Story

The ninth installment of the Final Fantasy series, though a favourite of mine, was not as popular as the previous installments. It did sell profitably well, however. It was the last Final Fantasy to grace the Playstation One, and because of this, Square wanted it to be a game that kind of "summed up" the Final Fantasy series; a sort of conclusion of the series up to that point. Squaresoft decided to return the series to its "roots". The FFIX characters had a "shrunken" appearance to resemble the 8-bit and 16-bit sprites from earlier Final Fantasies on the Super Nintendo. The story went back to traditional Final Fantasy plots of crystals, kingdoms and magic instead of going down the science fiction road like FF7 and FF8 had.

Many of the newer Final Fantasy fans, who were introduced to the franchise through the Playstation (not the Super Nintendo) were more familiar with the science-fiction action of FF7 and FF8, and they were not too pleased with FFIX initially. The game did not sell as well at first because of some fans' reluctancy to try it, but it did make it as a Greatest Hit. While some still dislike the game for whatever reason, many that have played the game realize that Final Fantasy IX is a game that is just as epic as its predecessors.

The Story of FFIX

The story of Final Fantasy IX revolves around a boy named Zidane Tribal, a member of a band of thieves called Tantalus. Tantalus has received an order from Regent Cid, the ruler of the kingdom of Lindblum, to kidnap his niece, Princess Garnet from the kingdom of Alexandria -- for good reasons, as you later find out. To accomplish this task, Tantalus went into Alexandria disguised as a theater troupe to perform a play for the Queen and other various nobles within the castle. Luckily for them, kidnapping the princess was a piece of cake because the princess just so happened wanted to escape from the castle! Garnet felt suspicious of the activity occuring around her kingdom lately under her mother's rule, but there was not much she thought she could do. She hoped that she could ask her uncle, Regent Cid, for assistance, and takes Alexandria's treasured crystal with her, to keep it safe from her mother.

After a dramatic and explosive escape from Alexandria followed by a near death trip through the Evil Forest (that is its actual name), the 'kidnappers' and Garnet finally arrived at Lindblum where Regent Cid informs his dear niece about Queen Brahne's sudden violent madness for power and his worry for her safety. Garnet becomes understandably upset that her hunches about her mother were correct.

Queen Brahne is not too happy that Garnet ran off with the kingdom's treasured crystal. She chooses to launch attacks at kingdoms Burmecia and Cleyra to take their crystals, and eventually, she destroys herself when Garnet and her party realize that the true evil was not Queen Brahne, but a man named Kuja who had been manipulating her like a puppet.

Final Fantasy IX follows the story formula of the older 2D Final Fantasy games. It is not without some old school romance between the two main protagonists as well. It is one of my favourite Final Fantasy games, and Garnet, one of my favourite characters in the entire series.