Everything Wrong with Final Fantasy IX

[NC1234567]

Here is my review commentary that takes the script of IX and comments on it and picks apart all it’s problems. It’s pretty detailed and covers the whole game.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14012757/1/Everything-Wrong-with-Final-Fantasy-IX

 

[Ite]

Who hurt you?

 

[Deleted member 13557]

 

[NC1234567]

Who hurt you?

Garnet did, for being an idiot, and Beatrix, for being a poorly written character and unbeatable Mary Sue.

 

[NC1234567]

View attachment 13233

Please, no trolling.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Are you for real?

Beatrix... is a Mary Sue because she's "unbeatable?" Nevermind that term is dated and dumb, but what in the world makes you believe FFIX even revolves around her? Like, it doesn't even fit it's own poor framed and defined definition.

Not even gonna touch the Garnet hate. Calling a young teen dumb because she's traumatized and was kidnapped as a kid is kinda weird.

 

[NC1234567]

Are you for real?

Beatrix... is a Mary Sue because she's "unbeatable?" Nevermind that term is dated and dumb, but what in the world makes you believe FFIX even revolves around her? Like, it doesn't even fit it's own poor framed and defined definition.

Not even gonna touch the Garnet hate. Calling a young teen dumb because she's traumatized and was kidnapped as a kid is kinda weird.

No it’s because Beatrix happily carried out orders to genocide an entire race of people, took pleasure in their suffering, happily pursued the subjugation of her friends, and is basically an evil psycho-bitch the entire way through until Zidane goes BUT THE PRINCESS!!!1!1! and she immediately goes "ohhhh, riiight, the princess... haha, whoops! my bad guys" and becomes a good guy, And the fact that she doesn't at least wonder why her queen, who was perfectly peaceful and rational up until a short time after the death of her husband, suddenly starts acting like a warmongering lunatic and ordering genocides left and right, doesn't speak well to Beatrix as an individual. Nor does it help that she gets away with killing hundreds of Freya's kind without even at least apologizing for it until too little too late.

As for Garnet:
1) Runs away from home because she's afraid her mother is trying to kill her and take over the world



2) Risks the lives of many, many people and causes numerous deaths along her flight from the castle (yes, I count all those Black Mages on the ship as deaths)



3) Upon arrival in Lindblum suddenly proclaims that she refuses to believe her mother is evil and trying to take over the world, despite proof of her unprovoked attack on Burmecia, the slaughter of Black Mages, and the attempts to kill the kidnappers



4) Runs all the way home because apparently she wanted to just talk to her mom and DRUGS AND ABANDONS ZIDANE: the guy who loved her



5) Through her stupidity, she gets captured and tortured. Millions of people die from the results of her entirely preventable course of action because she basically handed over her Eidolons to her mother on a silver platter, and just to rub salt in the wound, she never gets called and chewed out on any of this, especially not by Zidane who should very rightfully be furious and upset with her, after all that he did for her, only for her to blow him off.

 

[Ite]

Look, I’m not gonna read all 29 Chapters of that, but I did read Chapter 1 and Chapter 29, which I think was rather gracious of me, considering that FF9 is my favorite all time video game. In Chapter 29, you fully admit that your ideas were laughed out of TVTropes forums. I think that rather than digging your heels in and approaching a different community (that is by and large fond of FF9) with the same middle-school-bully level jabs and “plot holes” that amount to poor reading comprehension on your part, you might consider caring a little less about a 22-year-old video game that you didn’t like.

And no, this isn’t trolling, I’m sincerely telling you that your bombastic and obtusely long op-ed is bad. Cringey at best, irrelevant certainly, and mean spirited as a matter of course. Hiding behind the “style” of CinemaSins is a poor pretence for what amounts to a bunch of hateful wall spaghetti. It will not make you any friends.

This, of course, is where I ought to devolve into my “I used to also be a self-centered amateur essayist who liked to gatekeep literature clubs and try to convert everyone to my taste, and now I am forced to wander the earth bearing this chain which I forged link by link, it is not too late for you” speech, but I think I’ll just check out.

 

[NC1234567]

Look, I’m not gonna read all 29 Chapters of that, but I did read Chapter 1 and Chapter 29, which I think was rather gracious of me, considering that FF9 is my favorite all time video game. In Chapter 29, you fully admit that your ideas were laughed out of TVTropes forums. I think that rather than digging your heels in and approaching a different community (that is by and large fond of FF9) with the same middle-school-bully level jabs and “plot holes” that amount to poor reading comprehension on your part, you might consider caring a little less about a 22-year-old video game that you didn’t like.

