Greetings. I am Squall Leonhart, and since me and my homies have a lot more time to kill, we've instituted our newest feature: The Video Game Review of the moment. The most current one we have to review this week is "Final Fantasy IX." We've each agreed to take a few of our certain things to review and just run with it. Now, on with the review.
GAMEPLAY
Hi, everyone, I'm Quistis Trepe for gameplay. As you might have figured, they picked me for this because to determine gameplay, you need to have an amazing grasp of your fingers, and who on the team uses their fingers more often than me? Okay. The gameplay is completely average for RPG's. The only game that didn't follow the typical format for buttons on Playstation was our game. This led it to be an excellent game to start people off on RPG's who didn't play since original "Zelda", but also left those people who got into RPG's with it in a lurch when they try to play more normal ones. This one has the bonus of being an RPGer's RPG, as it uses perfectly the FFVII style of buttons. Of course, most of the other stuff was stolen from FFVII, but I digress from my point of view. Now, let's head over to our graphic check.
GRAPHICS
Hi, I'm Irvine Kinneas to determine the graphics. Hey, who else cares as much about how things look as I do? This game is easily my pick for the biggest downer in graphics this year. The bonafide legendary game that proceeded this one in the series had easily the greatest graphics on a Playstation ever, and arguably in the top 10 for graphics of all time (Hey, I still haven't gotten a PS2, so you have to figure...) This game looked like it could have been the one to fix the smallest problems that it had in the graphics, mostly the little things like giving characters more developed faces and smoothing out the graphics for female characters' arms and legs (Hey, they're cute, but those diagonal lines really chafed, man...) However, instead of doing these things, they proceeded to devolve from the amazing graphics used in FFVIII to one that makes the characters look like they were born from a series of unholy unions between the FFVII and FFVIII universes. The graphics are still tres sweet, but I have to give the official "Irvine Kinneas Bitch Slap" to the SquareSoft company for apparently waiting until the first Final Fantasy game for Playstation 2 in order to show people exactly how well they can do with graphics at the expense of the PSX users who served as the catalysts to bring the series out into a more mainstream fanbase...
"SPARE SOME CHANGE, MAN?"
Barret? What the hell are you doing here? No one's seen you since the end of VII...
"I need some gil to get some food! Come on! My daughter's been living on nothing but potions for two years!"
I'm sorry, but I'm in the middle of a review here...
"Come on! I need food desperately! I desperately need this money! I'LL SUCK YOUR DICK!"
Well, I'll change this to the Hype review.
HYPE
Greetings, everyone! This is Selphie Tilmitt for the review on hype, mainly because I'm the most image-based person here. The hype for this game is much less than the hype for FFVIII. For our game, we had everything: action figures put out as soon as the game came out (almost certainly still on sale cheap at your local K-B), commercials on network TV (okay, okay, but Fox is a network, right?), and hype in all of the stores. However, the only clues you could get that FFIX is coming out would be if you went to some more certain places. Instead of figures out at the same time as the game (my figure is so cute! BUY IT!), the figures for FFIX still haven't come out yet. Instead of hype in whatever store you go to, you have a case where you'll only see that FFIX was coming out if you went to one of the Trinity of video game stores (Software Etc., Funcoland, and Babbage's, for those of you not in the know about ownership.) Instead of commercials on Fox, FFIX only rated one commercial on TNN. (Okay, okay, it was during "Monday Night Raw", but it's still on a network that, until a few weeks ago, had the short-lived series "Siblings in Love" as its top-rated show ever!) In addition, the commercial wasn't even as good as ours. In our commercial, you got more of a case that the game you'd be playing was the greatest game in history (even though I wasn't in it...*sniff*). All you get from the FFIX commercial is the theory that this game is the predominant Final Fantasy 7 rip-off out there today. Now, on to the review of the most well-seen characters.
