Novelty Has No Inherent Value

I think Final Fantasy 7 was a great game. It felt fun to play. It was satisfying to play. You gain experience points for fights. When you reach a threshold, you level up. When you level up, your stats improve. You can customize your characters with equip-able magic stones called materia. You can swap them freely among your characters to make all kinds of combinations for your playstyle. When you fight, you also gain AP for your equipped materia. When your Materia reach an AP threshold, they level up and you gain more utility or power. When you fight, you get money. When you get to a new town, new weapons and armor become available for purchase that make your characters tougher. In dungeons, you can find unique weapons and armor and materia. Really simple gameplay loop. Make some progress to make more progress. You could see and feel how you get tougher. You could watch numbers go up. It was simple. It was elegant.

Then Final Fantasy 8 came out, and it was nothing like Final Fantasy 7. They changed almost everything. You earn experience points, and you can level up, but your stats barely increase! Worse yet, the monsters' levels scale to your levels, and their stats and powers do improve! It means that leveling up is disadvantageous! You can find these monsters called GF that you can equip, and they gain levels with exp, but they don't have stats that you can see. Instead, you're mostly keeping an eye on their AP. When AP is earned, they learn abilities. There's a hidden ability tree where certain abilities are prerequisite to others. What abilities are going to be valuable? You don't know till you get there! Instead of finding magic stones that you equip for magic, you have to go stock spells with a tedious, slow combat action called drawing, or by using special abilities to modify playing cards or refine various items you collect from monster drops. You had to collect items to use to upgrade your weapons, some of which were rare to find and rare to drop! Armor was gone. Instead, you equip magic spells to your specific stats, and the level of the spell, and the quantity of the spell effected the amount that the stats increase. It was a very micromanage-y, it was complex, and it was intimidating to learn. Mastery meant playing the game in a very controlled way to efficiently earn AP without getting so much exp. Ugh.

But it was different, so that means it was OK? Right?

Remember the Nintendo Wii and its nunchaku controller? Eff that. Sometimes I hear people praising games for being new and different. What was wrong with Final Fantasy 7? Give me more of that! I want more of that! I wish I was into sports games and FPS games and Assassin's Creed because those game devs look like they figured this out. People like the formula, keep it! How do you go from FF7 to FF8? It's madness! What a wild change!

So, my central complaint is novelty for its own sake sucks. Is the game good? I have heard people praise FFX for being a non-standard fantasy setting. Boo! It was the ugliest setting ever. The costumes were ugly and stupid looking. The unique hair styles were dumb and ugly. Machines were ugly and dumb looking. Monsters were OK. Buildings and boats were dumb when they were unique. How many people cosplay as characters from FFX? Better yet, when people cosplay as FFX characters, which ones do they pick? Auron, and the main girl characters. That's it. The game is so ugly, no one cosplays as any other character. Ronsos were in the game. Ugly effing game.

So for some reason, people think FFX is a really good game. It's not. They did some cool stuff. Being able to swap characters in and out mid-combat? Cool. Having to swap your characters in and out mid-combat because all the monsters in the game are functionally a rock-paper-scissors game? Meh. I just want to pick my favorite characters and use them. The game's best mechanics don't get fully utilized until late game if you fill out the monster arena, which is effortful, but I think you have to be into grinding to really enjoy yourself. It so happens that I am into grinding. Why can't the whole game be more like the late game? The equipment customization system doesn't even matter until this late portion of the game. You might be able to manage to make a few useful things throughout the main game, but that's it. Mostly, you would put elemental damage on weapons so you could do double damage. By the way, Str + 5, +10, +20, etc. in FFX is a trap when using the right element doubles damage! A trap I say!

I hate the story and characters in FFX. OK, I don't hate the story and characters, but it was a very, very delayed appreciation and even then, I don't actually like them. I just don't care. I enjoy Lulu's cleavage though. More of that please. Also, bring back the customization of materia. Powers are contained in objects that are tracked separately from characters, and they can be freely moved around. And there weren't that many fiddly bits. Very simple, very fun. You dumb dumbs at Square came up with a cool idea, you used it once, then that was it. The hell is wrong with you?

What's wrong with them is they pursue novelty for the sake of it. As if reusing something that works is a bad thing because we already did it. So in FFX, they give you this thing called the Sphere Grid instead of experience and levels. What is the sphere grid? It turns character improvement into a process of moving your character along a path on a game board and activating nodes with consumable items you collect after battle. The problem is it's linear, so why? What's the point? Again, it's something in FFX that only gets good late game when you can move freely around the sphere grid and earn whatever you want. It's undercooked.

Anyway, if you've stuck with me this long, thank you. Believe it or not, I am not here to complain about the Final Fantasy series, it just happens to be what I'm very familiar with. I'm here to complain about novelty. I don't care about new things because they're new. New is not a virtue. How about I get you a new turd? And so understandably, I get a little annoyed when I hear people praise something for being new. I could get you a new car or I can get you a new scratch on it. The new car is valuable if it's in new condition because that means its quality is intact. But a new car that's used is less valuable. But what if the used car still works better than the new one?

I think innovation must be a value to some people. I don't share it. Can I say I'm tired of people trying to be innovative? Are we done trying to invent new stuff? Or make old stuff seem new by adding a twist to it? Are we done? Can we just embrace tradition yet? If you don't like tradition, then by all means make something different, but be honest that you don't like tradition. Many of us just like being a male, human, fighter, with a sword, and that will never get old to us. When you eff with the thing that works, you alienate the people who come for something familiar. I think this is why media has generally sucked for the last ten to fifteen years. Especially Final Fantasy games. The FF7 remakes sucks too. Can we cut out the ten-to-thirty-minute cut scenes? I don't want to watch an effing movie! Oh, and bring back timed hits and defenses from Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars. Those were fun!

I think I made my point without ruffling too many feathers. Newness does not automatically mean good, quality, or fun. We have decades of good stuff we abandon. What happened to side-scrollers? Video games were 90% side-scrollers once upon a time. They didn't stop being fun! And isometric perspective games are missed. Did I piss off the FFX fans? Who cares. Wakka's hair sucks and you suck for liking it. Insert the Titas Ah-ha-ha laugh. Cue the outro. DUN da da dun dun dun duuunnn.

Final Fantasy X (FFX) Celestial Weapons / Ultimate Weapons Guide

FINAL FANTASY X

Celestial Weapons / Ultimate Weapons

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Celestial_Weapon

Cloudy Mirror

Location: Remiem Temple to the east of the Calm Lands. Race the champion chocobo there, and win.

