Final Fantasy 9 review

Final Fantasy 9 is my favorite Final Fantasy. It depends on taste but FF9 hits most of the right buttons for me. Why? Well:

Story and Characters
It's hard to talk about the story about this game. Not that it's bad, it that the game is more about the characters in the game. It's about the thief who wants to help anyone he can. It's about the  princess who just wants to help her kingdom and mother. It's about a little boy who wants to know what his purpose in life is. It's about a knight trying to fulfill his duties. It's about all these characters you meet, and I like all of them. I even like the comic relief who's mainly thinking about food.

Gameplay
It's a simple battle system. keep fighting tell enemies are dead. But what I like is that each party member is unique. Equip weapons and armor allows the party to learn different abilities and is different for each one. for example: a glove might have fire magic, but only Vivi can learn that. There are also equip-able abilities that can really turn some boss into jokes like one that protects you from poison or use a potion when hit.
The biggest flaw i the game is the trance system. While the idea isn't bad, the fact you can't decide when to use it can make them wasteful. like say a very weak enemy hits you and activates the trance, but then someone kills the foe, the trance will be wasted.
There are also a two mini games. one is a chocobo game where you dig for treasure in a minute, which is okay but can get annoying when you just want the special treasure and the card game, which I honestly don't like. That mainly because I really like the simple card game in FF8 and the one in 9 makes little sense to me.

Music and Presentation
I really like the art style of the game. The Character models are detailed and colorful and the backgrounds look like paintings. Even in this generation the graphics are still good.  The music is also good. While there some misses in the soundtrack, most of it is memorable and sometimes even awesome, especially the track 'You Are Not Alone'. That scene plus the song is awesome.

Conclusion
If I would I recommended an RPG for some to get into the genre, I'll pick FF9 for it's beautiful world and characters and the gameplay being simple enough to play, but can be hard if you don't know what you're doing.
9/10