Chronicles of the Last Fantasy Part 3
Released to the public in Europe in February 2001, not a lot of people know that Final Fantasy IX was developed alongside Final Fantasy VIII. The unison between the two starts and ends there. Whilst Final Fantasy VIII took the series in a new direction, full of gritty realism and sci-fi aspects with more accurate character modelling, Final Fantasy IX walks an alternative path, returning to the roots of the series complete with more colourful artwork, a more medieval early age of industrialisation era and even little anthropomorphic animal critters in clothes inhabiting the world alongside humans.
Don’t take this to mean that FFIX doesn’t take itself seriously when it has to, since those of you who have played right through will know that the plethora of characters all face their own personal challenges, and through them the game tackles the spectrum of love, life, loss and even the philosophical dilemma of the nature of existence itself. In fact, the level of morbidity that the game reaches in the final stages with its nihilistic characters and the questions that it puts forward are quite shocking. Whether you look at black mage, Vivi Orunitia, and his quest to justify his existence beyond being a simple puppet from a failed, twisted experimentation or the primary antagonist, the mysterious Kuja, and his slow slip on sanity before his inevitable, impending death as he muses whether reality should be allowed to exist without him, the issues still hit quite hard; especially if you’re but a young child as many of us were when we first played these games.
For me, this title is undoubtedly the best in the series bar none. It was a commercial success, that’s a given, but I can’t help feel that this beautiful instalment is somewhat lost in the ether. Plenty of people whom I’ve spoken to claim to be great fans of the series yet ashamedly admit that they’ve never really touched the ninth title in the franchise. Maybe the release of Final Fantasy X later in the year on the Playstation 2 eclipsed the successes of FFIX and forced it out of its brief time in the spotlight. Maybe many people were put off simply by the graphical presentation of the game; it’s not unheard of for some to say that they avoided it simply because it looked too ‘cartoony’ and like a step back for the series after the increasingly realistic episodes of VII and VIII. However, to say such a thing is to judge the game at face value, and quite frankly a mistake. To delve a little deeper would uncover what really makes FFIX tick; the charming presentation wrapped up in a well thought out mix of humour and melancholy, bringing new ideas to the table whilst paying homage to the original titles in the series. Yes, there is a lot of joviality, witty scripting and slapstick humour, particularly provided by classic rusty armoured guard of the princess Steiner and Queen Brahne’s babbling servants Zorn and Thorn; but the mature undertones are ever present and by the second disc the darkness of the plot really starts to come to light.
Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of FFIX was just how much it pushed the original Playstation unit to its limits. We may all have fwapped over the near-real cutscenes of FFX and the highly detailed ingame graphics, but IX was arguably not far off the mark; the matte painting backdrops were as beautiful as ever and a lot of the soundtrack is of such quality that it’s hard to imagine exactly how far Nobuo Uematsu pushed those MIDI synthesisers into trance/limit break/overdrive. With a diverse range of tracks to cover the wide array of moods and themes in the game the soundtrack quite easily poses a threat to the much lauded, sombre and sad tones of FFVII as best composition in the series; nevertheless it cannot be said that Nobuo isn’t a musical genius, with nothing but voiceless, scripted chat to read off screen it is ultimately this man’s music that sticks with us and makes the Final Fantasy experience as memorable as it is.
Maybe it’s for the best that this charming little title (possibly an understatement, the game spans 4 discs and will take a good 30 hours just to run through the main story) never really hit the mainstream as well as FFVII did; heaven forbid it ever spawn a spin off of any kind, such a thing would surely ruin the magic. Instead it sits at the start of the new millennium as a hit and miss Final Fantasy title, and that doesn’t bother me at all, because I’m firmly sat in the hit camp and I always will be.
Categories: Gaming
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