And no, this isn’t trolling, I’m sincerely telling you that your bombastic and obtusely long op-ed is bad. Cringey at best, irrelevant certainly, and mean spirited as a matter of course. Hiding behind the “style” of CinemaSins is a poor pretence for what amounts to a bunch of hateful wall spaghetti. It will not make you any friends.

This, of course, is where I ought to devolve into my “I used to also be a self-centered amateur essayist who liked to gatekeep literature clubs and try to convert everyone to my taste, and now I am forced to wander the earth bearing this chain which I forged link by link, it is not too late for you” speech, but I think I’ll just check out.

Okay “thanks” for your long winded strawman speech, but TV Tropes is not a good website, it’s no secret, they will ban you for most ridiculous reasons and the mods are control freaks, you can see lots of people online talking about how terrible it has become, like this person: https://www.deviantart.com/gairon/status-update/18017382

You can skip to chapter 4: Disk 1 Lindblum because that is when my real criticism starts.

 

[looneymoon]

Ite is too nice tbh

 

[NC1234567]

Ite is too nice tbh

View attachment 13237

Ite certainly wasn’t nice with his second comment, considering he lashed out at me and called me a “hater” just because I criticized IX, even it’s constructive criticism and I want to discuss these things and help improve IX, especially if a Remake comes out, along with the upcoming cartoon.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Your opening salvo was to call Beatrix, a character who goes through a whole arc of her realizing the heinous actions she did on behalf of her kingdom and regretting it, a "Mary Sue"... A vitriolic and gamergate-esque insult, while calling a teenage girl who was kidnapped and desperate for love and to save her monster of a mother an idiot.

Sorry, but calling that "constructive criticism" is at best, hilariously disengenous.

You were a 10 gallon drum of haterade right from the jump

 

[looneymoon]

I for one love being a hater

Honestly, without really acknowledging the stuff youve said on the merit of your ideas, your presentation just... does not spark any sort of joy. Maybe try being like, funnier about it or something idk.

but then maybe linking to an almost 200k word essay about a JRPG from the early aughts, posted on fan fiction dot net in 2021, is some sort of high-concept shitposting that is going way over my head. In which case, I apologize for just not getting it.

 

[NC1234567]

Your opening salvo was to call Beatrix, a character who goes through a whole arc of her realizing the heinous actions she did on behalf of her kingdom and regretting it, a "Mary Sue"... A vitriolic and gamergate-esque insult, while calling a teenage girl who was kidnapped and desperate for love and to save her monster of a mother an idiot.

Sorry, but calling that "constructive criticism" is at best, hilariously disengenous.

You were a 10 gallon drum of haterade right from the jump

Beatrix’s arc is poorly written, since you didn’t bother to read the chapters where I criticize her (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14012757/6/Everything-Wrong-with-Final-Fantasy-IX, https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14012757/8/Everything-Wrong-with-Final-Fantasy-IX and https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14012757/9/Everything-Wrong-with-Final-Fantasy-IX) which I will be quoting in a minute, Beatrix is a Mary Sue, more specifically a God Mode Sue, you are never allowed to beat her, Beatrix is the most nonsensical unwinnable boss fight I've ever seen in a JRPG. She completely defies any logic that unwinnable bossfights are supposed to serve. I'm supposed to feel shame for losing to her that inspires me to grow stronger and beat her in a later encounter. Not for her to wreck my shit in rapid succession three times in a row then say "I'm a good guy now". It doesn't work that way. That just leaves the player with blue balls and a pointless chip on their shoulder. It’s especially irritating when Zidane was in all those fights, the super soldier that is supposed to be stronger than Kuja yet can’t beat this one normal human paladin, yeah that makes sense.

Here are the quotes directly from the chapters where I criticize Beatrix: “Yeah Beatrix is just casually talking about attacking a tree full of innocent people, I'd like to remind you all that the game tries to make her out to be "conflicted" later.”

“This is our "sympathetic character" folks, the laughter really "helps".

Also, do Beatrix and Brahne really not recognize the tailed boy who "kidnapped" Garnet? He was performing for them on stage, was clearly in full view holding on to Garnet on the stage in the FMV of Brahne firing upon the Prima Vista, and Zorn and Thorn must have no doubt reported who was running away with Garnet to the Queen when they were chasing them with the Black Waltzes.

This is what I meant regarding Beatrix back in chapter 1, she doesn't seem to be concerned for Garnet here, she's more interested in being a warmongering *word that means female dog*, she doesn't ask for Garnet's whereabouts when she sees Zidane, nor does Zidane try to reason with her by saying what Garnet would think of Beatrix if she saw her right now, for ANY of the fights actually.”

