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Like I said last night, I'll post about FF9 today XD But first, today is our anniversary. We went to the mackerel place hahaha. They also had flounder. It's a buffet so it's all-you-can-eat. I ate so much... I had 3... pieces... of flounder (idk what to call them, it was like just a big cut of the fish down the middle?) and like at least 15 pieces of mackerel sushi. I had a few other things but eating the raw flesh of a dead fish is the best lmfaoooo. Well, only really mackerel. I mean other raw fish is good but mackerel is just so amazing XD Then we came back to Dennis's and he gave me a box of Cheez-It as present and I gave him nothing. Now he's sitting with heat pad because he is in pain. And now I'm on the computer. And that's about that.
So I'm gonna go through FF9 and try to remember the stuff I wanted to talk about while posting my screenies :P
There are early-game spoilers ahead. I'm mostly going to keep to opinions of the game/characters/etc. and not really try to detail the story too much, so I think if you haven't played it, it won't really give too much away. But still some stuff will be revealed anyway, and you'll see random screens from the game (though without too much context, as I'll just assume the reader either knows what it is already or doesn't want to know the spoilery details XD)
OK so as I said, I finally gave up on jump rope. If you don't know, there's this horribly difficult-for-all-the-wrong-reasons minigame in this game where you have to skip rope with little girls, and you get prizes for different numbers of jumps. The last real prize is at 200 jumps which is not hard to get, but after that it gets... weird. And I absolutely cannot do it. Then there's a prize for 1000 jumps called "King of Jump Rope" which is an item that does absolutely nothing other than say you jumped 1000 times. But now in the Steam version, there's an achievement for getting that item -_-; But this minigame is in the very beginning of the game, in fact, you can do it as soon as you have control of your character. There's also an achievement for getting Treasure Hunter S-Rank (which is a ranking based on how many treasures and secrets you've found in the game), and I thought for S-Rank you had to get everything... but it turns out it's pretty lenient and you can miss something like 130 treasures (which seems like a lot, but this includes like literally anything you pick up, so like if you don't pick up a potion in a bush you just missed one... and there's quite a few places in the game you never get to go back to, like insides of some rooms or even entire towns or whatever so you really have to be thorough. It's still not that hard, though).
Anyway, so I realized I didn't need to do jump ropes now to get all the achievements so I'm just gonna play through the game and try to get the rest XD I just didn't want to have to do an entire separate "with jump ropes" playthrough. But since it's right at the beginning of the game, I can just get it at any time. The only other achievement I should miss is for getting the Excalibur II, which is a reward for getting to the end of the game in like 11 or 12 hours.
So ONTO THE CAPS lol
First is this! This is cute fishy guy!! There are a lot of random races in this game -- they're not developed at all. They don't have names or anything, it's just kinda like... a furry world lol. People are just randomly all kinds of animal-like creatures, but also there's a lot of humans lol. But yeah, fishy guy is cute! I wish there were more fish guys. And since the races aren't developed, there's not much to enjoy other than sometimes you see a fish person and it's like yay. Not nearly as wonderful as the yama race from The Last Remnant.
But yeah in the beginning I didn't realize the achievement for winning 100 card games meant winning against 100 different unique opponents. So I hardly played against anyone in Alexandria X_X I pretty much just got my 200 jumps and grabbed the treasures and went on.
The sword fight is a lot of fun and some of the best music in gaming XD
And fortunately a LOT easier to get 100/100 in the PC version... I was never able to get this in the original X_X; It's not nearly as bad as jump ropes, but the best I could do on PS1 was 99/100 T_T But for 100/100 you get 10,000 Gil and can get a Moonstone later, too. There are exactly 4 Moonstones in the game, and there's an achievement for getting all 4, so that is vital, too XD
Love these little chef guys ^_^ They're like a race of their own I guess. The Qu chef there uses the same model as Quina but it is indeed not Quina. I always thought maybe it was Quina, but listening to Quina and Quale's conversation later, it's clear that Quina has never eaten anything other than frogs and still doesn't know much about food, so probably would not be a chef.
