcription of this video. The text has been edited for readability while preserving my original sentiment.

Final Fantasy IX was released on July 7th, 2000, and even after 25 years, fans of this game have been saying that this is the best Final Fantasy game. Now, I have played my share of Final Fantasy games in the most recent of years, and my first experience was actually playing the X2 demo that was released during the US PlayStation Official Magazine.

However, today I want to tell you about my experience and journey going through Final Fantasy IX. The first part of this post is going to be taking place over the first 12 hours of me playing the game, and I stopped right as I met Ramuh for the very first time. However, let’s go ahead and rewind a bit because I want to tell you how awesome the opening is.

Intro to Meeting Ramuh

We are introduced to a wonderful group of characters called the Tantalus Group, and when I first saw them, I thought they were going to just be a throwaway cast of characters. They only purpose was to steal the Princess and nothing else big about them. And then I was like, oh, their names are Zidane, Blank, Marcus, Cinna, Baku, and I was like, how did I remember these names? It is truly something special when I remember the cast of characters that typically takes me a really long time to remember.

So I’m surprised. They are such a wonderful group that I remember them. And then we’re introduced to a wonderful kid named Vivi. He’s around nine years old and a black mage and he’s exploring this big city of Alexandria for the very first time. He runs into this punk ass kid named Puck, who happens to be a prince and calling Vivi a slave. We’re going to go ahead and just skip over that because they are about to go ahead and steal their way into watching the theater performance ran by who else but the Tantalus group who’s attempting to steal the Princess.

So we’re already seeing these intermingling stories that I’m just very excited about. And then we’re introduced to the castle cast. We have Captain of the Pluto Knight, Steiner. We have Queen Brahne. The leader of the Alexandria soldiers, Beatrix. And Princess Garnet. When I learned that Steiner is a year younger than I am and in the game they’re calling him middle aged and an old man, I’m like, god, I’m still young. OK. All right. Crazy.

Either way, it’s really interesting to see the differences of the Alexandria guards, right? The Pluto Knights are a bunch of idiots, right? And you have the Alexandria soldiers who are just like stern and strict. It is like so different. Curious about the difference between Steiner and Beatrix? Or is that something to show? Like, did the king originally command the Pluto Knights and then the queen was in charge of the Alexandria soldiers? I would love to learn more about the interplay between why the Pluto Knights are so dumb.

As the Tantalus group is doing their performance, Blank and Zidane run off to go kidnap Princess Garnet. And who do they just happen to bump into trying to escape the castle? Princess Garnet wearing, which I love, is the official classic white mage robe. Awesome. I really love that. And she’s even saying like, hey, I want to escape. So Zidane takes her off and they split. And Steiner, in his efforts to protect the Princess, runs off to go ahead and try to protect the Princess from Zidane and the Tantalus group.

This is where Steiner begins to irk me. He is constantly insulting the Tantalus group, calling them criminals and trying to take Garnet home. He even has the childlike emotes of him just like stomping on the ground and having like a hissy fit. But I get it because he’s just blinded by his loyalty to Alexandria.

And I have enjoyed the moments where Steiner’s loyalty has been tested. We have moments where Princess Garnet tells him to shut up after he continues to insult Marcus and the Tantalus group. Another wonderful moment where Steiner questions if he is doing enough when he sees that Beatrix and Freya, after Beatrix and the Queen Brahne killed all of Freya’s people, teamed up together to fight against the queen. He’s wondering maybe I should go back them up, right? He is seeing what the courage that Beatrix has, and he’s like, maybe I can do this as well.

So I do like how the game is testing his loyalty and helping him understand who he is as a person. And I do enjoy every time Steiner calls Vivi, Master Vivi because he has this appreciation for how powerful Black Mages are.

Speaking of Black Mages, let’s talk about Vivi. Vivi’s story has been fantastic so far. He is full of so much emotion and life, and he has memories of the past. So it becomes like this crazy moment when we are then introduced to the idea that Black Mages are just dolls being controlled by Queen Brahne to attack and destroy. It’s sad because we are seeing Vivi experiences for the first time where he has never seen a Black Mage before. His first experience is Black Mages either ignoring him or seeing them commit these awful atrocities. This gives Vivi this identity crisis about who he is as a person. Is he just a doll meant to be controlled or is he a person?

But in this kind of depressive cycle that Vivi is in, Steiner says something really incredible. He tells him that from the experience you were with us, you’re just as human as I am, which was such a touching and amazing moment coming from Steiner that I didn’t even expect. This makes me wonder if we’re really supposed to question whether Vivi is a doll or not. And maybe the story is pushing us more towards what does it mean to be human? What is it about your experiences? It’s not where you’ve come from, but it’s about what you’ve been doing, what your experience is, things that you are in control of. So I’m really curious and excited to learn more about Vivi as a character.

I love how expressive Vivi is, even if we can’t see his facial expressions. The way they animate his body is so expressive that I understood each and every single one of his emotions when he feels them. It’s a really amazing job by the animators on that. I love that we also learn that Vivi’s grandfather looks like Quina. I even found a cave nearby Treno when I was with Marcus Steiner and Princess Garnet, and it was a letter about how he adopted Vivi six months ago. And so I’m really excited to go back to Quan’s cave to look with Vivi to like learn more about his story, you know, because Vivi is definitely one of my favorite characters.

Also, Quina is also a fun character. All she cares about is like collecting frogs, which is very, very funny. It’s a very cute minigame. She’s a blue mage that gets the powers from enemies by just eating them. That is also very, very funny. Another character I really like is Freya because we just randomly meet her at a bar and the game does such a great job of making her real badass because she beat me at a hunting game so I’m in a state of awe with her. Crazy that this city just unleashes a group of wild animals and expects people to hunt them down. Also is Cid insane? These people could die. But once the competition is over, we then quickly move on to another emergency scenario where Burmecia is under attack, which is the home city of Freya. \

Even after three years, Freya is like, I need to go help protect my people. We’re going right now. And so we head over to Burmecia. However, by the time we arrive, the black mages have already completely destroyed Burmecia. It’s a heartbreaking moment because not only are we dealing with Freya having to come to terms with this horrifying reality, but also at the same time, Vivi is still struggling with like, did I do this? Is this what I’m meant to do? The game even goes as far as for us to speak with wounded soldiers in their last words and then they just die at the end of the conversation. It is so depressing.