Celestial Mirror (Cloudy Mirror Required)

Location: Macalania Woods. Speak to the woman at the Thunder Plains entrance. She mentions something about her missing husband, who is also in the woods in an area near the Bevelle exit. Speak to him, and he will return to his wife. Once they are reunited, talk to them again and they mention something about their missing son. Go up the crystal pathway to an altar resembling a giant plant bud. Examinging the altar with the Cloudy Mirror changes it into the Celestial Mirror.

Tidus

Caladbolg

Location: Calm Lands, north west end down a ramp. You must beat the chocobo trainer in a race, and the person guarding it will move out of the way.

Sun Crest

Location: Search the room in which you fight Lady Yunalesca for stairs. Go up and down them until they teleport you into a identical version of the room with a treasure chest. 

Sun Sigil

Location: Chocobo Trainer; Race them, and get a time of 0:00:00. Very RNG. Good luck.

Yuna

Nirvana

Location: Monster Arena in Calm Lands. Reward for capturing 9 different species from the Calm Lands.

Mood Crest

Location: Beach in Besaid.

Moon Sigil

Location: Remiem Temple east of the Calm Lands. Must defeat all Belgemine's aeons, then send her. Requires Yojimbo and Anima.

When the player defeats Bahamut, they receive the Flower Sceptre. Then, the player must capture 1 of every species in Mt. Gagazet and earn the Blossom Crown as a Monster Arena reward.

Use the Flower Sceptre and the Blossom Crown on the door behind Belgemine to unlock it and obtain the final aeon, the Magus Sisters. Defeat Belgemine's Magus Sisters Aeons, then send Belgemine to finally obtain the Moon Sigil.

Wakka

World Champion

Location: Luca, in a cafe. Player must place in at least 3rd in a tournament, then speak to the owner and agree to show her the Celestial Mirror.

Jupiter (or Mercury) Crest

Location: Locker in the Aurochs locker room.

Jupiter (or Mercury) Sigil

Location: 50% chance it appears as a prize in a Blitzball League game once the player has won all three of Wakka's Overdrives in previous competitions.

Kimari

Spirit Lance

Location: Thunder Plains. The player must pray at three different Qactuar Stones which makes a spiritual Qactuar appear at either the North or South end. The player must have also read the text of Gandof and the Qactuars (book) located on the counter in Rin's Travel Agency in the Thunder Plains. The player must follow the Qactuar to the broken tower and press square (or its equivalent) to pray at the tower.

Saturn / Jupiter Crest

Location: Mt. Gagazet, just past the spot where the players fight Seymour Flux. The treasure chest is hidden from view among the pillars on the left.

Saturn / Jupiter Sigil

Location: Butterfly hunt mini-game in the Macalania Woods after obtaining the airship. ?The Sigil appears the second time the player wins?

Lulu

Onion Knight

Location: search for coordinates "12, 57" while aboard the Airship to locate Baaj (temple). Geosgaeno must be defeated, then search the underwater area for a chest that is hidden out of sight.

Venus / Mars Crest

Location: Farplane in Guardosalam. Visit the Farplane after Tidus mentions Seymour's departure for Macalania Temple. If missed, return here after obtaining the airship.

Venus / Mars Sigil

Location: Thunder Plains; dodge 200 lightning bolts consecutively, without leaving the area, and without reseting / loading your save data.

Auron

Masamune

Location: Djose / Mushroom Rock Road. The north-wester passage leads to a rising platform that leads to a statue of Lord Mi'ihen. Players must place the Rusty Sword here to reveal a glyph. The glyph reveals the sword. The Rusty Sword is located on the eastern cliff outside the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth, north of the Calm Lands, south of Mt. Gagazet.

Mars / Saturn Crest

Location: Near the entrance to Mushroom Rock Road along the final area of the Mi'ihen Highroad. 

Mars / Saturn Sigil

Location: Monster Arena reward for unlocking a total of 10 Area Conquest or Species Conquest monsters (any combination of the two).

Rikku

Godhand

Location: Mushroom Rock Road. The player must enter a password "GODHAND" on the Airship, and going to the new location.

Mercury / Venus Crest

Location: Bikanel Desert. Found in a treasure chest in a shifting sand pit in the final area.

Mercury / Venus Sigil

Location: Complete the cactuar sidequest on Bikanel Island, which is available after obtaining the airship.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Cactuar_Nation#Village_of_the_Cactuars

Final Fantasy III Class Tier List

Hello and welcome to my complete Final Fantasy III class tier list! Yes, that's right, I said complete (Note, this is not complete on purpose). Ladies and gentlemen and those of unspecified gender, I want to tell you what! So, without further adieu, a summary of the jobs of each crystal and a final summary at the end.

Wind Crystal
Wind crystal jobs tend to have lower stats on higher levels than later jobs, however the trade off is if you stick with a wind crystal job for the whole game, you'll be fairly high in job level which kind of balances out. Also, you may be eligible for a legendary blacksmith items without any extra grinding. If you try to earn job level 99 with a non-wind crystal job, you may have to grind hard. Consider using at least one wind crystal job the whole game. Trust me, you'll be fine.

Warrior
You may want a warrior for consistent melee in the early game. The warrior is kind of a shit melee class, so don't get too attached. They can only use early game equipment and the Excalibur. I recommend upgrading to a knight ASAP.

Monk
You can alternatively use a monk for the early game melee and you can't go wrong with punching in Final Fantasy games because punching in Final Fantasy games is usually slightly worse than the chosen one wielding the power cosmic. The only problem with the Monk class in FFIII is that they are shit at first. Get your job level to about 14 or so and you should begin to see a solid return on your investment. Weaknesses: They are glass cannons.

Thief
I used a thief in my previous play through all the way to the end game. The thief is broken! It gains JP faster than any other class and will be 30 job levels higher than the party average before your know it. The game will give you knives to keep your thief competitive late game. My thief consistently outdid my knight in damage output and could reliably one-hit or two-hit anything. In addition, with its high speed, my thief would be likely to act sooner in turn order, dispatching an enemy and reducing the amount of damage received by the party each battle. By the time I got to the evil dark knight dungeon with duplicating enemies, I could do 5000 damage or max damage on a crit and I was one-hitting almost everything. My other party members would defend every turn because anything they could contribute was too little to matter. Thieves are amazing!