How do you say this name ;;;
After the whole Alexandria ordeal, the fun stuff really starts :) We meet Dagger who is in her white mage robe for the only time ever here.
And she is unbearably cute~
This scene was paralleled in Final Fantasy XII :) The Princes demands to be kidnapped aboard the theives' ship :)
One thing I really love about the game, though, is how natural all of the speech is. Some characters talk more formally and reasonably so, but most of the characters have really natural, casual speech. It's not necessarily an abundance of slang or whatever, it's just that the English script is written so well. Everyone's personality really shines through their speech. I really love it.
These things wiggle their butts so much when you hit them.
Black Waltz No 1 :) This was the hardest part of the game so far. It wasn't particularly hard, it just took forever because I want to steal everything I can steal (the main character is a thief, so stealing is kind of integral to the game -- bosses all have rare items and stuff you can steal, and stealing a lot can power up some of your special abilities, and the stuff you can get from stealing is usually well worth it) but that can take a while, because rare item steal rates are pretty bad.
I had to do a pattern of steal-steal-potion. I'm using a lot of potions this play... I normally don't rely on items too much, but I feel like I use potions like crazy. I even ran out of potions during the Festival of the Hunt and had to rely on Hi-Potions for a bit!
I think it's weird they felt like 'dominant hand' was relevant for the character profile/naming screens...
ANYWAY DAGGER
she win a prize :)
Took FOREVER for this little bastard to come out...! I swear I mastered like almost all my abilities while running around looking for it -_-
"You sure know how to fake it"
Don't be such a homophobe Zidane D: Though honestly I interpret this as Zidane just being surprised that Vivi is not as huge of a pervert as he is -- not commenting on orientation. But, uh, Vivi is like 8. I mean I realize Vivi's not a human (he's actually younger than 8) but he has the appearance of an 8-year-old and is constantly referred to as a child by all the other characters and is assumed to be about 8... so from Zidane's perspective, Vivi is an 8-year-old boy, and Zidane is constantly encouraging him to hit on girls and trying to hook him up with girls and stuff lol. I mean he's just like this with everyone but XD
I want the pickles ^_^ Also what method of payment even exists in this world besides cash...? There are no banks or anything in the game so...? It's not like cheques LOL Do people write IOUs or something?
For PS1 models, the character models are so expressive in this game! This isn't really a great way to illustrate it since it's a screencap and it doesn't look like much even then, but just... trust me lol. They're fantastic! They're really expressive and cute. You could really feel Vivi's shock, fear, and confusion during this scene...
Black Waltz no 2 is by far the easiest of the trio. A bit underwhelming, honestly.
BTW I was trying to steal all items from rando monsters to see what all they had before realizing/remembering Zidane has an ability called "Detect" that tells you what all items an enemy is carrying...
But it's super weird because this like... seemingly high-tech ball thing comes out of nowhere and like.. scans the enemy with lasers and then like data starts appear in the air like some kind of weird sci-fi junk... there's NOTHING else like this in the game? It's so weird and unfitting. What even is this ball thing??? I really like the animation, though, and prefer using this to stealing until it says 'Doesn't have anything.' even though watching this animation takes longer than the steal animation, and it's the same amount of 'wasted' turns (1 for Detect, or 1 for the failed steal).
Anyway, if you are seeing Black Waltz no 2, that means very soon is...
Black Waltz no 3 :) :) :) This guy is so lovely <3
I actually took a ton of screenshots of him; he's so cool in the cutscenes, even though these cutscenes are very sad :( One of the most iconic parts of the game... But I didn't upload them all to the Steam cloud thing so I can't hotlink them XD
I actually took a ton of screenshots of these scenes, poor Vivi :( But the most important part I wanted to talk about is that Dagger is the one that pilots the ship through South Gate. Which I think is just really cool. I had kinda forgotten that she was the one flying it...
I just really love Zidane and Dagger's relationship, and like watching it develop over the course of the game. One of the most important parts to me is that Zidane turns the ship over to Dagger, and tells her she can choose where to fly through South Gate or return to Alexandria. Not only is he letting her have her own agency, but he's trusting her with a very dangerous job. He let her know it was dangerous and offered to pilot the ship, but when she said she wanted to do it, he respected her decision.