We get this brief moment of calmness and joy, I guess, because all the all the surviving Burmecia people and our squad head over to Cleyra, which is protected by a giant sandstorm. And we also get to see a wonderful dance that is meant to strengthen the sandstorm. But instead, the heart breaks, the sandstorm dissipates, and now Alexandria is right outside the door taking over everything. It is quite the mess. So as the city is being attacked by Alexandria, the game gives us a choice to help people survive. And unfortunately, the first option was two high priests going like, which way do we go? And I’m like, oh, yeah, go up. And then they just got killed by a bunch of black mages. So I felt bad about that. But hey, at least I didn’t kill the mother and child.

Eventually get surrounded by a bunch of black mages, but Freya was like, I’m here, kills them all. Super cool. And then the game is like, hey, why don’t why don’t we just make you sadder? Because Freya is suffering through all of this torment. And then Fratley has been on a great journey, great adventure. And he hasn’t returned home. And so this is his first time returning home. And he’s got amnesia. He doesn’t remember his experiences with Freya. And this devastates Freya because the reason she is who she is as a person was because she loved and looked up to Fratley. And for him to just not remember her at all is so devastated.

It feels like this story is meant to be revolving around finding your purpose in life and figuring out who you are. Freya just lost her purpose. Vivi is still juggling with who he is and what he does. Steiner can’t figure out his loyalty. And Princess Garnet is trying to be an independent person.

Speaking of Garnet, I haven’t even talked about her. Garnet, also known as Dagger, is a wonderful character. She deeply cares about people. But because she has been so sheltered her entire life, she has not yet experiences the realities that a lot of people are living under. We get this really good glimpse of her past when she is a little girl with Dr. Tot and she’s like, oh, where’s she looks at this. She looks at this globe and she’s like, oh, where is our castle? And Tot’s like, hey, our castle is way too small for this globe. And it kind of shows that her entire world for forever was just the castle. And now because of Zidane, she’s been able to experience life, experience different walks of life and to truly learn how to become independent.

The game does such a good job of expressing this by having her be extremely weak. Her attacks are very low because she could just wield staffs and she doesn’t have access to her summonings. But the game shows us that not only does she have summons, but it even shows us the kind of summons she has. It is such a great job of making us know that like Dagger relies on others to help her out. And that’s what Dagger is suffering with? That’s what she doesn’t want. She wants to become independent. And I love that.

The last character I haven’t really talked about is Zidane. He’s a tough character to understand, honestly, because everything is going good with them. He is the leader of the group. He’s in charge all the time. And the only bit of weakness we have seen from him is during the time when Queen Brahne has extracted the Eidolons from Princess Garnet and she’s like she’s not waking up. And Zidane’s like, I can’t cry because I don’t have any tears. And he’s kind of struggling with these emotions. I’m really curious to learn more about Zidane, because as of right now, we haven’t seen much weakness from him. He’s a very good protagonist. I really want to see how we learn and get deeper into who Zidane is as a character.

I love the way that the game doesn’t allow us to always be able to switch out all of our party members. Every so often, we’re being forced to play a specific group of characters for the story. I think that has been so effective for me in terms of seeing how different characters interact. Also, the game, the game’s combat is a little bit interesting because I’m not really gaining abilities. Abilities and skills are like tied to equipment and I don’t do a lot of synthesis. So a lot of my characters are lacking abilities or skills.

Also I’m not the biggest fan of the trance system because it’s based off you getting hit and that increases your trance meter. However, it just activates when your trance bar is full. And for me, that has happened often during a random encounter where I didn’t even need to use it. And so it feels like a waste when I would rather want to save it for a boss and do some crazy damage.

What’s not lacking is the fantastical element of visiting Lindblum for the first time, because this is such a massive city. And your first experience going on an airship, seeing how beautifully awesome this city is was just like so fascinating. I don’t know. It’s just so fascinating. I don’t know why it impressed me so much, but I just I really, I really like this. I really like Lindblum.

Lastly, I want to talk about the villains I met so far, which is Queen Brahne, Beatrix and Kuja. Queen Brahne is an interesting character because Princess Garnet mentions that she has been acting weird since the king died. And it seems that Kuja has been working behind the scenes as he has been supplying the Black Mages to Queen Brahne. So I’m very curious if Kuja is like doing any kind of mind control or something. But then at the same time, like if he’s doing mind control, are we really just going to have a moment where Queen Brahne is like all of a sudden a good person? I wouldn’t want that. Speaking of, are they a good person?

Let’s talk about Beatrix, because I have a lot of complicated feelings about Beatrix. She is super loyal to the queen. After the attack on Cleyra, Beatrix is like, I could have done it myself and my soldiers because Queen Brahne is using all the Black Mages to kill all the people on Cleyra. And Beatrix is just like, why didn’t she ask me? Is she’s getting jealous for not being able to kill the Brumacian people? This person seems pretty bad. Which happens after Queen Brahne summoned Odin to destroy all the Cleyrans and Brumacians that were in there. But I don’t think that Puck and Quina died. But goddamn, has that been devastating. So I find it difficult to be excited when Beatrix is turning on the queen because I just don’t see a character like this being redeemable, even though she does look cool and she has cool attacks.

However, I did appreciate that during the moment where she makes her turn, she looks at Freya and apologized. But Freya saying, I don’t accept your apology. You are not forgiven. Do your job and protect the Princess, which. Absolutely incredible moment, because, yeah, that’s how I feel. You don’t deserve forgiveness. You caused a genocide. So I do appreciate that from Freya. I’m hoping by the end of the game that either Beatrix dies or what would be even crazier and awesome is that she sacrifices herself for Fratley, Freya or Puck at some point would be really cool.