Red Mage
I love the red mage in concept!!!! There's a reason why you don't see red mages in FF games after this game, and it has to do with the later job class systems allowing you to customize your characters and effectively build a red mage. The FFIII Red Mage class in my experience is crap. One of its perks is that it can use that one early game sword that does extra damage to undead. Cool. This class is just too well rounded. It's not the star of anything; it's your backup at everything. This class doesn't hit hard enough to hit, it doesn't magic well enough to magic, it has less MP, access to weaker equipment, etc. I find that in RPGs, you usually have to specialize to be successful.

White Mage
The white mage has a lower JP rate than other classes, so to keep your white mage falling too far behind, you should use the defend command instead of wasting your turns planning another action that doesn't go off because another character defeats an enemy before your white mage's turn. The white mage is essential for healing during boss battles. You can not get away with relying on items alone to heal. Pick a white mage or die.

Black Mage
I hate black mages, but you're required to have them for some boss fights. Whatever, this game is balanced to allow your black mage to be helpful outside of boss battles. The whole concept of crowd control is gone though. Seriously, if I was confident that I could kill everything with melee, I would only use melee.

Fire Crystal Jobs
I couldn't name all the fire crystal jobs when I began writing this, but you're looking at Geomancer, Knight, Ranger, Scholar.

Scholars
Scholars are interesting in concept; I wish you could get more attack items. When they use items, the effect is doubled. They're like a prototype Final Fantasy Alchemist/Chemist class with a scan ability. The game tells you that you need that scan ability for at least one boss. You don't. I can't justify this class, but I would like to. I think the scholar has a very low JP gain rate.

Ranger
I've never used a ranger because of a little thing called ammo system.

Geomancer
I really like this class in concept as well. They have spells that don't use MP! The downsides are that their spell list is determined by the terrain, meaning you will most likely be fighting fire enemies with fire or water enemies with water. See the problem? Also, they use spells at random so they aren't reliable. I really, really like reliability in my RPG party. If I have some real badasses and thus I have some discretionary room to fuck around, I may invest in a character who might waste their turns or one shot everything on the screen like a geomancer. I think the geomancer has a low JP gain rate.


Knight
You know the end game is going to give you cool knight shit. That's why you have to pick a knight over a viking when deciding what class to have for tanking even in the early game. Deal with it. Excalibur, Ragnarok, and Ultima. If dual wielding shields is a thing (I think it is), a Knight is more effective as tank than a Viking because they have a Defend command which lets them intercept attacks for allies. Therefore, they're better at being a super tank than a viking.

Water Crystal Jobs
The water crystal offers jobs: Viking, Dragoon, Dark Knight, Evoker, Bard.

Viking
I have seen a let's play where the player used a viking just to do something different. Vikings are surprisingly effective at melee and as tanks. I recall that you can dual wield shields in this game and make a viking a super tank, or maybe I'm full of shit.

Dragoon
I shit you not, you are required to change your entire party into dragoons for one boss battle. After that, you don't need to use them ever again. Dragoons are bad at being tanks because they're special ability Jump removes them from the battle for one-two rounds. This means your squishy characters can take more damage before your dragoon hits an enemy for double damage once every two turns. Also, math makes that attack seem redundant. Jump will do 4x damage to flying or air themed enemies which are not the majority of dangerous enemies. Even if jump damage scales exponentially with job level, I can't find myself recommending it because healing spells won't target it while it's airborne.

Dark Knight
A dark knight in the remake of FFIII is a sort of samurai / ninja themed non-ninja character who can use katanas which are effective against enemies that duplicate. You know what else is good against enemies who duplicate? A character who hits hard enough to one-shot that enemy. You also have the dark attack attack which sacrifices the users HP for extra damage. Dark Knights are not tanks by the way; they're armor is just OK.

Evoker
I want to give it a fair try, but I didn't and I won't. I'm just too comfortable with my party by this point in the game. In case you don't know, Evokers are baby versions of summoners.

Bard
I want to use a bard too, but I hear nothing stellar about them.


Earth Crystal Jobs
Unfortunately, I don't like spellcasting classes in JRPGs. This crystal offers 4 spellcasting classes and it's clear (to me at least) that you're meant to pick and commit to only 2 at most and it's supposed to be a difficult choice. The deal with these spellcasting classes is that they are overall better than their lower tier counterparts, but in some ways the lower tier counterparts are better. For example, the White Mage has a higher Magic Power stat and more lower level MP than the Devout. I think you're supposed to trade being really good a using low level spells for being OK at using lover level spells and having access to end game spells. This kind of makes sense for the white mage because having more Cures is better than having fewer, slightly more potent Cures for dungeon crawling. Other than that, Earth Crystal jobs will be at job level 1 and your other jobs may have quite high job levels.

Magus
The big boy Black Mage. Has access to higher level black magic, has more MP, etc. Flare, Meteor, Death.


Devout
The big boy White Mage. Has access to higher level white magic, has more MP, etc. Can cast Life 2, Cure 4, and Holy, which is cool.


Summoner
The big boy version of the Evoker. Access to higher level spells, more MP, etc. Can cast Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut.

Sage
This is the big boy red mage if the big boy red mage can't hit or wear armor anymore. You have access to all magic. I don't know how much more or less MP you have or how much more or less potent your spells are, but I suspect that a jack-of-all-trades super wizard sacrifices something. Oh well, I can choose to cast any three of Bahamut, Full-Life, Holy, Flare, and Meteor plus Odin with one character. That's cool.

Black Belt
I think this class is amazing for 2 reasons. 1, you don't need a weapon to be a good DPS, however this game actually gives good fist weapons so you'll still hit like a truck. 2, very high HP growth. If you want to get your HP significantly higher, make your characters into black belts and grind out 10 character levels each. You'll be happy you did. This class is still kind of a glass cannon though.


Ninja
In the NES version, this was a secret class that could use ALL weapons and armor making it super fucking duper! In this version, it is a more traditional ninja: glass cannon melee! It has low HP and Defense. I find they get KOed more easily than your magic classes. You can throw ninja stars which do tons of damage. It's amazing if you don't plan on grinding out tons of job levels, but if you do plan on job level grinding, ninja stars are not so impressive.

Summary
For the length of the game, I recommend a dedicated healer, a dedicated tank, and a dedicated melee attacker. I only keep someone prepared to do attack magic stuff because the game seems to like to throw the occasional boss at you that can only be hurt by attack spells and you want something like a black mage with a decent job level for the sake of potency. Just have your bases covered for the whole game; the game is kind of balanced for that. For your final party, I think it sounds risky to leave out a White Mage or a Devout. Notable classes (IMO) for your final party include Knight, Ninja, Black Belt, and Sage. Ninja probably beats Black Belt. I think you have some real leniency to have one wind crystal job with a job level of 99 for that sweet legendary black smith item, in which case I recommend the thief for DPS based on experience. End game grinding is required.