CHARACTERS
What's up? This is Seifer Almasy. I'm here to review the characters in this game. First off, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER? In VII, you have Cloud Strife, the official bad-ass of the 1998 Winter Olympics. In the VIII, you have Squall. Granted, Puberty-Boy's a bit of a whiner, but he's still quite hardcore once you get to know him. (EDIT THAT OUT. TELL ANYONE I SAID THAT AND I WILL END YOU.) Finally, in IX, the lasting legacy of the Playstation, we get... A whiny, little punk who apparently wants to be Johnny Reznick when he grows up! (I don't care if I got that wrong, I can afford to!) The Chicken Wuss could probably kick his ass more times than he can count with both hands tied behind his back and using only his manhood to bait this guy! But, before I go too far into the little guy, I lend the mike to Rinoa for the female lead. Remember, people. At least with the main guy in FFIX, the yaoi storylines just write themselves!
Well, I don't have as much vitriol as Seifer did, but I'll try. I'm Rinoa Heartilly to check the female lead. My main question here is, WHO DID THIS CHICK SLEEP WITH TO GET THIS PART? Her character is...she apparently is trying really hard to be me! Come on! I'm much better at being me than she could ever hope to be! In addition, she's not attractive enough to be the lead in a game styled like this. To put it simply, she looks like a second-rate hoodrat! She's a little pudgy around the middle and her face just says "Wait just one second while I go rob that fruit stand!" I think I've said my piece.
OVERALL.
WASSUP? It's me, it's me, it's that D-I-N-C-H-T, and I'm here to lay on you the basic stuff for this game. Basically, DON'T EXPECT A MIRACLE. This game would have to stretch itself just so it would be half the game that Final Fantasy 8 was. The game's making proves that as a finale to the original Playstation's Final Fantasy games, quite possibly the best set of games of any of the systems that have supported Final Fantasy games, it's leaving Playstation not with a bang, but with a whimper. I can't say that this game ruins the series, because there's still a movie and at least two more games in the cupboard for PS2 as we speak. I think I speak for all fans of this series when I express intense hope that these two games deliver on the promise for the future that FFVIII set, because this is just too good a series to die. Basically, buy IX if you loved VII. Otherwise, buy it, but make sure to save VIII games on the same card and play both things so you can at least see that the Playstation's Final Fantasy games used to be good.
GAMEPLAY
Hi, everyone, I'm Quistis Trepe for gameplay. As you might have figured, they picked me for this because to determine gameplay, you need to have an amazing grasp of your fingers, and who on the team uses their fingers more often than me? Okay. The gameplay is completely average for RPG's. The only game that didn't follow the typical format for buttons on Playstation was our game. This led it to be an excellent game to start people off on RPG's who didn't play since original "Zelda", but also left those people who got into RPG's with it in a lurch when they try to play more normal ones. This one has the bonus of being an RPGer's RPG, as it uses perfectly the FFVII style of buttons. Of course, most of the other stuff was stolen from FFVII, but I digress from my point of view. Now, let's head over to our graphic check.
GRAPHICS
Hi, I'm Irvine Kinneas to determine the graphics. Hey, who else cares as much about how things look as I do? This game is easily my pick for the biggest downer in graphics this year. The bonafide legendary game that proceeded this one in the series had easily the greatest graphics on a Playstation ever, and arguably in the top 10 for graphics of all time (Hey, I still haven't gotten a PS2, so you have to figure...) This game looked like it could have been the one to fix the smallest problems that it had in the graphics, mostly the little things like giving characters more developed faces and smoothing out the graphics for female characters' arms and legs (Hey, they're cute, but those diagonal lines really chafed, man...) However, instead of doing these things, they proceeded to devolve from the amazing graphics used in FFVIII to one that makes the characters look like they were born from a series of unholy unions between the FFVII and FFVIII universes. The graphics are still tres sweet, but I have to give the official "Irvine Kinneas Bitch Slap" to the SquareSoft company for apparently waiting until the first Final Fantasy game for Playstation 2 in order to show people exactly how well they can do with graphics at the expense of the PSX users who served as the catalysts to bring the series out into a more mainstream fanbase...
"SPARE SOME CHANGE, MAN?"