Ramuh to Alexander Appearing

In just these four hours alone, so much happened. We’re not going to be 100% chronological here because I’m just going to ramble. I left off meeting Ramuh and he asked a question about whether Joseph is a hero or a human.

I chose human because that’s kind of how I viewed the story. But what I really love what Zidane mentions is that it’s not what matters about who we tell this story about. What matters is who this person was at the time of when they lived. Ramuh agrees. As long as you’re true to yourself, it doesn’t matter what people say about you after. I think that’s just a really cool moment that I think will definitely tie a lot into this game and who these characters are that I’m very excited to learn more about.

One moment, I want to mention is how awesome the reveal of the world map is, because. I’ll be honest, I’m kind of a person who tries not to think too much when I’m playing a game. I like to enjoy the story as it is and I’m asking myself a few little questions about like, you know, our Dagger in Eiko related or we’ve never met someone who looks like Zidane before currently in the story, but never once have I questioned if our map is going to get bigger.

This is a trope in the Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy 7 is once you go outside of Midgar. Final Fantasy 8 once you’re out of Seed Garden, but in Final Fantasy 9, I never thought it was too small. I had enough room to navigate and there’s so many other areas, I haven’t explored.

So to get the world map reveal & immediately traveling underground taking the little bugs to travel to a non-mist continent and seeing new people, seeing the tree of Iifa. It’s that was such an awesome reveal that I was really happy that this all happened as a surprise!

Along that journey, we meet the Black Mage Village. This was so awesome because originally I thought this is where the Black Mages are from, but quite quickly do we learn that Black Mages were produced in Alexandria, but they escaped. They somehow broke free and are now starting their own societies, living in their own village. This is so cool.

They even have this illusionary dead forest that hides the village itself. And I love that as we get there, they’re scared of humans because they realize the atrocities that the Alexandria and Kuja have forced them to do. And so they don’t trust humans because they’re just going to force to be weapons again.

I love that as they’re building this society, they’re also honoring their dead. We have a really beautiful moment where Vivi starts to understand what death means to him about what stopping means in their language. It’s just this very beautiful moment. And I think what I really appreciate about this game is we have this wondering feeling about if Vivi is a puppet or not? But that doesn’t matter. What matters is Vivi trying to understand who he is as a person. This is what Vivi’s story is about.

And we even have this additional moment where even Zidane is like, Vivi is just trying to find a home. I think that stuff means so much. And I love how much Vivi as a character is growing and just how much I love Vivi. Dude, Vivi is such an awesome character. He’s so, so good.

We also go to a place called Madain Sari, which my mind was racing, dude, because we have these glimpses of when we enter Madain Sari for the first time and Daggers like, this looks familiar. I recognize this. And originally I was like, oh, it’s because her dad was probably from here because we haven’t learned much about her dad. We meet a character named Eiko and she very goofy because she’s wants to break up Dagger and Zidane. She lives alone on this island with a bunch of Moogles. Since her grandfather died. That was the only person who was taking care of her. She is the last of the summoners because Madain Sari, as we learn, is a village of summoners or was a village of some. And I love that as we start to learn more about this story. Do we then learn Dagger is slowly remembering things about her past.

One of these moments happens on a little boat with Zidane. Zidane hears her singing her song and he jumps down. He sees her there, small little boat, and we get a little flashback of the very beginning cutscene of the game. We see someone who we thought would be Dagger, but in fact is Dagger’s mom taking her daughter away from Madain Sari. And we see the eye of Invincible open up, destroying the entire village. Her mom dying as they arrive in Alexandria, and Queen Brahne and her husband deciding to take in Dagger as their daughter because the previous Princess Garnet died. Very fascinating. We also learn from Dr. Tot that they cut off Dagger’s horn, which we see those horns on Eiko.

I just want to briefly zoom over to when Bahamut shows up because Bahamut showing up is some of the most hypest stuff in in Final Fantasy IX. After our first trip to the mist, we go to the Iifa tree. The mist is no longer being produced, but we do know that the roots still hold some of that mist. But new mist is not being created.

Kuja can no longer use the mist to create weapons because we also learn that the mist also causes people’s fighting spirits to be more active. Luckily, Kuja’s up on this tree so we go to fight him. And as we see Kuja up on the tree, Brahne’s brought her fleet here. She wants to kill Kuja because she’s like greedy with power. Kuja actually tells this to Dagger that he didn’t do anything to her mother. She just became greedy.

We got this really cool battle. We see Kuja just destroying Brahne’s fleet. Dagger wants to save her mother so we head to the bottom of the Iifa tree because there is a Eidolon sealed there. We convince Eiko to destroy the barrier sealing the Eidolon, but learn that it’s Leviathan.

Which would just create tidal waves wiping out Brahne’s fleet. So Dagger feels hopeless that she cannot save her mother. Then her mother summons Bahamut, an amazing epic cut scene. And immediately Kuja gets a little blood on him contacts the Invincible, a giant eye from the sky opens up and takes over the summon & kills Brahne.

Around the same time, Kuja also mentions taking over Gaia. As though this story is not going to just take place on the current planet we’re in. We might be going to space. And that’s something, I’m absolutely wild! We also meet a new character because earlier in the story we’re introduced to some bounty hunters hired by Brahne. Mysterious redhead troll looking guy, like Warcraft troll, big and blue. And then Hot Lady Lani. I think that’s her real name. And they are cool looking characters. Lani especially because she’s just got a huge battle axe! Funny that we fight her multiple times and she always dips out.

However, one time, she takes the Royal Pendant from Dagger by kidnapping Eiko. However, the big blue troll guy saves Eiko because he tells Lani that they were just here for the pedant so no need to keep the hostages. But then also decides to fight Zidane. Because he’s like, I’m equal opportunity here. I’m going to fight you Zidane. We win & he asks Zidane to kill him. You won as a warrior. I deserve death. And I love is that Zidane keeps him alive to help him understand why he wants him to live.