You can't in my experience avoid a balanced party. You can't have 4 Black Belts for instance. I've tried. Longer dungeons will make you burn through too many resources. The game will throw 1-3 enemies at you per battle; 1 or 2 on average with 3 being rare or more common at mid-late and end game. I think any way you roll, your party's damage output will generally be enough to defeat one enemy per round. Your party will on average take 2 to 3 hits per round of combat. That's just the way this game is balanced. Bosses will be threatening enough to give you a game over if you get unlucky or you make a poor decision.

The game will make resources available (such as weapons, armor, spells) to encourage you to choose different classes at different phases of the game and free resources (weapons or armor found as treasures) are available to encourage or limit use of specific classes. You will not have enough swords and armor to equally equip 4 knights for instance.

Kingdom Hearts 3 pun goes here review

Kingdom Hearts 3 is released after more than a decade. Here's why it took so long to make this game. The developers had to make it in stages: Production then cringing under the desk.  Put simply and cleanly, devs for Kingdom Farts spent 3 years on production and 10 years on self-soothing. I can't imagine why anyone would put themselves through a production schedule of make a little bit of the game and then go do drugs to cope with the shame and repeat until complete. Of course, this game is definitely complete right? Knowing this series, there are 5 titles waiting just to explain some other bullshit you could overthink. Geez. Fuck.

I still don't know what kingdom hearts is, but fuck it. I understand the concept of defeating your enemies with the power of rock and roll so what the fuck ever. Kingdom Balls 3 features a story about Riku and King Mickey doing important stuff off screen while Sora grinds back up from level 1. That's The actual plot. At least they had a half decent reason for Sora being on level 1. This game is more linear than previous games, so I give it a big penalty for that. The stories you get when you visit Disney worlds are lame. Half of them, you're just doing the movie. 5 points will be deducted from Heart House. Finally, you visit the final level, and shit goes down, but it's trope-ier than your average MLP FIM episode. More on that later. The ending is not satisfying and a redemption story for the villain comes out of this shitshow like a goddamn zombie rising from a porta-potty to wrap up the plot for Square's inept writing department. Xehanort gives up for no fucking reason and hands over the black materia with a frowny face like a scolded child.

Let's now compare KH3 to My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. MLP FIM is a show written for kids complete with a moral of the day in each episode that is exposited explicitly by at least one character at the end before everyone eats pie and has a group hug and takes a photo. KH had it's shit together once upon a time, for example, the first game, which is still cringey as fuck. I won't allow Square to use the fact that this game has always had bad writing as an excuse to be weaker than MLP FIM. What is Gundam Hearts 3 about? What's the moral of the day? Are there any jokes adults can appreciate like in MLP? No, this game is superficial. It is made to look and feel cool, but the story is "hearts are good, but also bad, but good." Fffffffffff uck.

MLP FIM can set up a plot and resolve it in 20 minutes. KH can't even keep its internal rules consistent. I thought the keyblade chose it's own master, now they're interchangeable and anyone can join the club. Keyblade wielders are more redundant now than super saiyajins. Hell, I can wield a keyblade. What is the darkness in peoples hearts? What is the light? What are hearts? Why does spikey hair look like a bunch of bananas at the wrong angle? Why was Maleficent here? Why was Kairi a token girl and also a women in refrigerator? Why does Riku have an actual relationship with his inner child who sacrifices himself for Namine? Why is Namine important? Is she important? How can Sora has a relationship with Kairi while Riku can have a relationship with a character who only exists because Kairi partially died and the universe spawned a substitute to be a place holder until she could be brought back? And then why is there another version of Kairi with black hair and how can she know shit about Kairi who is dead again? What did anyone in Organozation XIII want? What was their motivation? The blonde girl literally told Sora it was a secret! Why did Donald almost die just by casting a spell!

By the way, how cool was it that King Mickey knows Ultima! I don't know or care why or how. That's pretty fucking awesome!

Once upon a time, a linear game was normal. The constant cutscenes in KH3 make you feel like you're being lead around on a constant tour and I want off! It started off as a quest to get your lost power back, then you just go to the last level because there's suddenly some urgency in this plot. God. Geez. After seeing new and old Disney levels with little original content, you just go to the last level and Sora, who has not verified that he has recovered his lost power, is the MVP. No one can keep up with him. He fights all the bosses and then follows the villain to the Square / Disney version of Purgatory to finish him off. When did we say Sora has recovered his strength? Fuck!

The villains are bullshit. I don't remember their names or care about them. Everyone has stupid hair. That's another reason why it took so long to make this game, bullshit hair. 

Winnie the Pooh was back. Thank fuck it was only a ten minute cutscene. It was a crappy as hell cutscene too. Sora is too old for Winnie the Pooh and there's just no potential for conflict!

No final fantasy characters present. I can't tell if that's a good thing or not. They probably got cut and that explains why the game is so short. They could have at least given us a black mage! That would have been cool.

What are the redeeming qualities of this game? It looks pretty and it's fun. They should just make an arcade game / tournament fighter already! 1 ball / 10. Don't give Square your money.

Final Fantasy Tactics Strategies

Final Fantasy Tactics is the best tactics game I've ever played and even though I've played it ad nauseum and moved on, I still wake up some mornings thinking about it. This morning I woke up thinking about the absolute best Final Fantasty Tactics strats, bro! The best! You might not want to use these strats because you don't think they're cool, but If you really want to wreck some shit, these works. Disclaimer: These strats do not work against chocobos. Chocobos will kill you. Have a good day.

Handicaps
The best way to turn a fight around is to handicap your foes. You can control the pacing of a fight by lightly handicaping one or two enemies. The best way to do this is with either Break Skills or the Frog spell. All the magic options available such as Paralysis, Don't Act, Slow, etc., are temporary and buy you one or two rounds if they work. If they don't work, you've wasted a turn and if you waste too many turns, you're going to feel it. I want to say Sleep is useful because it lasts a very long time, but it's still temporary.

Break Skills + Dual Wield
Dual Wield takes a bit of time to get to, but once you get it, your favorite break skills become your favorite-er. Dual wield + break skills increases the probability of one of your breaks landing. If the success rate of the skill is high enough, you will generally see one of them working and two-for-ones occur.

One unit suffering the effects of Speed Break x1 or x2 and Power Break x1 or x2 will show. Do this to two units and the weaker members of the enemy party will seem like their pulling their weight.