I just really love Zidane as a character, honestly. While he's a perv and constantly hitting on women, he still shows a lot of respect to women. When he gets rejected, he doesn't push further. He hangs his head or mopes but leaves the girls alone. He offers support and guidance to Dagger, but he never enforces his ideas on her and always makes sure she does what she wants in her way. If it doesn't go along with what he wants, he steps back and realizes it's not his place.
Dagger is a really interesting character, and I'm not going to go into it now. But even though she's the polite princess type, she has so much depth and strength in her own way. She doesn't get ~badass~ in the sense that she's beating the shit out of monsters or shouting at people and trash-talking. She stays polite and calm, but does important things and drives a lot of the story. When she realized something was wrong, she took it upon herself to escape the castle and try to influence another political leader to listen to her concerns. She's pretty complex, so I don't want to go into it now, but... Dagger is just a really great character.
OK, on to silly things I guess LOL. I have no idea what the heck this is -- like is it a sign? Is Zidane thinking this? It's weird XD
I got a bunch of card games in in Lindlbum, and really powered up my Cactuar card :) I think I already talked about this XD
OH YEAH SPEAKING OF STUFF THAT HAPPENED IN LINDBLUM
Look at the big-nosed innkeeper XD Too cute. Actually like... all the rando NPCs in this game are so cute... they all have giant noses or mustaches or are fat or are like... a fish LOL like everyone is just adorable. They're hardly 'generic'-looking!
Also, Minister Artania is so cute :D I think he's obscure enough I can't really get into him, though? Like there's pretty much nothing to his character; he's more just there for the sake of needing a character to be there for this part lol. But like, I say this, and I love Priest Dabbie who literally only exists as a concept art and is never even mentioned in his respective game :P But, Priest Dabbie at least has a bunch of lore surrounding his family line and stuff like... yeah I don't really wanna get into that XD
Also I love how he has the same little ponytail in front and back XD
Also I love how Regent Cid's defining feature is his fantastic mustache XD
Also ew @ "moustache"
This little kid had a Regent Cid doll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of mustaches, I also only realized now that those yellow things coming out of Quale's head are actually his mustache. Quale has a big weird flat loopy mustache.
Also Quina is apparently 70-90 years old XD I love Quina to death. I wrote up a giant article about Quina once, and how much I love 'Qu Philosophy,' so I'll probably continue to talk about that through this replay. Another thing I really love about FF9 is the different perspectives characters bring to the story. Some of them are more concrete and expected -- like the obvious clash between lawful Steiner who follows rules so vehemently it almost doesn't make sense sometimes, and chaotic Zidane who does what he thinks is right no matter what anyone else says (and respects others' abilities to make their own choices, no matter what he thinks!).
But Quina is different. A lot of people view Quina as a comic relief character, and while I believe it's true that Quina tends to do a lot of funny things, they also question circumstances beyond what the other characters do. They offer perspectives outside of the scope of the way others think about them. Steiner may view the world as 'right' (following laws) and 'wrong' (breaking laws), and Zidane may view the world as 'right' (helping others) and 'wrong' (hurting others), but Quina views the world as 'food' or 'not food,' or 'yummy' or 'not yummy.' And yeah, that's silly, but at the same time, if you look at the moments when they decide to have Quina speak or act, it really feels like important commentary to me. They're not speaking up just to make a funny food joke, but rather to suggest that there are more ways of viewing a situation than what people are used to. It's really interesting and makes Quina one of the greatest characters in the game to me (plus, they're non-binary, look funny, love food, and have a really fun gameplay mechanic... even their own minigame XD)
Speaking of minigames... 3 of the 9 hours I played last night were pretty much this. Honestly, I like Chocobo Hot & Cold, and when I'm not playing it, I'm like "Oh, yeah, one of the best minigames/subquests in the series!" but when you have to dig up the chocographs it is absolute hell. The minigame is really fickle and the chocograph appearance rate can be terrible, so you're going to spend so much time sitting and doing this... I realize they don't really expect you to dig up all the ones from this location all at once, but... if I don't do it now, I'll forget, lol. Plus doing it all as early as you can will eventually lead to you being very mobile and having some very nice perks WAY early in the game...