Thus unlocking Amarant. Cool character. I don’t know how he plays yet. He throws items and I bought all these items to save when I can find someone who could synthesize them. So I’m like, I don’t want to throw any of my items right now. I only have Chakra right now. So I need to I need to really find some good equipment for him for some better spells because he’s not a very great character that I can use, but very cool learning more about him, especially now that I’m back in Treno. He & Zidane met here, but Zidane doesn’t remember him. So that’s very interesting.

Let’s talk about Dagger and Zidane’s relationship, because this turned into a beautiful flower in in just these four hours. An unrequited love that we saw throughout the first 12 hours of the series. In these last four hours, this develops a bit more. We start to see that Dagger is wanting to rely more on Zidane and Zidane is wanting to be there with Dagger. We have touching moments and this scene made me cry when we have the Alexander moment.

And Dagger is falling to her death and Zidane saves her, but as she is in Zidane’s arms she embraces him tightly. It is this moment that has built up for so long because after Queen Brahne died. Dagger becomes Queen, but Zidane is moping around. He’s not himself. He doesn’t feel right. He now can’t find the words that he used to be able to easily find.

Even when he gets the opportunity to speak with Dagger. He doesn’t know what to say and Dagger is also there wanting to say more to Zidane. But she’s like, why aren’t you saying anything to me now? She’s taking it more personally. I love that kind of moment for these two characters. They really care about each other so the moment where Zidane saves Dagger. They are finally able to be honest with each other. I greatly appreciate that.

There are also goofier romances between Beatrix and Steiner because Eiko writes a letter to Zidane and then she gets stuck on a mantle and then Baku’s like, hey, I’ll deliver this letter to Zidane. But then he drops the letter and then Beatrix picks it up and is like, oh, Steiner was just here. Did Steiner write this? And then at some point, Blank steals the letter from Beatrix and he’s like, oh, Beatrix wrote this letter for me. And then he drops the letter and then Steiner picks it up and he’s like, oh, did Beatrix write this letter for me? And we are about to have a moment where Beatrix and Steiner were about to admit love to each other and then they got interrupted. It is all very funny.

There is a cool moment where Beatrix and Steiner are fighting for their lives against all these evil creatures that are ascending upon the castle of Alexandria, which that moment was crazy because we also had Eiko and Dagger coming together to summon Alexander, the Holy Judgment, to protect everyone. To then quickly getting destroyed by the Invincible. We don’t know how powerful the Invincible is. It was there during the time when Dagger escaped Madain Sari. And it’s now there as it destroys Alexander. So I’m very excited to learn more about this because this is just an ominous spaceship. It has to be.

Oh yeah, we do get to look inside it too. A futuristic looking spaceship with the man named Garland inside. He’s in a black suit. And he talks about Kuja failing his mission and how he needs to eliminate Kuja. He also mentions Zidane. Why? Why is he particularly pointing out Zidane, which he refers to as Kuja’s counterpart.

We don’t know what home is to Zidane. He doesn’t talk about his life. The only time he’s kind of mentioned this is that he mentions growing up with Baku and that’s what he considered home. But we don’t really know too much about Zidane. Unless the game somehow flops their ending or something, this game is going to be pretty high on my favorite, if not one of my favorite Final Fantasy games.

I really love Zidane as a character because he’s a character who is there to bring in people. He cares so much about these people and learning about their story and wanting to bring people together. And I love that aspect of him, because what I love a lot is that there’s a reason he has all these friends. I am curious to learn more about his story, learning more about his past. Because I think the whole point of this game is what does home mean? What does it mean to who you are? What defines you as a person? And so a lot of that I think lends itself very well to characters with pasts that maybe aren’t great. Maybe Zidane wasn’t originally meant to be a good person on Gaia? So I’m curious to learn all about this stuff and have these characters fight with their own self and how they define themselves.

I really like that this game, you are experiencing the lives of all these different characters. And you don’t always have a character in your party. Steiner was gone from my party for so long. Same with Freya. The game is willing to have your party split up because they got other things to do. It really makes this world feel bigger. It really makes us feel that everyone has a different purpose. And that when our purposes align, we’ll come back together as a party. I really appreciate that. I really love this game.

Alexander to Ipsen Castle

I’m about 28 hours into the game so far. I had just arrived at Ipsen’s Castle. Very excited to talk more about Final Fantasy IX. Zidane, he wakes up from saving Dagger. We go see Dagger and she’s mute. From everything that has happened to her, she has been traumatized to the point where she is now mute. It is such a sad, depressing moment, but it’s worth the payoff towards the end, which we’ll see a bit later.

We also turn Cid into a frog because we fed him a bunch of potions. We go over to Kuja who are teaming up with the Black Mages and wanting to extend their lives. That’s not true, but they’re still working with them. The Black Mages village is empty except for three. We have the one who’s telling Vivi about what it means to die. And then there are two others who are taking care of the Chocobo egg.

We have this cute moment where these Black Mages are experience this overwhelming sense of joy, this sense of parenthood, of seeing this thing that they were taking care of as a little egg now hatch into this beautiful baby Chocobo and to see them start to cry and then not realizing what their feelings are is just it’s very fascinating.

We also learn that all these mass produced Black Mages only last a year, but prototypes last longer, but we don’t know how long. So we don’t know whether Vivi might die or not. I’m not too concerned as of yet. We have been introduced to the technology that Terra has, so there might be something that the Terra civilization might contain that extends Vivi’s life, but also we have this powerful sorceress named Hilda who might be able to help us with something.

I’m not too concerned about Vivi’s life. I hope not, though it would be a it would be a very depressing and I would be crying for sure. Also, we get a ship, right? So when we escaped Alexandria, we were on the boat Blue Narcissus. And this one was so cool because they have been teasing us throughout this game about don’t worry, you’re going to get your airship. Don’t worry, you’re going to get your airship. So we get a cool ship to go across the ocean, which is super cool. There’s still so many places that we can’t explore yet, but it is very cool to have our boat flying, our boat swimming around.