Break Skills + Range Weapons
Combine any break skills with a ranged weapon and you now have a recipe to perpetually keep your distance to avoid taking hits and avoid triggering any counter attacks until one or enough of your breaks land. This is an effective way to utilize break skills in the early game.

Frog + Chakra
If you have learned Chakra, you have a rare ability in RPGs that lets you heal MP for free. Have a character dedicated to spamming frog and have another character who can spam Chakra for infinite MP. I recommend two separate units; One for frog and one for Chakra so you never miss a chance to use frog.

If you nail one unit with frog, any fight will turn around. If you nail two units with frog, the fight is over. It's not as cool as casting death, but Frogs' success rate is always 20% higher. Petrify is cool too; It provides slightly more range, but requires slightly more MP and is less useful.

Frog + Math Skills
If you want to talk about having spells that cost no MP, you'll want Math Skills. You can also increase the number of units you can target and render the range of the spell irrelevant. Math Skills come later and after much work though.


Buffs
The other strategies in Final Fantasy Tactics that work well are buffing your own units. Haste 1 or 2 is OK, but I want something more reliable and permanent.

Accumulate
This ability is underrated. You should have a dedicated powerhouse use this ability more than a couple times in a fight. Start a fight off by using it once or twice to take an early advantage. You will spend a few rounds of many fights moving but not doing anything. That's a perfect occasion to use this. You could also spend these rounds waiting in place, falling back, or regrouping and drawing the enemies out.

Cheer
The next most useful move is unique to Ramza and it's superb. Cheer improves speed by 1. Stack a single unit, such as your Healer or your DPS, with 3 of these to have more frequent turns and effectively have extra turns at intervals. You can use it to get the slowest party member to catch up or by giving everyone a slight boost, you'll guarantee that your party members will go before the enemies.

Speed Save, MA Save, PA Save
I accidentally discovered that Speed Save is the best way to passively break the game. The Speed/MA/PA saves fix any weaknesses in a unit. Now there are pros to taking hits.

The trick is to have low evasion and high brave. Characters with high evasion and shields and characters who frequent the back row will not get the advantages of these abilities. These reaction abilities are excellent for a front-line melee unit who wears medium armor and don't use shields like Squires, Monks, Thieves, and Ninjas. Units who do use shields can always just leave the shields at home.




General Abilities
Some general abilities to look for.

Samurai > Blade Grasp
This reaction ability is broken. According to its description, it's only supposed to be triggered when you're targeted by a melee weapon, but it is still triggered by bows, crossbows, and weapons thrown by the Throw skill. This went overlooked in the War of the Lions version. Basically, it turns your brave stat into your evasion for 99% of the physical attacks in this game (yes, there are exceptions like cat-kick, repeating fist, and dash).

This is sheer defense and your unit becomes invincible against everything but magic. I recommend at least one front-line unit knows this.

Archer > Concentrate
This is one of the best support skills. All success rates improve or go up to 100.

Mediator > Equip Gun
If you're going to have anyone in the back, such as a magic class, give them a gun. Guns have a range of 8 and according to the Final Fantasy Tactics Battle Mechanics Guide, the magic guns bypass evasion.


Mediator > Invite
You turn an enemy into an ally. This skill is crazy good except for its success rate of 20%~30%. An enemy will become a guest character and there is the option to recruit them when the fight ends. This is equal to casting a version of confuse that doesn't wear off and stealing all their equipment in one turn.


Mediator > Threaten or Solution
A very high success rate of dropping an enemy's Brave stat by 20 or Faith stat by 20 each time you use it. Low brave means less reactions. Dropping the faith stat is reliable way to cripple a magic class. If you drop their brave to 10 or less, they transform into a chicken which effectively makes the useless. You can also reduce your own units Faith which means their magic will suck, their friends magic when used on them will suck, but enemy magic used against them will suck too.

Note: These abilities permanently reduce brave and faith stats by 4. Some strats involve using these abilities to effectively make magic useless, and low brave means the move-find ability has a higher chance of working. You can build faith and brave back up with Preach and Praise (talk skills), Cheer Up (Ramza only), and Brave Up/Faith Up reaction abilities.

Math Skills
Magic sucks in this game. You have almost no MP. A wizard can reliably nail one, maybe two guys per fight before they're spent; then they're useless. If you're prepared to GRIND LIKE A BASTARD however, you can have 1 unit who has MOST of the games' magic in one list and can use it without MP. Math Skills can be tricky to use, but this skill is OP.


Ninja > Throw > Whatever
Throwing shit is actually not the most effective way to deal damage, but the range of Throw is equal to your Move speed, so if you have a move speed of 6, 7, or 8, then you'll be able to hit anyone from any part of the map and get the hell away. The damage of throw is based on your Speed stat and the Items' Attack stat. I usually just learn to throws Shurikens and Balls. The elemental balls are useful when you need melee fighters to do elemental damage.

Ninja > Dual Wield
This is definitely cool, but not constantly useful.

Monk > Chakra, Revive, Stigma
Punch Arts has some skills that are like very handy alternative white magic that melee characters can use. Chakra restores HP and MP of the user and up to 4 units. Stigma Magic has the same range and removes most status conditions, and Revive can bring a unit back from KO. These skills are more effective with high PA. Note: The Martial Arts support ability increases the effects of these abilities even if the user is not barehanded.


Monk > Martial Arts + Ninja
If you don't know this rule, than you're not a real Final Fantasy fan. I'm serious. Hang your head and weep for the loss of your status as a fan if you don't know punches do more damage than weapons in Final Fantasy.  If you give a unit Martial Arts, they will basically do as much damage as a unit that is equipped with the best weapon available. Talk about saving money.

Now, if you give a ninja Martial Arts, you basically have Two Punch Man. This is the most lethal melee combination for generic units. Combine that with Accumulate or Speed/PA Save and you have the Square Soft version of Goku.


Thief  > Gil Taking or Mediator > Negotiate
If you don't want to grind money, skip this. The amount of Gil you steal is equal to Level * Speed. Here's the scenario: One enemy left is a Frog. Ramza is spamming Cheer on your designated thief who is fast enough to have 2 and 3 turns per round taking 300+ gil each turn. Hashtag not even five minutes.

Skills to Avoid
Archers
Archers are really fucking cool in this game, but there are better ways to do damage or fight from range. I really want to like Charge, but there's better ways to do damage.

Geomancy
I always wanted to use geomancy, but there's more effective ways to do damage. Geomancy is for crowd control, and in Final Fantasy Tactics, that means you can target 2 units at once after they set themselves up for it by attacking one of your units together. Geomancy relies on both MA and PA, and who has that? The chances of the status effect they produce are so low, that they're not the point of the skills but a benefit you see sometimes. I really want to like geomancy, but it's not up to par.