“You aren't going to finish off the people you just fought? I'm surprised that the queen isn't immediately ordering Zidane's execution or grilling him for information on Garnet's whereabouts.

And speaking of which, as I pointed out in chapter 4, Garnet said back in Lindblum that she tried to tell everyone in Alexandria Castle that her mother was going nuts and nobody believed her, which apparently includes Beatrix, but what is happening here in Burmecia should be direct proof to Beatrix that Garnet was right, yet she doesn't consider Garnet's feelings in any of this. What makes this worse is that neither Garnet nor Steiner are around to witness Beatrix committing these atrocities.”

Beatrix "Ha! They fell for it."

“That's right, Beatrix is LAUGHING as she is about to commit war crimes on the rat people, keep in mind that immediately after Cleyra, the game will suddenly try to portray her as "sympathetic and conflicted" and apparently "didn't want any of this", while scenes like this one clearly say otherwise.”


Beatrix "Hmph! Pathetic rodents!" "You fail to grasp the true power of the jewel!"

“Beatrix is being a condescending bitch to rat people, really sympathetic character right here. Also how does she know the true power of the jewel? Did Brahne tell her, and why would she? Beatrix never speaks of this later.”

“Again, the writers aren't even trying to make her conflicted and hesitant, yet they will try to pull the bullshit with Beatrix's monologue on the Red Rose airship next chapter (and pretty much Beatrix in general next chapter), and I'm going to really enjoy ripping that apart.”


“Speaking of that, I refer everyone to what I said back in Burmecia, why didn't Beatrix finish them off when she had the chance? Why didn't the queen immediately order their executions? And don't give me that "Beatrix truly didn't want any of this" nonsense, Beatrix has been blatantly portrayed as a heartless warmongering monster up to this point, as I've been repeatedly pointing out, She didn't spare the party out of some goodness of her heart, she did it because its a JRPG and it has to have unwinnable battles where the boss doesn't bother to finish you off...for reasons.”


Beatrix "That was ridiculous..."

“And here we go with what I've referring to regarding Beatrix these past few chapters.

You can not do this Sakaguchi, you cannot have a character, who prior to this point, has been portrayed as nothing but a cold heartless warmonger responsible for the deaths of many innocents with no hesitation in her actions and absolutely ZERO implications saying otherwise (she even LAUGHED a few times, as I have pointed out), just suddenly be conflicted and remorseful right out of nowhere.

This whole scene is a complete asspull, and even then, she seems less anguished over the atrocities themselves, and more that she is annoyed that it wasn't her herself doing them, as we will see in the next line.”

Beatrix "My troops alone would've been more than enough to take Cleyra." "Why does the queen insist on using black mages and eidolons?" "I didn't train all these years so I could take a backseat to anyone..."

“See? She seems more "concerned" over her soldiers and herself not doing the killings rather than the whole thing even happening to begin with, if this is the writers attempts at making her "sympathetic", they failed hard. She isn't feeling remorse, she's mad she couldn't be the one to take Cleyra herself.

Also she didn't even raise any objections to the Black Mages back then in Burmecia when she was in the palace with Kuja and Brahne when she could have said so, at any point.”

“The fact that she doesn't at least wonder why her queen, who was perfectly peaceful and rational up until a short time after the death of her husband, suddenly starts acting like a warmongering lunatic and ordering genocides left and right, until too little, too late, doesn't speak well to Beatrix as an individual, especially since Garnet tried to talk to her about it but Beatrix wouldn't listen. She is just suddenly morally conflicted.”


Beatrix "Welcome back, Steiner." "Where have you been all this time?" "Don't tell me you have been enjoying the company of these scoundrels."

“…and Beatrix has gone right back to being a bitch, completely forgetting everything she said on the Red Rose airship and that whole "Queen wants to execute her daughter" bit. It's bad enough that her moral conflict comes right out of nowhere, but now she is flip-flopping back and forth between it like schizophrenia.”

Beatrix "I'll kill all enemies of Alexandria!" "Never step into this land again." "Your pathetic powers are useless against me."

“Not exactly getting any sympathy from me regarding Beatrix, the writers aren't even trying.”

 

[NC1234567]

Your opening salvo was to call Beatrix, a character who goes through a whole arc of her realizing the heinous actions she did on behalf of her kingdom and regretting it, a "Mary Sue"... A vitriolic and gamergate-esque insult, while calling a teenage girl who was kidnapped and desperate for love and to save her monster of a mother an idiot.

Sorry, but calling that "constructive criticism" is at best, hilariously disengenous.