We learn that Kuja is in a desert palace surrounded by quicksand, but once we enter the palace. Everyone is captured. Forcing Zidane to run an errand for Kuja. We are sent to Oeilvert, a crashed spaceship or what looks like a crashed spaceship. Because this is where we begin to learn the lore about Terra. And we aren’t living on Terra. We’re living on Gaia. Learning about this civilization from space that most likely Garland is from. I think we get confirmation that Kuja is from there. Most likely Zidane is from there as well, because we see a bunch of blue flashing lights, which in the past, Zidane has mentioned he remembers flashing blue lights. I think the summoners are also from Terra. So it is a crazy place to be also get this really fascinating area. We also learn about the Invincible there too? So it actually is confirmed that Garland is from there.

What’s really cool is that once we turn on everything? We go back to this large room & see two planets merging together. This has got to be Terra and Gaia? But we are also learning about the two moons as well. So it’s like, are we even a planet or are we just moons? I’m not quite sure, but it is definitely clear that it is Terra and Gaia merging. Funny enough, Gaia isn’t mentioned by name, but you do pick up Gaia gear in that same room.

Knowing what Kuja’s plan is, it’s not quite clear why we want to merge planets. And we don’t know if we’re going to merge planets? That’s the only thing that we saw with the Terra civilization. Kuja & Garland seem to be doing different things at this point. I also like that Kuja doesn’t go to Oeilvert because of the anti-magic protection. However, for some reason, I decided to bring Dagger & Vivi along so I was just exploring this place while my magic users were unable to cast magic.

I am at the point where I can freely start switching out party members. The game is getting me comfortable with all these characters. It’s allowing me to learn their stories, allowing them to have different dynamics for what’s happening in the story that I just greatly appreciate. You know, what’s so cool about a large RPG party is their effects on the world. It’s why they’re all in it together. And Final Fantasy IX just gives a perfect reason for all these characters to be together. And I love it.

I wish the game chose more of my party members for me because I want to experience more of tailored experience. This is the story the developers want to tell. And they also want to give you a huge cast of characters to play with as well, which that’s why when we get towards the later end of the game, now I’m able to freely start switching out between a bunch of different characters because the game was like, now you’re at the point where everyone is now together. We’re ready to fight this common goal. So very excited about that.

At the end of Oeilvert we fight the Ark. It is just a super cool spaceship. I loved it. Now, this was an easy fight for me because luckily my strongest character, Zidane, got tranced during this fight so I didn’t have to stress because Vivi & Dagger were blocked by anti-magic field. It is funny that you pull out a small stone in Oeilvert than a huge space ship appears to fight. I’m guessing that the ship that crashed is the Ark. So that’s very cool.

As Zidane is off at Oeilvert, the remaining party members are trying to break free from Kuja’s control. Cid being the smart frog tries to steal the key to free everyone, which is one of my favorite animations and moments in this game. As he tip toes past a monster to get the key.

Once everyone is free, we are exploring this beautiful desert palace. I loved this lighting all the candles. What was very funny about this is around this time, I was getting really involved into the AP systems. So I was equipping much weaker items to get the abilities for my characters. However, because I’m in the desert palace. I’m also collecting these bloodstones. I’m looking at the bloodstones in the desert palace which provide crazy skill buff, but because I am leveling up my AP on different items. I do not equip any of them.

What’s so funny is that the boss at the end of the desert palace is suppose to use unique attacks based on the bloodstones you have equipped. So that boss became super easy as a complete accident for me. I’m very glad that that boss fight was not as hard as it could have been. Cause I’m a stubborn guy. I would have tried to fight it without unequipping the bloodstones.

Once we defeat the boss, we are rewarded with the party getting taken over. Well, not quite because when Zidane shows up, Kuja asks to hand over the stone to get his team back, but then the rest of the party teleport over. Then Kuja takes Eiko and runs and boy, he takes Eiko and runs over to Mount Gulug.

Mount Gulug might have been the toughest challenge yet. I haven’t been grinding and the game has been fairly difficult, but not so difficult where I’d be spending hours upon hours fighting the same boss or fighting the same enemy. Usually, I can win within 3 deaths. However, Mount Gulug, we get these dragons that are constantly casting spells. They’re doing thousands of damage that my team can only take twice. So my team is wiping, wiping, wiping. I was spending at least an hour or two hours fighting the same dragons.

I took a look at my equipment I noticed I had a staff that gave me the ability to cast berserk. So once I was able to cast berserk on these dragons, I was back to having an easy time since the dragons could not cast spells anymore. Once we get to the bottom of Mt Gulug, we find out that the two clown dudes, which I hate them. I hate them so much. They’re trying to extract the Eidolons from Eiko, just like what they did to Dagger. But this time, because Eiko is not 16, she could die from the extraction. The clowns oddly bring up this point as though they are worried about her & Kuja is like, when did you guys ever care about morals? Kill the girl.

As the extraction is about to occur, one of my favorite moments in the game happen. Mog who has been with Eiko this entire time is like, you ain’t touching my girl, Eiko. I’ve been an Eidolon this whole time. Mog is a big old lion and uses something called Terra Homing, which is like wait so are summoners from Terra? But Terra Homing absolutely destroy the two clowns, which for some random reason Kuja tells us they aren’t twins. I don’t know if we needed an answer or not, but okay, sure. Whatever. I hate these guys anyways. So that was so awesome.

However, the twins after death merge together into the most grotesque looking Final Fantasy boss I have seen before? It is just this monstrosity. Like you thought Jenova looked weird? This thing called Melty Gemini looks even weirder. It was just the two twin heads, their fleshy bodies. You see the veins and the strains of their like skin melting together. Oh, it was, it was so gross, but like what a satisfying fight that was because we get to finally put them to rest. No longer do we have to deal with these fools. So I greatly love that.