Geomancer > Attack Up
I like the idea of this ability but I don't know quite how it works. I haven't noticed any significant benefit and I think we can do better. If you give it to Agrias, it will help her, but she's still weaker than Orlandu.

Monk > Counter & Hamedo
The counter skills is useful if you want to do attacks that don't get you EXP or JP. I have gotten by without ever using this. It's probably good, but I like to have control over whether or not I retaliate and I usually don't want my characters counter attacking in this game. Hamedo is like Counter but you avoid taking the hit and counter attack. You also attack the enemy to their face, in other words, they get to use their full evasion. For defense, Blade Grasp is still better than Hamedo. I would take Blade Grasp over Counter or Hamedo any day!

Samurai
Samurai are interesting because their Draw Out skill is MA based, so you can have a sort of magic tank instead of a glass cannon. The problem is that Samurai swords, which can break, just aren't too readily available. You don't see any good ones until chapter 3 and they're expensive as a motherfucker. The best abilities are dependent on swords you only see one of.

Samurai > Two Hands 
This is a cool idea, but it only works for the attack command.

Summoners
It's like a wizard that is extra specialized. You're even more of a glass cannon. One or two good spells per fight and you're done. You also want to wait for enemies to be set up. I think this class has nothing of use.


Dancers, Bards, Mimics
These classes seem cool, but I can't see a casual player discovering a mime much less figuring out how to use it. Bards and dancers just don't contribute as much as fast as and as reliably as other units. Unlock them for the abilities you want but don't use them. Crippling stats with a dancer is more effective than boosting stats with a bard. Why? Ticks of the clock. One tick, and your turn gauge fills up by your speed. If you reduce an enemy unit's speed by 1, that's the same as increasing an ally unit's speed by 2. Think about it.


Time Magic/Ying Yang Magic
As far as support magic goes, this is a maybe. Too middle of the road for me. These classes are comparable to Bards and Dancers.


Cloud
You know they put Cloud in here because Cloud is cool, and his look contrasts the rest of the game so much that when Cloud is in your party, it's almost like having a glimpse into what a good Star Ocean Tactics game would be like. There are two problems with Cloud. One, you get him very late in the game and he starts out with nothing. You just wouldn't and shouldn't bother making him competitive. Two, Cloud sucks in this game. Let me explain. There are two types of characters you can use, generic ones and special one. The special characters have a unique job like Holy Knight or Dark Knight and they're sometimes pretty fucking powerful. Special characters also have above average stats. Cloud is a special character, but his unique job is all flash. His above average stats are just slight. The only advantage to using Cloud is that he is a boy unit who can use the girl items.


My Strat
Ramza as a Squire because that's awesome. A male ninja with Break Skills. A female mediator with Math Skills (With Cure 3, Life 2, Esuna, Holy, Haste, and Frog) a Magic Gun so she has something to do when she's not spamming the forces of life and death. After that, anything will do. I like the idea of using only 3 or 4 characters. A knight dual wielding knight swords or a punching ninja are good choices. I think of character number four as a utility character to round out the party, provide more of what I want, or fill a role I need for a particular fight.

Final Fantasy VII Ultimate Weapons are Bullshit

    The ultimate weapons in past Final Fantasy games were pretty simple. Equip for a massive boost in damage. Sometimes you did more damage to some enemy types or you got some bonus stat points. In Final Fantasy 6 they got a little creative. The ultimate weapons were a bit hard to find. The only one you got for sure was the Atma Weapon, the predecessor to the Ultima Weapon. It started a trend that lives on in Final Fantasy to this day: weapons that don't work.
    This was something I didn't understand when I got some final weapons in FF7 as a kid. Why am I doing only 500 damage at level 70 with the Ultima Weapon? I guess the enemies are getting really tough! In actuality, there was a unique damage formula built in to each ultimate weapon. In the case of Cloud and Cait Siths' weapon, the amount of damage you could do was proportionate to what percentage of HP you were at. At full health you did regular damage, and if you had less HP, you were doing less damage, down to almost nothing if you were near death. Cramping my fucking style, there, Ultima Weapon.
    For Red XIII and Cid, your damage was proportionate to your percentage of MP, making them crappy if you were planning on using them as dual melee wizard characters. Tifa was also crippled as a melee character: Her damage was proportionate to the percentage of her Limit Guage. Her damage would be all over the place. Barret's damage depended on how much AP his materia had, meaning he sucks without materia that might affect his stats. Vincent was the worst. Just make him your wizard and give him Flash. Don't even ask. Just don't even ask. Score 10,000 kills. Nope. Fuck no. You fucking fuck.
    This is why I use Yuffie. Her final weapon, the Conformer, is the best. Besides having the long range benefit, the unique formula for her damage was that it used the level of her enemy as a multiplier. All weapons used the level of the user as a multiplier for damage, but Yuffie's Conformer conformed to her enemies level instead. That was the gimmick. It's the most reliable and most consistent. This is also the only weapon in the game to use a regular damage formula when using the Morph command.
    The other reason why the final weapons suck in FF7, no AP growth. I guess the designers didn't want me using these weapons except for boss battles. With a crippling feature like that, you will almost never use these weapons outside of boss battles. You need to get AP. You WANT to get AP. Using final weapons is a waste of AP.

Here's how you solve the problem:

• Use Yuffie for melee. Farm Power Sources (very easy to do).
• Cloud is a wizard now. Deal with it.
• Cait Sith is a wizard. You probably didn't use him anyway.
• Red XIII and Cid are either melee fighters or wizards, not both. Cid is good at melee and bad at magic so whateves, but Red XIII had potential to be both. I had a childhood friend who used them both, go figure.
• Get used to knowing that you're wasting some of your best materia on Barret that might mess with his attack, vitality, and HP stats.
• Vincent is wasted as a wizard since his specialty is transforming into a 2 trick berserk monster, so build him around his limits breaks.
• Give Tifa a mastered cover Materia and stack up to 8 counter materias on her. Never use her limit breaks. Have her defend every turn. Or giver her the Fury Ring so she's always in berserk.
• Aeris is dead.

 Ultimate weapons? More like kooky pieces of bullshit.

How to Cope with Final Fantasy Tactics: War of The Lions

I had to play Final Fantasy Tactics, and the only way just happens to be the PSP version now available on Android. I don't care about the new stuff. To me, the PSX version was more than fine. The Ye olde English is actually not charming and it's not a turn on. I might even consider it a disadvantage for this game, because no one can understand the way these motherfuckers talk now. I'm also mostly indifferent to the voice over animated cut scenes. Bah. All that aside, it's pretty much the same game except the fucking JP requirements for everything can go to hell and die.