So yeah, that's about it lol. I had some other things to say but I forgot oops. I have way more screencaps on Steam (and way way more in the local files) so you can check them out there I guess if you wanna see more. I like to kinda take them and make little comments as I go.
So I'm gonna go through FF9 and try to remember the stuff I wanted to talk about while posting my screenies :P
There are early-game spoilers ahead. I'm mostly going to keep to opinions of the game/characters/etc. and not really try to detail the story too much, so I think if you haven't played it, it won't really give too much away. But still some stuff will be revealed anyway, and you'll see random screens from the game (though without too much context, as I'll just assume the reader either knows what it is already or doesn't want to know the spoilery details XD)
OK so as I said, I finally gave up on jump rope. If you don't know, there's this horribly difficult-for-all-the-wrong-reasons minigame in this game where you have to skip rope with little girls, and you get prizes for different numbers of jumps. The last real prize is at 200 jumps which is not hard to get, but after that it gets... weird. And I absolutely cannot do it. Then there's a prize for 1000 jumps called "King of Jump Rope" which is an item that does absolutely nothing other than say you jumped 1000 times. But now in the Steam version, there's an achievement for getting that item -_-; But this minigame is in the very beginning of the game, in fact, you can do it as soon as you have control of your character. There's also an achievement for getting Treasure Hunter S-Rank (which is a ranking based on how many treasures and secrets you've found in the game), and I thought for S-Rank you had to get everything... but it turns out it's pretty lenient and you can miss something like 130 treasures (which seems like a lot, but this includes like literally anything you pick up, so like if you don't pick up a potion in a bush you just missed one... and there's quite a few places in the game you never get to go back to, like insides of some rooms or even entire towns or whatever so you really have to be thorough. It's still not that hard, though).
Anyway, so I realized I didn't need to do jump ropes now to get all the achievements so I'm just gonna play through the game and try to get the rest XD I just didn't want to have to do an entire separate "with jump ropes" playthrough. But since it's right at the beginning of the game, I can just get it at any time. The only other achievement I should miss is for getting the Excalibur II, which is a reward for getting to the end of the game in like 11 or 12 hours.
So ONTO THE CAPS lol
First is this! This is cute fishy guy!! There are a lot of random races in this game -- they're not developed at all. They don't have names or anything, it's just kinda like... a furry world lol. People are just randomly all kinds of animal-like creatures, but also there's a lot of humans lol. But yeah, fishy guy is cute! I wish there were more fish guys. And since the races aren't developed, there's not much to enjoy other than sometimes you see a fish person and it's like yay. Not nearly as wonderful as the yama race from The Last Remnant.
But yeah in the beginning I didn't realize the achievement for winning 100 card games meant winning against 100 different unique opponents. So I hardly played against anyone in Alexandria X_X I pretty much just got my 200 jumps and grabbed the treasures and went on.
The sword fight is a lot of fun and some of the best music in gaming XD
And fortunately a LOT easier to get 100/100 in the PC version... I was never able to get this in the original X_X; It's not nearly as bad as jump ropes, but the best I could do on PS1 was 99/100 T_T But for 100/100 you get 10,000 Gil and can get a Moonstone later, too. There are exactly 4 Moonstones in the game, and there's an achievement for getting all 4, so that is vital, too XD
Love these little chef guys ^_^ They're like a race of their own I guess. The Qu chef there uses the same model as Quina but it is indeed not Quina. I always thought maybe it was Quina, but listening to Quina and Quale's conversation later, it's clear that Quina has never eaten anything other than frogs and still doesn't know much about food, so probably would not be a chef.
How do you say this name ;;;
After the whole Alexandria ordeal, the fun stuff really starts :) We meet Dagger who is in her white mage robe for the only time ever here.
And she is unbearably cute~
This scene was paralleled in Final Fantasy XII :) The Princes demands to be kidnapped aboard the theives' ship :)
One thing I really love about the game, though, is how natural all of the speech is. Some characters talk more formally and reasonably so, but most of the characters have really natural, casual speech. It's not necessarily an abundance of slang or whatever, it's just that the English script is written so well. Everyone's personality really shines through their speech. I really love it.