You were a 10 gallon drum of haterade right from the jump

I for one love being a hater

Honestly, without really acknowledging the stuff youve said on the merit of your ideas, your presentation just... does not spark any sort of joy. Maybe try being like, funnier about it or something idk.

but then maybe linking to an almost 200k word essay about a JRPG from the early aughts, posted on fan fiction dot net in 2021, is some sort of high-concept shitposting that is going way over my head. In which case, I apologize for just not getting it.

Part II:

My point is, her heelface turn comes out of nowhere. It isn't properly set up beforehand. She's just suddenly morally conflicted. That's why I don't like her. I understand what they were going for, but they didn't do it well.

As for Garnet: She ran away from home because she knew her mother was going crazy. It's not such a sudden about-face, Garnet already knew this was going on and was frightened enough that she ran away from home rather than actually talk to her mother (something you'd assume someone that had an otherwise perfect relationship with their mother would do first). Had all of the stuff we'd just witnessed not happened, and Garnet had come to Lindblum without ever fearing her mother or seeing evidence of her mother's atrocities, then the "My mother isn't crazy!" reaction would make sense. If her mother was so darn pleasant that Garnet could have just talked her out of it, why run away from home in the first place? How much more evidence did she need, combined with what she'd already known about her mom that drove her out of the castle in the first place?

She quite literally drugs and abandons Zidane, the man who loved her (which really ruins the love story a lot) and goes back and hands her entire selection of eidolons to her mother after all the hard work Zidane and Tantalus did to get her ass out of the kingdom. Rendering the whole kidnapping and beginning parts of the game COMPLETELY POINTLESS. In the end Garnet is the one responsible for giving her mother magic nuclear weaponry that annihilated Cleyra, seriously hurt Lindblum and then Alexandria itself killing god knows how many people.

Also, to make things worse nobody ever calls her out on the mistakes she made or what the cost actually was. If I were Zidane, I would have been really upset with her after losing a close friend in the attempt to rescue her and be by her side only for her to decide to blow me off and make the whole thing meaningless.

Rinoa would have been called out on it and forced to learn. Garnet wasn't. That's why I cut Rinoa some slack - at least the characters treated her the way I would have. The FFVIII game and I were on the same wavelength.

And as I’ve said above, the love story of Zidane and Garnet is so poorly done and focused on, which I talk about a lot in the fic.

As for looneymoon’s comment, I do make some jokes in the fic, maybe try to read the whole thing before making judgments like what others are doing here? It’s not shitposting.

 

[Ghost X]

I'm not reading what appears to be a lot of writing from the work cited, as I simply don't have the time. I'm not here to critique the work referenced. I'm here to critique the arguing going on here in this thread.

People can actually not like FFIX, and are allowed to do so on this forum, and even do so perhaps not very well (hypothetically, of course ). One can be free to point this out too. I do not understand the necessity for the abrasiveness however. I wish for a more civil level of discussion. The eye rolling type responses are fine though .

I think a person can be critical of female characters without accusations of hate, @Makoeyes987 . I'd try to be more substantiative, if we wish to go down this line of argument. "Mary Sue" isn't solely used by hateful people. You might very well be on to something, but I'm not remotely seeing it in what has been cited so far. Given the seriousness of the accusations, I'd not be reaching for straws in doing so. I'm sure you would not appreciate it in return.

That's not to say there isn't some problematic language from what has been cited here so far, but of the form I'd argue is on the lower end of the scale (eg: "bitch", which I'm pretty sure lots of people use on TLS, though I avoid it myself), and nothing that particularly hints at a particularly raging level of bigotry. The worst I'd say is the "schizophrenic" comparison. I'd avoid that in future, @NC1234567.

 

[NC1234567]

I'm not reading what appears to be a lot of writing from the work cited, as I simply don't have the time. I'm not here to critique the work referenced. I'm here to critique the arguing going on here in this thread.

People can actually not like FFIX, and are allowed to do so on this forum, and even do so perhaps not very well (hypothetically, of course ). One can be free to point this out too. I do not understand the necessity for the abrasiveness however. I wish for a more civil level of discussion. The eye rolling type responses are fine though .

I think a person can be critical of female characters without accusations of hate, @Makoeyes987 . I'd try to be more substantiative, if we wish to go down this line of argument. "Mary Sue" isn't solely used by hateful people. You might very well be on to something, but I'm not remotely seeing it in what has been cited so far. Given the seriousness of the accusations, I'd not be reaching for straws in doing so. I'm sure you would not appreciate it in return.

That's not to say there isn't some problematic language from what has been cited here so far, but of the form I'd argue is on the lower end of the scale (eg: "bitch", which I'm pretty sure lots of people use on TLS, though I avoid it myself), and nothing that particularly hints at a particularly raging level of bigotry. The worst I'd say is the "schizophrenic" comparison. I'd avoid that in future, @NC1234567.