To unlock anything in the original version, you just needed to get your job level to 2, 3, or 4. "When In doubt, just get to level 4," that was my rule of thumb when I couldn't remember what the job requirements were. The exception was the Mime class. In the PSP version, you have to get some jobs to level 5 or 6, and the JP requirements are tripled. To get to level 4 in the original, you needed to reach 550 JP. To get to level four in the PSP version, you need 1600 JP. Get fucked. That just makes the game more tedious and less satisfying. This was most likely an idea to better balance the game, however, if you want to use the word broken, the original game was broken in good ways. I think this will take away some of the replay value for me. Way to go, Square Enicks. I hope a radioactive squirrel bites your nuts.

Hope to Cope:
Here are some tips to grind JP.
 
1. Learn the Toad spell, learn Speed and Power Break, learn Chakra.
Kill off all but one enemy and turn it into a toad, then Speed/Power Break the bastard to 1s. Now, attack and heal the frog, or your party members over and over. You can Also Power Break your own guys so they don't accidentally kill anything. Chakra is glorious because it restores HP AND MP for up to 5 units, for FREE! If you have an Arithmetician/Calculator, a class worth getting for one character, this can be easier.

1b. Just learn Focus/Accumulate from the squire Job and spam it. Buffs are OP in this game anyway.

2. Add Tailwind/Yell
The above, but also add Tailwind/Yell to make everyone the same speed or to just be even faster than your toad punching bag. You can make one character super fast if you really just want that one character to grind JP.

3. Add Stone
If you stone characters who won't be doing anything, you don't have to worry about their turns slowing you down.

4. Add Berserk
Turn off all the battle messages in the options menu and now all your characters can be berserk toads automatically attacking a crippled enemy toad for 1 damage ad nauseam without any player input.

5. Dance/Sing
I hear dancing or singing using the fastest song/dance paired with Short Charge learned from Time Mages is actually the fastest way to grind JP and that you can add Move JP Up to get even more JP, but I don't want to be bothered to unlock these fucking jobs in this version. You can dance/sing 2-3 times per round, but you have to do most of the grinding this game requires to unlock this job.

How to Beat Final Fantasy 5 EZ (The one with the Monks and Ninjas)!

     Final Fantasy 5 is the least intuitive RPG ever. It's a game built around fruitlessly and inconsequentially customizing the four most forgettable characters in Final Fantasy history by using a useless ass job system that magically becomes a very broken ass job system on the second to last screen. You have no defense stat, meaning your ability to take hits is completely dependent on your armor. This means that you will always take the amount of damage as carefully intended by the programmers even if you're properly equipped. No matter how much you excel at the game, your defensive capability is locked in. It's also frustrating and difficult for newbies. It's probably the least popular FF and that's why it was passed over for an international version the first time around. Wanna know how to beat it?

• First off, don't get carried away buying equipment until you unlock your first set of jobs
• Once you unlock the first set of jobs, make everyone a monk. Monks are dirt cheap and very effective fighters because the damage formulas for weapons are bullshit.
• Alternate some characters as white mages to improve their white magic skill as new white magic becomes available. This becomes insanely easy once you earn the barehanded fighting ability from the monk job. You want everyone to be able to double as a healer. Do this for the rest of the game until you earn the highest level of white magic.
• When the ninja job becomes available, make two characters ninjas. You will commit the other two to mastering the monk job. 
• When your monks master their jobs, make them ninjas. Then, change your other ninjas into monks until they master their monk job and then make them ninjas again. This should take you till the end of the game.
• Having 4 ninjas is overkill and super expensive. This way, we also get to take advantage of the monks for being dirt cheap to equip.
•  After mastering the ninja jobs and the monk jobs, make your characters their starter class. Equip all the best stuff and go into the last dungeon. clear it. In the second to last room, you can encounter enemies called movers who drop ~200ABP/battle. Earn all the other abilities and master all the other jobs you like. Return to the world map and complete the side-quests. Come back and finish the game.

* NOTE: Some boss battles require alternate strategies. For instance, the fire boss you fight at the end of the steam ship is weak against Ice 2 and nothing else so make everyone a black mage for one battle only and spam it.

     That's it. Monks and Ninjas. Forget everything you know about RPGs, fantasy games, adventures, etc. This is actually the ideal way to get through this RPG. You can only make it easier if you grind a few other abilities on the side if you know what abilities you'll need in advanced. Every other job in the game is useless garbage.

Who is Still Playing Final Fantasy?

People who were fans of the series Final Fantasy when it started were playing Final Fantasy 4 and 6 (maybe 1). Then came FF7. It brought in many, many new fans to the franchise and to the RPG genre, but because it was so different, it also challenged many of the people who were already FF fans. FF 8 and 9 challenged almost everyone. After the abhorred 10, most of us jumped ship. In fact, most people turned off their PS2s at the same point in the game, or at least that's the impression I've been given. By 10, the mind behind the franchise, Hironobu Sakaguchi, was no longer serving in a creative capacity anyway.

If I wrote a play, it wouldn't be a Shakespear. If I made a painting it wouldn't be a di Vinci. If Hironobu Sakaguchi did not produce a game then it's not a Final Fantasy. It's not Final Fantasy anymore. The last one was 9. What was once a title for a series of stories has now become a brand name. The new games being marketed to us with the title Final Fantasy should be distinguished from the ones Hironobo made. Classic FF and New FF.

So who is still playing FF? I know that some people who are still playing FF are admittedly foolishly hoping that the next game will manage to recapture the old magic. Time to pull the cord.

Wrost RPG Class Ever!

I remember playing Final Fantasy 5 and having a pretty good time building my dream party. That game gave you a lot of room and a lot of options. Your characters are four blank slates that can be customized to fill any role. There were numerous classes with a wide variety of skills, strengths and weaknesses. The concept got much better in Final Fantasy Tactics. The only problem was just how much busywork was involved. I was probably 10 hours into the game when it threw one of the cheapest RPG tricks at me: A mandatory boss with only one strategy!

Bullshit!I'mnotpreparedforthat!NowIhavetogogrindABPforanhour!Fuckme!

The game forced me to use the one job I chose to neglect: The Sorcerer class. This class is creative but entirely useless so they force you to use it this once and only once! It's a combination Knight and Black Mage class. It can't use magic and it can't wear heavy armor. What it does is it fortifies it's equipped weapon with black magic spells such as Fire, Fire 2, Fire 3, Poison, etc. which changes the effect of your normal attack.