We also are able to rescue Hilda. Hilda rescues Cid from being a frog. Cid gives his whole apology of like, I won’t ever cheat on you again. I love you so much girl. And she’s like, Oh, that’s okay. They embrace and then Cid is back to being a human. He is a handsome lad there. Hilda also knows Kuja’s plan because Kuja is so in love with his own voice that he told Hilda his plan. She even says that she didn’t even want to hear it. It’s just so funny. It’s so in character for Kuja. I freaking love this.

With knowledge of his plan, the hypest moment in the game so far comes in. It’s the airship moment. Cid shows us the airship he has been fixing up this entire game. Zidane meets up with Dagger and we get this beautiful moment. This is when a game makes you so happy inside and the payoff is so good.

We have this extended scene where Zidane is looking for Dagger and Beatrix is like, hey, she’s probably by the resting spot where her mother was buried. And so we go over there and Dagger starts to speak, but much differently than what we’re used to. She finally found her resolve. She finally found the courage she needed in herself. And we get this awesome scene where she asks for Zidane’s dagger & goes Mulan on her hair, cuts it off. And the reveal of her smile was so beautiful. She found it! I’m already getting chills writing about this because when you go to her menu, she is smiling so brightly. This is everything I didn’t know I needed, but it just fills me up with so much joy seeing Dagger being this person who felt so worthless, who felt like she couldn’t do anything. Is so confident & happy with herself! It’s just a fascinating, cool reveal.

And at the same time, we’re getting this awesome music as Zidane & Dagger show up on the airship & we just begin flying across the map! What an incredible experience to have happen all at once.

Next stop is Ipsen Castle and it took me like an hour and a half to find it. I was struggling because I came across the Lost Continent & also ran into a place called Daguerrero, which also very interesting. Which why does it sound so close to Dagger? Either way, this place is beautiful. It is a mountain waterfall library. It’s full of so much knowledge. Now, there’s not much to do here at this point in the story, but I’m very excited to go back because there’s the treasure hunter that Amarant ran into, which I tried bringing him back and there was no conversation there. So that was kind of a missed opportunity. I also got a Capricorn stone there for like the bird lady in Treno. I can also convert my ores into aquamarines. But aside from that, there’s not much else to do here.

I also found my favorite Final Fantasy enemy in the game, and it’s this little cute cat here. Adorable.

We arrive at Ipsen Castle and I didn’t get a chance to explore this, but it’s an inverted castle. That’s very strange. Could it be the result of melding between Terra and Gaia. Did that already occurred? Is this a castle from Terra?

At the front entrance of the castle, there are two very interesting items, a dagger and the Aquarius stone. Now, as an Aquarius myself, my birthstone is Garnet. So this is one big reference to Dagger? Does she have some sort of important connection to this castle?

Ipsen Castle to Necron

Exploring the Ipsen Castle, we come across a world map with four different mirrors, pointing to different shrines throughout the world. When I was traveling along on the Hildegard, I did see like these strange areas throughout the map that I was unable to access. Once I saw the mirrors on the map, I knew exactly where they were. I also got a mirror from the Trenor Auction. I don’t know what the hell to do with that at this point. I’m sure it’s a world quest that I missed, but it seems like if there are other mirrors, then it’s probably pointing to another shrine that’s hidden. I’m not quite sure, but after I beat the game, I’ll go back because there are a lot of things that I miss. Like there are also cracks throughout the world that look like they’re breakable, but there’s no way for me to interact with them. So very curious to see what those are all about.

I’ve also been seeing this black spot that’s been moving around the world map. Once again, unable to interact with this. It reminds me of Doom from Final Fantasy VI, but all you had to do was just fly into it. But in Final Fantasy IX there’s not a way to interact with it. So very curious to see how this will all unfold.

We fight an alien bug after taking the mirrors off the map. But what I really like about Ipsen Castle is why it is an upside down castle, which is like, where did this come from? But also I really liked that this is an Amarant dungeon because he goes off on his own & makes it to the map room before us. He tells us he doesn’t need us & then leaves the castle. But as we are escaping the castle since once the bug is dead everything is collapsing. Amarant is missing. Zidane goes back into the castle & we find him collapsed on the ground because of a trap. I love this moment because Amarant is just trying to understand why Zidane came back for him. It’s like, you don’t need me. What’s the use of me? I like he is trying to figure this out. And I love that even Zidane doesn’t even know why he came back. But he’s just like, I just have to get you back. it’s this wonderful moment of Amarant understanding what friendship truly is. No strings attached. I love that this moment is really Amarant’s turning into becoming a true member of the party. And as we’ll see later on, he comes through.

I mentioned earlier that I love the game always having us change parties, splitting us up. And this game was like, there are four shrines. We need to attack them at once. So two people per shrine. And they don’t give us the choice of who’s partying with who. So we get party with our blue mage, Quina. And this one was a fun fight. I kind of wish that we got to experience the other fights. But as we’ll see later on, we do actually get to fight the other Chaos Guardians.

Once we collect the mirrors, we head over to the Shimmering Island. I’m like, okay, sure. I remember seeing that icicle place. Let’s go there. And I love that as we arrive here, it’s not space. I was thinking that if we were to go to Terra, we would be in space of some sort. But we’re in this very ocean-like area. Everything feels like a coral reef or some sort of aquatic plant life. And we are here in Terra. More specifically, Bran Bal.

Bran Bal is the start of the story geting even more incredible. We meet… genomes specifically a genome named Mikoto, who is basically letting us know that all of these genomes were created for the purpose of holding the souls from the people of Terra. Zidane, Kuja, Mikoto, and all of these other genomes are there to serve a purpose. Now, Kuja and Zidane are a little bit more special. Mikoto is slightly less special, but still in line of lineage from Zidane and Kuja.