These things wiggle their butts so much when you hit them.
Black Waltz No 1 :) This was the hardest part of the game so far. It wasn't particularly hard, it just took forever because I want to steal everything I can steal (the main character is a thief, so stealing is kind of integral to the game -- bosses all have rare items and stuff you can steal, and stealing a lot can power up some of your special abilities, and the stuff you can get from stealing is usually well worth it) but that can take a while, because rare item steal rates are pretty bad.
I had to do a pattern of steal-steal-potion. I'm using a lot of potions this play... I normally don't rely on items too much, but I feel like I use potions like crazy. I even ran out of potions during the Festival of the Hunt and had to rely on Hi-Potions for a bit!
I think it's weird they felt like 'dominant hand' was relevant for the character profile/naming screens...
ANYWAY DAGGER
she win a prize :)
Took FOREVER for this little bastard to come out...! I swear I mastered like almost all my abilities while running around looking for it -_-
"You sure know how to fake it"
Don't be such a homophobe Zidane D: Though honestly I interpret this as Zidane just being surprised that Vivi is not as huge of a pervert as he is -- not commenting on orientation. But, uh, Vivi is like 8. I mean I realize Vivi's not a human (he's actually younger than 8) but he has the appearance of an 8-year-old and is constantly referred to as a child by all the other characters and is assumed to be about 8... so from Zidane's perspective, Vivi is an 8-year-old boy, and Zidane is constantly encouraging him to hit on girls and trying to hook him up with girls and stuff lol. I mean he's just like this with everyone but XD
I want the pickles ^_^ Also what method of payment even exists in this world besides cash...? There are no banks or anything in the game so...? It's not like cheques LOL Do people write IOUs or something?
For PS1 models, the character models are so expressive in this game! This isn't really a great way to illustrate it since it's a screencap and it doesn't look like much even then, but just... trust me lol. They're fantastic! They're really expressive and cute. You could really feel Vivi's shock, fear, and confusion during this scene...
Black Waltz no 2 is by far the easiest of the trio. A bit underwhelming, honestly.
BTW I was trying to steal all items from rando monsters to see what all they had before realizing/remembering Zidane has an ability called "Detect" that tells you what all items an enemy is carrying...
But it's super weird because this like... seemingly high-tech ball thing comes out of nowhere and like.. scans the enemy with lasers and then like data starts appear in the air like some kind of weird sci-fi junk... there's NOTHING else like this in the game? It's so weird and unfitting. What even is this ball thing??? I really like the animation, though, and prefer using this to stealing until it says 'Doesn't have anything.' even though watching this animation takes longer than the steal animation, and it's the same amount of 'wasted' turns (1 for Detect, or 1 for the failed steal).
Anyway, if you are seeing Black Waltz no 2, that means very soon is...
Black Waltz no 3 :) :) :) This guy is so lovely <3
I actually took a ton of screenshots of him; he's so cool in the cutscenes, even though these cutscenes are very sad :( One of the most iconic parts of the game... But I didn't upload them all to the Steam cloud thing so I can't hotlink them XD
I actually took a ton of screenshots of these scenes, poor Vivi :( But the most important part I wanted to talk about is that Dagger is the one that pilots the ship through South Gate. Which I think is just really cool. I had kinda forgotten that she was the one flying it...
I just really love Zidane and Dagger's relationship, and like watching it develop over the course of the game. One of the most important parts to me is that Zidane turns the ship over to Dagger, and tells her she can choose where to fly through South Gate or return to Alexandria. Not only is he letting her have her own agency, but he's trusting her with a very dangerous job. He let her know it was dangerous and offered to pilot the ship, but when she said she wanted to do it, he respected her decision.
I just really love Zidane as a character, honestly. While he's a perv and constantly hitting on women, he still shows a lot of respect to women. When he gets rejected, he doesn't push further. He hangs his head or mopes but leaves the girls alone. He offers support and guidance to Dagger, but he never enforces his ideas on her and always makes sure she does what she wants in her way. If it doesn't go along with what he wants, he steps back and realizes it's not his place.