Pretty neat, but that means you don't actually do anything for a whole round. The enemies stick around longer and you take more damage. That's the cost of this class's strength. The idea is you'll always be able to exploit an enemy's weakness for a lot less MP than a Black Mage. It's not worthwhile for random encounters, just bosses. Why? Because if you're going to roll up a fighter, you are much better off using the Bare Hands ability you easily learn from the Monk class until you collect the legendary weapons. You can clear just about any typical fight in 1 round, maybe 2, making MagicSword the slower, weaker strategy.

But it is a very interesting idea. I like it. If only they designed the game to better suit it. You'll notice in some FF games, the characters have built in classes and can't be customized, like 4,6, and 9. There was never a sorcerer class in any of those games and it's not an iconic class of FF. Some improvement I would suggest is an  the ability to cast spells on your sword at the start of battle before actually taking a turn, like having initiative. Or, what if an alternate to casting spells on your sword for a long duration, you could just make one-time attacks with a spell in place. How about support abilities to make spell casting quicker or the ability to cast a spell without using a turn? An alternate could be doing a normal attack, then the spell is casted? How about an advanced ability to stack spells on your sword? How come the Sorcerer can't use black magic conventionally anyway?

How about designing a game around the class? Nah, whatever. I haven't played any more FF games after 10, but it's worth noting that the Sorcerer class didn't make it into another FF game.

Disney Owns Star Wars?!

oh god

kingdom hearts will have star wars stuff now

star wars and final fantasy

luke skywalker and cloud strife

dude

i don't know if that's stupid or awesome

 

except Square Enix sucks.

A Review of FFIX

I want to level with you, there are aspects of ffix that are really positive, but there are also aspects of the game which are not, such as the main villains' pants, but I feel the pluses grossly outweigh the negatives and this is a game worth trying.

I think everyone's primary concern with this one is the art style. Most gamers are immediately deterred by the art, but I think you'll find that it won't be an issue for long. While the box art looks pretty unattractive, the game itself looks pretty sweet. There's a subtle cartoon-y aesthetic to the whole game; the settings, the characters, the monsters, and I think you'll find that it makes the fact that this game is a fantasy really stand out. The settings themselves are detailed and creative, and they're very beautiful from an artists' perspective.

The music in this game is also great. It complements the look and feel of this game. I can't say it's stellar, but your definitely getting good music. There are many times when you just become aware of the music's role, even while dungeon crawling.

The second problem for most people who play this game is the main character, Zidane. I don't remember how, but I got over his immature personality real early and without even realizing it. I think this is because the story puts a lot of obstacles in his way right at the beginning, giving his chivalrous nature real showcase. Also remember that characters change over time, especially on a hero's journey, so that initial immaturity of his is short-lived, and by disc three I begin wondering when he got so cool.

FFIX has a really good story based on a basic fantasy premises that takes you back to the roots of the FF series. There's a great kingdom called Alexandria, and recently the queen has become inexplicably cruel and wicked, so her brother arranges for his niece, princess Garnet, to be spirited away by some meretricious thieves in a spectacular fashion. The kidnapping gets complicated, and the escape is messy. Their fabulous mobile-theater/airship crashes in an Evil Forest where the princess is stolen from the wreckage by monsters. Out of responsibility and young idealism, mostly, Zidane chooses to rescue the helpless princess over staying by his family, and he protects her on a long dangerous journey with a dysfunctional party where they must brave the wilderness while being pursued by assassins.

Later on, a mysterious, otherworldly puppeteer with a god complex manipulates the world powers into a short and very one-sided war that leaves all sides miserably torn apart, and our heroes must hunt him down and stop him from completely perverting the planet. Unlike later games in the FF series, FFIX brings back something that was lost somewhere – it's that feeling you used to get when you played a good rpg that you were watching a play. These characters are alive on screen. They emote well and each of them have personalities that come from real human experience. They all grow and overcome their problems over the course of their adventure. I can't remember the last game I played where I knew that the characters had a bond of friendship.

Gameplay is good. Some recent RPG innovations are gone and some more traditional RPG elements are back. The characters have built in classes with specialized equipment and skills. I'm very fond of the way you build up your characters. Your characters learn abilities and magic from armor and weapons. Each piece of equipment in the game has at least one, but usually more, abilities, which your characters will slowly master as you fight. Many of these abilities don't matter in the long run; If you just hold on to your old equipment you can utilized specific abilities when you need them, and there's little need for any monotonous grinding.

Something else about the gameplay I'm really excited by is the stealing. Because your main character is a thief, Square developed an RPG full of monsters with loads of goodies to steal. There's a problem though, this being that you can be overwhelmed by the amount of things there are to steal. In my case, this problem is actually an hindrance. Stealing from bosses can require a lot of patience. Some of them have such attractive goodies that I'll have my party tolerate rounds and rounds of sometimes hardcore punishment because some steal items have such a low success rate. I think its a really neat idea, but it's execution actually takes away from the game.

Don't get upset, but FFIX has two mini-games. One of them is a bullshit card game you can almost completely get away with overlooking, but the other one is actually pretty fun and very rewarding: It's called “Choco-Hot'n'Cold” I think. It's basically a scavenger hunt riding a chocobo, but on a global scale. Cool, right? Who can say no to a scavenger hunt, especially one that rewards you with a full set of ancient samurai armor and the lance they used to kill jesus? The choco-Hot'n'Cold mini-game is actually the only side quest in FFIX, and there isn't much content in this game to distract you from the main story.

There's also an item creation system, and it's very simple. There are special shops in the world called Synthesis Shops, run by craftsman who can take your old, junky equipment and forge it into unique and powerful swords and armor. Finally, some use for my old crap. I found that this is actually a fun way to shop.

The only real problem I have with the gameplay is the ATB. I can't help but feel that the monsters are getting in more turns than me. This is especially obvious if you use the spell Haste to make your characters faster. Haste is definitely redundant. You'll find that all it does is make it so your characters turns come up sooner, and doesn't increase the number of turns they get over time.

Like I said earlier, this game is worth trying. If you nit-pick, you'll miss out. You can nit-pick anything. Being overly critical and approaching everything with a negative slant is real trendy these days. You should always remember that a video game is a piece of art, and also to try to look at art with an open mind. Start with the positives. Try to find something you can appreciate about the art first. It's natural that sometimes, we just hate particular art. Just accept FFIX for all that it is and see if you enjoy the ride.