Now that I have a ton of free time I have decided to work on some analytical writing exercises to keep myself, and my mind, from becoming an unproductive mess of laziness. Im going to be doing short analytical essays of my Top 5 favorite things, starting with my top 5 favorite games and heres the first one. My Top 5 Favorite Video Games Of All Time: #5 Final Fantasy 9 When people talk about their favorite Final Fantasy games they’re often quick to jump to titles like FF6,7,8, or 10, but one I don’t see very often is Final Fantasy 9. The development period for FF9 is a little strange, it was actually in development alongside 8 and was never actually intended to be a part of the main FF franchise. Hiranobu Sakaguchi wanted the, at that time untitled, game to be a fond look back at just how far the game series had come. In 1999 it was announced that the game would indeed get a roman numeral and would be Square’s last game on the PS1. Rather than Square making more life like sprites like they did in FF8 they decided to take the sprite concepts from the old games and re-imagine them in 3D, the game was meant to mix the best of the old with the best of the new, and in my opinion they succeeded. What I love about FF9 is that, despite its cartoony look, it’s story dealt with some very mature sub-textual themes. While 6 dealt with themes of finds hope in a hopeless world, and 7 dealt with themes of redemption, responsibility, and facing the mistakes and fears of the past, 9 dealt with themes of identity, death, mortality, and reasons for living. Each character struggled with finding their place in the world or, for those who had a place, eventually came to question their current place in it, even the main villains motivations stem from this these themes. It’s something that everybody thinks about at some point in their life and these themes really resonate with me personally. But the sub-text of the narrative isn’t the only reason I love this game, the cast of FF9 are some of the most funny and likable characters I’ve seen in any FF game, especially the main protagonist of Zidane. Unlike the distort and conflicted main protagonists of the last two games, Zidane was a happy go lucky thief who always had a shoulder to cry on and often helped his friends see the brighter side bad situations. He always reminded me of Goku from Dragonball for these reasons, well that and the fact that he also had a monkey tail. The battle system returned to a more streamlined format, I was never really a fan of the junction system in 8 and it was great to see the more simplistic battle system return with some fantastic improvements. Each character resembled the class they were supposed to be which was another call back to the original games, Vivi looked like a black mage, Steiner looked like a warrior, we even see Garrnet/Dagger wearing the robes of a classic white mage when she first meets Zidane. I could honestly go on for hours about my love for this game and just how it cemented my love for JRPG’s but I think I’ll keep this short. If you never gave this game a chance in the past I highly recommend that you give it a go the next time the opportunity arrives, I guarantee that it will not disappoint.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 20:06:16 +0000