Uh, I’m just making points on how Beatrix is a poorly written character and how the writers failed at properly making her sympathetic, I‘m not being “bigoted”. Why, because I called a character a bitch for committing war crimes and having a bad attitude? Don’t make this Tumblr or Twitter, don’t take these words so personally, I used the term Mary Sue gender-neutrally, I have complained about several male characters in IX as well, particularly Steiner and Kuja, and Zidane later on as well.

 

[Leafonthebreeze]

Serious question: why have you decided to do this here? Yes, there's some discussion of FFIX here, but it's primarily a FFVII forum, with a pretty small group of people primarily here to chat about FFVII. Why did you think this would be a good place to post a really really long takedown of a game that isn't the focus of the forum? What did you think would happen?

 

[Lestat]

 

[Rankles]

What a fantastic game FFIX was, really need to replay that soon. Just a shame about the final boss…

 

[NC1234567]

Serious question: why have you decided to do this here? Yes, there's some discussion of FFIX here, but it's primarily a FFVII forum, with a pretty small group of people primarily here to chat about FFVII. Why did you think this would be a good place to post a really really long takedown of a game that isn't the focus of the forum? What did you think would happen?

Because it is one of the few forums that I am able to sign up on (the others like Eyes on Me and TFF have some sort of issue where I am not getting the confirmation email), and this is the general discussion, not the solely FFVII discussion threads. I have also posted this link elsewhere, I am just trying to draw more attention to it to make IX’s issues more noticeable.

 

[NC1234567]

What a fantastic game FFIX was, really need to replay that soon. Just a shame about the final boss…

“Fantastic” is a big stretch, there are bigger problems with the game besides the final boss, honestly Necron is overrated in being called IX‘s “biggest issue”.

 

[Leafonthebreeze]

You've said you want to draw attention to what you think are the issues ahead of the possible remake. Why are you doing this by posting on forums? Why are you even using fanfiction.net? Surely at the very least you'd get more traffic on AO3?

Upthread you link to a deviantart status update as well. I think you might be living in a version of the internet that hasn't existed since like 2007. Which would maybe explain why your criticisms sound about as outdated.

 

[Kai Schulen]

Upthread you link to a deviantart status update as well. I think you might be living in a version of the internet that hasn't existed since like 2007. Which would maybe explain why your criticisms sound about as outdated.

Hey fanfiction.net isn't as dead as you think, a lot of people freaked out and mourned the end of FF.net when it was down for maintenance and thought it was the end of an era, only to have it pop back up in perfect working order the next day. I still use it every day to look up YGO fics when I pick A03 clean of it's bones!!!

Aside from that. OP: I thought about reading your...."review" earnestly, so that I could give you honest feedback on your review, all 192k+ words of it.

But this almost bought me to a full stop:

"Not even going to explain what was up with that whole dragon head thing and attacking the others, huh?"

Why...did you feel the need to complain about this? Why is the opening battle (which is meant to ease new players into the battle system/story) a point of contention for you? Have you not heard of the term "in media res" before? Have you not played other Final Fantasy games that have started off with a fight, like say....Final Fantasy VII, which has Cloud backflipping off the train in the coolest way possible and killing two guards in the first 3 minutes of the game with no one explaining anything? Choosing to criticize how a story starts is like criticizing how people greet each other -- some people like to wave hello, some like to fist bump, others like to shake hands, the extra touchy feely type of person would like to hug as a greeting while there are people who prefer to just nod their heads as a hello.

Why is this such a noteworthy flaw to you?

I tried to continue on, but this

"Where does Tantalus get such a reputation if they're freaking thieves?"

Made me quit reading and close the tab immediately. I'm absolutely flabbergasted that you would chose to whine about this because

Thieves

don't make it a point to tell the world

that

they

are

thieves.

Are you this...naive to think that being a thief is a 24/7 occupation that can be can be taught in college or something? You do know that it's possible for people to moonlight as a thief while using their career as a cover, right? You do understand that it's possible to be a gang of thieves but also a world famous acting troupe, right?

I'm not going to bother reading the rest of your "review". You say that this is supposed to be a work of criticism but I think you need to practice your critical thinking skills and learn what is worthy of criticism and what isn't. I'm not going to read 190k+ words of you not understanding how things work and complaining about how you don't understand.

 

[ForceStealer]

Someone rolls in on occasion attempting to troll the FF7 site by shitting on FF7, and everyone's like "move along, we're all in our 30s and don't care anymore."
Someone comes in to troll the FF7 site by trashing FF9 and