Barret? What the hell are you doing here? No one's seen you since the end of VII...
"I need some gil to get some food! Come on! My daughter's been living on nothing but potions for two years!"
I'm sorry, but I'm in the middle of a review here...
"Come on! I need food desperately! I desperately need this money! I'LL SUCK YOUR DICK!"
Well, I'll change this to the Hype review.
HYPE
Greetings, everyone! This is Selphie Tilmitt for the review on hype, mainly because I'm the most image-based person here. The hype for this game is much less than the hype for FFVIII. For our game, we had everything: action figures put out as soon as the game came out (almost certainly still on sale cheap at your local K-B), commercials on network TV (okay, okay, but Fox is a network, right?), and hype in all of the stores. However, the only clues you could get that FFIX is coming out would be if you went to some more certain places. Instead of figures out at the same time as the game (my figure is so cute! BUY IT!), the figures for FFIX still haven't come out yet. Instead of hype in whatever store you go to, you have a case where you'll only see that FFIX was coming out if you went to one of the Trinity of video game stores (Software Etc., Funcoland, and Babbage's, for those of you not in the know about ownership.) Instead of commercials on Fox, FFIX only rated one commercial on TNN. (Okay, okay, it was during "Monday Night Raw", but it's still on a network that, until a few weeks ago, had the short-lived series "Siblings in Love" as its top-rated show ever!) In addition, the commercial wasn't even as good as ours. In our commercial, you got more of a case that the game you'd be playing was the greatest game in history (even though I wasn't in it...*sniff*). All you get from the FFIX commercial is the theory that this game is the predominant Final Fantasy 7 rip-off out there today. Now, on to the review of the most well-seen characters.
CHARACTERS
What's up? This is Seifer Almasy. I'm here to review the characters in this game. First off, WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER? In VII, you have Cloud Strife, the official bad-ass of the 1998 Winter Olympics. In the VIII, you have Squall. Granted, Puberty-Boy's a bit of a whiner, but he's still quite hardcore once you get to know him. (EDIT THAT OUT. TELL ANYONE I SAID THAT AND I WILL END YOU.) Finally, in IX, the lasting legacy of the Playstation, we get... A whiny, little punk who apparently wants to be Johnny Reznick when he grows up! (I don't care if I got that wrong, I can afford to!) The Chicken Wuss could probably kick his ass more times than he can count with both hands tied behind his back and using only his manhood to bait this guy! But, before I go too far into the little guy, I lend the mike to Rinoa for the female lead. Remember, people. At least with the main guy in FFIX, the yaoi storylines just write themselves!
Well, I don't have as much vitriol as Seifer did, but I'll try. I'm Rinoa Heartilly to check the female lead. My main question here is, WHO DID THIS CHICK SLEEP WITH TO GET THIS PART? Her character is...she apparently is trying really hard to be me! Come on! I'm much better at being me than she could ever hope to be! In addition, she's not attractive enough to be the lead in a game styled like this. To put it simply, she looks like a second-rate hoodrat! She's a little pudgy around the middle and her face just says "Wait just one second while I go rob that fruit stand!" I think I've said my piece.
OVERALL.
WASSUP? It's me, it's me, it's that D-I-N-C-H-T, and I'm here to lay on you the basic stuff for this game. Basically, DON'T EXPECT A MIRACLE. This game would have to stretch itself just so it would be half the game that Final Fantasy 8 was. The game's making proves that as a finale to the original Playstation's Final Fantasy games, quite possibly the best set of games of any of the systems that have supported Final Fantasy games, it's leaving Playstation not with a bang, but with a whimper. I can't say that this game ruins the series, because there's still a movie and at least two more games in the cupboard for PS2 as we speak. I think I speak for all fans of this series when I express intense hope that these two games deliver on the promise for the future that FFVIII set, because this is just too good a series to die. Basically, buy IX if you loved VII. Otherwise, buy it, but make sure to save VIII games on the same card and play both things so you can at least see that the Playstation's Final Fantasy games used to be good.