So we’re learning all of this stuff about the genomes and the reasons for Terra and Gaia and all the mixing of the souls. And that essentially, they’re trying to empty out all the souls in Gaia so that it will store the Terra souls. That way, the Terra souls can then be reborn into these genomes. It gets a little bit complicated, and we’re learning this from Mikoto and from Garland. And the interesting thing about Garland, though, is that the way he kind of talks about it and phrases it, it feels like this is the last step for Terra. Because Terra has been through this cycle before, taking over another planet, replacing the souls, and embodying them into genomes. It sounds like the way Garland has set this up is that this is the last time anyone will need to be worried about being alive or being dead because you are now going to be existing for eternity. At least that’s what it kind of sounds like.

As the players are being bombarded with information so is Zidane. He takes a breather & starts to walk out. And he passes by Vivi, and Vivi is having this wonderful conversation with the genome. Vivi doesn’t really understand him, but deep down inside, Vivi says he feels similar to me. And he’s right. These are just like the Black Mages. They look more humanoid than a Black Mage would, but they’re just as human as the Black Mages. And I love this moment because, as we’ll see later on, this is so important for the relationship that Vivi and Zidane have. Vivi is now able to communicate and talk and help share his own experiences. It’s just a very wonderful moment that pays off exponentially towards the end.

However, Zidane begins to lose a bit of himself. Instead of the person who was able to define who he was and able to do things with his own mind, which we have seen him do through most of the game, does he begin to allow Garland’s perception of why Zidane was created to cloud Zidane’s judgment, cloud his personality? Zidane now wishes to not only kill Garland, but to sacrifice himself because he sees himself & other the genomes as enemies of Gaia. Which is absolutely untrue, but in moments of weakness, sometimes we doubt ourselves, doubt who we really are. And I really like this interpretation of that for Zidane.

It leads to one of my favorite tropes in media which is your friends are going to pull you out of it. We have Zidane sitting on a throne, he gets up and begins to do a bit of a wobble walk. Eiko & Vivi try to talk to him, but Zidane just calls them brats & locks a gate so they cannot follow him. He then fights a monster. And as we are fighting this monster, Freya shows up saying I’m here for you, Zidane. And who else shows up? Amarant. The guy who has been ditching us, the guy who was the solo member now understands the importance of backing each other up, of picking each other up when we’re down. And he shows up for Zidane. And I love this moment. But Zidane still refuses to talk to them.

Zidane runs into another enemy encounter, but this time Steiner & Quina need backup. Zidane helps, but immediately leaves them behind afterwards. He says stuff like I don’t deserve to be with you guys. He goes off. And he fights another enemy. And I love this moment. Because we all knew Dagger was going to show up. But the fact that in his moment, when he’s about to die. He gets fully healed. Dagger shows up saying I’m here for you, Zidane. And it’s just this powerful moment of all the people you have come along on this journey. Are here to back you up, here to help you out. Absolute cinema.

Zidane might be one of my favorite main characters in a game. Typically, I’m a fan of side characters, but Zidane was such a likable character throughout the story. He was a character that was bringing people together. In his moment of weakness the people he helped uplift are now lifting him up. It’s a really beautiful moment.

During our encounter with Garland, I forgot to steal from his Silver Dragon & Garland himself and the first Kuja fight. Either way, Garland uses psychokinesis for the first time and I couldn’t return magic it. So that was unfortunate. I also really love that during Kuja’s fight, he trances. They don’t make this a cutscene, it just happens in-game, which I really love that because that’s how it works with every other character! Unfortunately, Kuja decides to destroy Terra since he lost. Luckily, we are able to escape with the genome and we steal the Invincible.

We bring the genomes to the Black Mage village for a wonderful moment. We see them trying to communicate with each other. We learn about the name of the baby chocobo. The Black Mages are trying to communicate and teach the genomes because they can learn from the people who’ve gone through it before. It’s such a wonderful moment because earlier in the story one of the Black Mages told Zidane that he hopes that Black Mages & humans can live together just like you & Vivi. So I love how this all ties together. These are some of my favorite characters in Final Fantasy. It fills me with so much joy that this game is just nailing every single wonderful emotional impact. I love it.

We head over to the Iifa tree to take down Kuja and we get an incredible cutscene where hundreds of silver dragons are heading straight for us. And we’re like, Oh my God, how are we going to deal with it? And then out of nowhere from the mist comes Cid’s fleet helping protect the Invincible. And who else do we see? None other than the Alexandria. Beatrix riding her ship, going forward to save her lovable future husband, Steiner. It’s just a wonderful moment of everyone in the world coming together to save Gaia. Very beautiful.

We make it to the tree & we have to fight this Nova dragon. So we kill that thing. And then we make it to Memoria, a place of memories. We learn a lot about what’s happening here in Memoria, which is very fascinating. Zidane has a memory of what happened with Garnet and her mother, seeing them enter Alexandria. We also learned that 5,000 years ago, Terra was attempting to merge with Gaia, but it ended up killing all the native civilization from Terra. It’s why they’re trying to use this genome project to implant the souls in. And it’s also why the Iifa tree here was made by Garland himself, because he wanted a way to force the Terra souls into Gaia. It’s a fascinating moment of the story of kind of realizing how long this plan has been enacted.

We also get this brief mention that Gaia use to be a big ocean. This is a very interesting point because what they may be implying is. A) It was okay for us to merge with Gaia because there were no sentient lifeforms on it. B) The other thing is that maybe that’s why we see something like the Ipsen castle because maybe when merging souls, it’s also a physical merge of planets and continents from Terra joining into Gaia. I’m not quite sure, but it is a very fascinating moment because everyone in the party remembers that Gaia used to be a big ocean planet.

Memoria takes us to amazing, incredible locations? From derelict castles, the castles in space to jumping into an eye, to just being on a crystal walkway. It is a very crazy and wonderful endgame dungeon. And along the way, we now fight the Chaos Guardians. And boy, howdy, when you steal from them, you’re collecting the equipment for the Genji armor. I’m so glad I started to steal again, because I do not want to miss any of it.

