Superdonkey's Game of The Week: Numero Uno

     Starting from this week on out, i will be writing an article weekly about one particular game that is a must-play. Up this week is one of my personal favorites, and as some would say, the best game in the series; Final Fantasy 9.

Just Vivi doing what he does best.

     If you don't know what the Final Fantasy series is you probably shouldn't be on this page, just kidding. This is one of the most successful, and critically acclaimed series in all of the gaming world. Final Fantasy 9 is the ninth installment in this series (you probably figured that out without my help huh?) and is, in my opinion, the best of them all.

     The story begins, as a play is about to start in the grand town of Alexandria. You are put in the shoes of the main character Zidane, as he and his team of thieves put on a mock show for the castle and it's guests. The show is just that, a show. The real reason Zidane and his crew are in Alexandria is to kidnap the beautfiul Princess Garnet. So far this may sound like a cliche' fantasy game to those who haven't played it, but the plot thickens when you are successful in cornering the princess. Just when you are about to capture her, she begs you to kidnap her away from the castle. The story then continues on and leads you across an amazing world filled with amazing characters, outstanding environments, and terrifying creatures. There is a lot to be said about the story of this game, but if i could wrap it up into one word it would be; Outstanding.

She's gonna cause you a lot of trouble.

     The gameplay is that of your usual JRPG, turn based and your battle selections are chosen from a menu. It's certainly not the most innovative idea, but it gets the job done. It varies somewhat from the norm by having an option to play out all the battles in real time. This keeps the action bar from stopping when making your menu selections. It's a small change but it makes the battles noticeably more difficult. I would suggest turning it off, as sometimes it doesn't give you enough time to think about the most logical battle option. The open world, is separated from the battle world, so if your not a fan of random encounters then this game might not be for you. The open world is split up into two different categories; Area, and world map. The world map  allows you to traverse the lands freely by foot, boat, airship, or chocobo (my personal favorite). You enter the different areas of the world, such as towns and caverns through the world map. Final Fantasy 9 is an old game, but to me it still hasn't lost any of its replay value.

A typical battle during the early parts of the game.

     Now onto the segment that turn most new gamers off from these older games, the graphics. The visuals used in Final Fantasy 9 were remarkable for their time. Sadly, this doesn't hold true to this day. Most of the textures will appear grainy and distorted on modern HDTVs so if your tv has a standard option i would suggest turning it on while playing. The battle screens still look somewhat decent but, the world map and area zones look terrible by today's standards. There is still some good looking eye-candy in the summoning animations though, so if graphics are your thing you will want to do a lot of these. If you get get past of the ugliness that is PS1 era graphics then you will find a game that is both rich in story and gameplay.

     The soundtrack in this game is one of the most critically acclaimed video game soundtracks to date. Nobuo Uematsu really did on hell of a job with the music in this game. Almost every one of the over 100 songs in this game are extremely well composed and catchy to listen to. To this day i still find myself humming some of the songs in this game.




     All in all, this is one amazing games and probably my personal favorite. it is definitely worth a play or two, and for only $10 on PSN you cant really go wrong.

Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 6
Sound: 10
Value: 10