Dagger is a really interesting character, and I'm not going to go into it now. But even though she's the polite princess type, she has so much depth and strength in her own way. She doesn't get ~badass~ in the sense that she's beating the shit out of monsters or shouting at people and trash-talking. She stays polite and calm, but does important things and drives a lot of the story. When she realized something was wrong, she took it upon herself to escape the castle and try to influence another political leader to listen to her concerns. She's pretty complex, so I don't want to go into it now, but... Dagger is just a really great character.
OK, on to silly things I guess LOL. I have no idea what the heck this is -- like is it a sign? Is Zidane thinking this? It's weird XD
I got a bunch of card games in in Lindlbum, and really powered up my Cactuar card :) I think I already talked about this XD
OH YEAH SPEAKING OF STUFF THAT HAPPENED IN LINDBLUM
Look at the big-nosed innkeeper XD Too cute. Actually like... all the rando NPCs in this game are so cute... they all have giant noses or mustaches or are fat or are like... a fish LOL like everyone is just adorable. They're hardly 'generic'-looking!
Also, Minister Artania is so cute :D I think he's obscure enough I can't really get into him, though? Like there's pretty much nothing to his character; he's more just there for the sake of needing a character to be there for this part lol. But like, I say this, and I love Priest Dabbie who literally only exists as a concept art and is never even mentioned in his respective game :P But, Priest Dabbie at least has a bunch of lore surrounding his family line and stuff like... yeah I don't really wanna get into that XD
Also I love how he has the same little ponytail in front and back XD
Also I love how Regent Cid's defining feature is his fantastic mustache XD
Also ew @ "moustache"
This little kid had a Regent Cid doll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of mustaches, I also only realized now that those yellow things coming out of Quale's head are actually his mustache. Quale has a big weird flat loopy mustache.
Also Quina is apparently 70-90 years old XD I love Quina to death. I wrote up a giant article about Quina once, and how much I love 'Qu Philosophy,' so I'll probably continue to talk about that through this replay. Another thing I really love about FF9 is the different perspectives characters bring to the story. Some of them are more concrete and expected -- like the obvious clash between lawful Steiner who follows rules so vehemently it almost doesn't make sense sometimes, and chaotic Zidane who does what he thinks is right no matter what anyone else says (and respects others' abilities to make their own choices, no matter what he thinks!).
But Quina is different. A lot of people view Quina as a comic relief character, and while I believe it's true that Quina tends to do a lot of funny things, they also question circumstances beyond what the other characters do. They offer perspectives outside of the scope of the way others think about them. Steiner may view the world as 'right' (following laws) and 'wrong' (breaking laws), and Zidane may view the world as 'right' (helping others) and 'wrong' (hurting others), but Quina views the world as 'food' or 'not food,' or 'yummy' or 'not yummy.' And yeah, that's silly, but at the same time, if you look at the moments when they decide to have Quina speak or act, it really feels like important commentary to me. They're not speaking up just to make a funny food joke, but rather to suggest that there are more ways of viewing a situation than what people are used to. It's really interesting and makes Quina one of the greatest characters in the game to me (plus, they're non-binary, look funny, love food, and have a really fun gameplay mechanic... even their own minigame XD)
Speaking of minigames... 3 of the 9 hours I played last night were pretty much this. Honestly, I like Chocobo Hot & Cold, and when I'm not playing it, I'm like "Oh, yeah, one of the best minigames/subquests in the series!" but when you have to dig up the chocographs it is absolute hell. The minigame is really fickle and the chocograph appearance rate can be terrible, so you're going to spend so much time sitting and doing this... I realize they don't really expect you to dig up all the ones from this location all at once, but... if I don't do it now, I'll forget, lol. Plus doing it all as early as you can will eventually lead to you being very mobile and having some very nice perks WAY early in the game...
So yeah, that's about it lol. I had some other things to say but I forgot oops. I have way more screencaps on Steam (and way way more in the local files) so you can check them out there I guess if you wanna see more. I like to kinda take them and make little comments as I go.