Now, I will be honest, I spent an extremely long time on the Kraken, because the Kraken casts Waterga. And if you got a Vivi with return magic and a Steiner with auto reflect, your life is just a living hell because you’re healing him for like 8000k a turn every time he uses the Waterga. So I was spending 30-40 minutes stubbornly trying to fight him with those rules. And then he eventually killed me. And then the second time around I turned all those off & was able to defeat him, but I was struggling with that fight. Also, there were random ghost Tetra Masters throughout the dungeon. That was kind of weird because they were also extremely strong so I was just not gonna be able to collect all their cards. I did get a perfect on one of them so that was cool, but I most just got back all the costs I lost.

At the end of Memoria, we fight Kuja, I steal the white robes. The same white robes that Dagger wore when she ran out of the castle for the very first time in the beginning of the game. Very cool that we actually get the white robes. I wish that at least for just the white robes, she would wear it. Either way, I really love this Kuja fight so much because Kuja doesn’t have a second form. This is a character much like Zidane, who is now having his judgment clouded by what Garland wants from him. Your whole purpose was to die. And that anxiety, that fear, is what takes over Kuja. And instead of Kuja going out with a bang, he goes out with a whimper. An anticlimactic death for a villain that caused so much destruction. But I think that’s what strengthens the core of the philosophy behind Final Fantasy IX. This story is about defining who you are as a person, not what someone else thinks about you, not why you were created in the first place. Your memories, experience, the people around you. All of these things form what makes you a unique and special person. As Kuja fails, he destroys the crystal nearly killing all of our party members. A wonderful moment happens where we choose the final party to fight the final boss. Our other party member give us their lifeforce or souls to heal the party going into the final fight. Super cool!

Thus appears the god of death arrives, Necron. A god that believes that fear, anxiety leads to fear, leading to hatred, leading to destruction, and that the only reason for life is to be destroyed. Because if there is no life, there is no fear. And if there is no fear, there is no destruction. So a world that is nothing is the best kind of world. But nay does Zidane say, because Zidane isn’t giving up. He has memories and friends. They are all here to take death on, but he is so damn hard. I never had this difficult of time with anything in this game. Also every time you die, you have to watch the entire cutscene of our party members giving us life.

FINALE

It has been over two weeks since I last played because I want to give myself time after beating Final Fantasy 9 and yes I cried a lot. I was struggling with Necron, but after writing my thoughts above. I woke up the next day and spent like two or three fights and defeated Necron. I’m not sure how. He just stopped using Grand Cross as frequently as he did when I was playing him for the first several hours. So that was a great help. Also Zidane was already in trance mode by the time I was playing it. So he was just doing 9999 damage because he was doing Grand Lethal. I was throwing him MP potions to make sure he kept using Grand Lethal. I also made sure that my characters could not get petrified as well. So that greatly helped make this fight so much easier.

Once Necron dies and the Iifa tree came to life. And I thought I had to fight a freaking tree. But luckily that was not the case and this is the start of the waterworks because Zidane being the good guy he is decides to save Kuja. So as the Iifa tree is trying to kill, Zidane runs in to save his brother. We have this amazing cutscene where he’s dodging, weaving past all these vines, trying to find Kuja. Zidane understood that if Kuja’s life was different, if he had the friends that Zidane had, that maybe he would have been a good person. And although Kuja is not forgiven for what he has done, Zidane still wants to give him a helping hand. And Zidane even goes further by saying that Kuja showed the genomes, the black mages, shown everyone what hope is. Because Kuja was the first one to break free from the fate that was determined for him. All these characters who broken out of a path and a fate that was set for them. It was a very beautiful way to tie everything together that I thought the game did such a great job. And then we see a moment where the Iifa tree captures Kuja and Zidane. And I thought that, they’re not dead.

But we start to get stories about everyone remembering Zidane in the past tense. And then we get one of the first moments where I began to just openly weep at this game. We see Puck surviving. He is in Alexandra and he bumps into Vivi. But Vivi doesn’t recognize Puck. And this is where I started to get worried, but we learn that it’s Vivi’s son and Vivi got to live a happy life. It brought me to tears. I was bawling because my precious baby boy got to grow up and have kids and he’s just living a happy life.

Note: After releasing this video, did I learn that Vivi actually did die & the person who is talking about Zidane in the past tense during these moments was Vivi.

This also means that Zidane’s dream came true about the Black Mages and the, and humans being able to coexist together, which was also awesome. And then we get other moments where Freya is getting to rebuild Burmecia with Fratley and Fratley re-falling in love with her, which was awesome. Cid and Hilda adopted Eiko. That was fantastic. All these moments just kind of represent that Zidane taught everyone the importance of life and living your life to the fullest. It was an absolutely incredible ending.

I love as the game ends, we see another Tantalus performance where Zidane is disguised himself as Marcus. He calls out to Dagger. We have this wonderful moment where Dagger is running through the audience, trying to get to Zidane to then fully embrace him. It was a beautiful moment.

Dagger says, how did you survive? And Zidane’s replies with, I didn’t have a choice. I had to live. I wanted to come home to you. So I sang your song.

Absolutely beautiful. So many times throughout this story whenever we could not find Dagger. Zidane would always find her because he would hear her song. Zidane fighting for his life in the Iifa tree because he finally found a home is wonderful.

Final Fantasy IX is truly a special game. I understand why some consider this to be one of the best Final Fantasy games and I’m right with you. I gave myself two weeks to really think about how I felt about Final Fantasy IX. And although I would have some criticisms where I think Tetra Master is just not great. The side quests are okay. I did like the Chocobo story quests, but I didn’t fight Ozma or Hades. I got Cinna’s hammer to get the alternate ending, but either way, there was still so much love.

Zidane being this character who is just so caring bringing people together and helping uplift & inspire them is wonderful. That is what a main character should be and I love it. This game is about finding a home, about defining who you are as a person and to not be beholden to the reasons why you are created from your creator. It may have taken me 25 years to finally get around to playing Final Fantasy IX, but I am so grateful for this journey.