Final Fantasy IX (09) (2000; PC, PS1, PS3, PS4, PSP, VITA, Switch, XBONE)

[Koby]

Final Fantasy IX is a 2000 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation. It is the ninth game in the main Final Fantasy series. The plot focuses on a war between nations in a medieval fantasy world called Gaia. Players follow a thief named Zidane Tribal who kidnaps princess Garnet Til Alexandros XVII as part of a ploy by the neighboring nation of Lindblum. He joins Garnet and a growing cast of characters on a quest to take down her mother, Queen Brahne of Alexandria, who started the war.

 

Game development occurred in parallel with Final Fantasy VIII. Envisioned by developers as a retrospective for the series, it departed from the futuristic settings of Final Fantasy VI, VII, and VIII by returning to the medieval style of the earlier games. Consequently, it draws heavy influence from the original Final Fantasy and features allusions to the rest of the series. The game introduced new features to the series despite this approach, such as "Active Time Event" cutscenes, "Mognet", and skill systems. Final Fantasy IX was the last game in the main series whose music was composed solely by Nobuo Uematsu.

 

Final Fantasy IX was released to critical acclaim and commercial success, selling more than 5.5 million copies on PlayStation by March 2016. It was re-released in 2010 as a PS1 Classic on the PlayStation Store—this version was compatible with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable; PlayStation Vita support arrived in 2012. In 2016 Square Enix released an enhanced port featuring minor gameplay and graphical enhancements, which would be released on several platforms. An animated series adaptation by Square Enix and Cyber Group Studios was announced in 2021.

 

 

We've had many discussions surrounding this game through the years but imagine my surprise when I tried searching for a general discussion thread of the game as a whole and came up empty. Guess back in the day we more focused on specific topics of the games and not one all-encompassing thread.

 

Honestly these days the best way to play this game is most definitely on PC with all the modding capabilities. Things like Memoria and Moguri really do a number on improving the visuals, fixing bugs, and adding quality of life features. There is also the upcoming Echo-S voice mod that is working to voice all dialogue in the game (as of this posting only the first 4 hours or so is available via a "demo". Below I'll detail a bit of modding for the PC version to get you started.

[Koby]

For starters let me show you the difference between vanilla and an older version of Moguri:

 

Moguri Mod is a faithful revamp of the PC version of Final Fantasy IX helped by deep learning techniques (ESRGAN). The most important changes are in the background arts, that are now cleaner, more detailed and higher resolution. Featuring HD backgrounds (aided by AI and polished by hand), Manual redraw of all 11k layer edges and area names, HD textures (worldmap, NPC, battles), 30fps FMVs, and some various bug fixes.

 

While Memoria, dubbed "Final Fantasy IX Engine", is a complete rewrite of the game's engine in C#. It maintains binary compatibility with the native parts of the game and the serialized data within the game archives, allowing the compiled version to be used in place of the original DLLs. The primary goal of this project is to provide mod makers with a convenient framework for developing gameplay mods, replacing game assets, expand original content, localizing the game into native languages, and fixing bugs of the original.

Memoria addresses numerous bugs in the existing game port across various aspects like rendering, audio, and abilities. It includes built-in mods (turn-based battles, gameplay mechanics changes, a new card game system, cheat disablers, etc.) and provides a framework for integrating third-party mods, supporting import/export and modification of game resources.

The engine integrates seamlessly with Unity, allowing the use of features ranging from loading external AssetBundles to manual manipulation of GameObjects and Components. However, many game elements like the event interpreter or animation pipelines emulate the PSX assembler, meaning significant modifications such as importing custom models, shaders, sounds, etc., require creating workarounds to either transform external data into the game's native format or completely alter the approach by transforming game resources into compatible formats and implementing custom rendering mechanisms.

The engine introduces a new audio API, extending the native engine with the dynamic library soloud.dll, enhancing audio capabilities.

 

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To get started with modding, first install the game and run it at least once to ensure everything is good. Then download the latest Memoria.Patcher.exe from this link. Run the .exe program, and it should automatically detect your installation location. Once it's complete, launch the game through steam.

 

 

These are just a handful of the settings you can modify with Moguri Mod. But you can enable or disable whatever you want on this window.

 

The manual trance option is a godsend imo. In the vanilla game you waste trance on random enemies cause it just pops off whenever the bar hits max. Manual trance lets you hit the left d-pad to go into trance when you choose to. Similar to FFX's Overdrive system. So you can save it for the boss fights or whenever you like.

 

Of course widescreen options are nice too, but some scenes will still be 4:3 due to limitations with the backgrounds and such. The No Random Battles toggle with F4 is also nice for when you're tired of running into enemies every few steps and feel like you're overleveled or already got all the AP you want. While the font options is great for getting rid of the terrible vanilla font they changed the PC version to and allowing you to bring back the original font the game used on PS1. ATB Mode lets you change the game to true turn-based if you want but that's also just a completely optional thing. Increasing UI lines to be less mobile-ish and more PS1-ish is good. Same with the Battle HUD option.

 

Click Check for Updates (might have to check and uncheck a time or two) and install any updates if one pops up.

 

Then Click ‘Play’ to run the game at least once to ensure the game will start. Exit the game and re-open the Launcher. Now click Mod Manager in the top right below the Play button and the following window will open:

 

 

You can click the Browse Catalog tab and install the mods you want. I'd recommend at least getting Moguri - BETA 1, Moguri - 3D textures, and Moguri - 30fps videos. This is what is going to be the bulk of the visual enhancements.

 

Though I'd also recommend High-Res Chocographs for better visuals of the Chocograph maps you get from the Hot & Cold mini-game... This will definitely help locate things on the world map.

 

I'd also recommend Mog Addons for things like different button prompts depending on your controller, different avatars based on your preference (or just improved vanilla avatars), and darker ui options. Mog Addons also features some options for improving a few character related traits and some tweaks but these can alter the vanilla experience so it's up to you if you want to utilize them or not... they can easily be activated and deactivated separately.

 

The other mods on the screenshot above that you see I have are just optional things. Like the Beatrice mod allows her to eventually become a permanent party member at a certain story point. The BetterCarpDrop improves the drop rate of cards and makes it so enemies will drop their specific card instead of whatever random card they might've been programmed for initially. As you probably already know, the actual card doesn't matter in the card game because stats of each card is random anyways. While the Black Cat - Endgame Shop literally just allows almost every item in the game to be purchaseable at the shop near End Game, which is neat if you missed specific stuff and wanted it but otherwise it's completely unneeded. So yeah just a bunch of optional stuff.

 

There's a bunch of other stuff in the catalog but your mileage may vary on whether you see a use in them. Stuff like making Garnet the character you roam around as on the world map instead of Zidane. Improving and making Blank, Cinna, and Marcus actually useful and playable. Making Kuja, Fratley, and Lani playable characters. Increasing difficulty with Trance Seek mod, etc. Alternate Fantasy changing a lot of the game to give you a fresh take on the game. Etc...

 

As for settings for the mods, you can click on them on the Installed mods tab and there should be a drop down box for the mods with options. Just go through each mod and each setting in the dropdown box and activate or deactivate what you want.

 

Now lets get onto modifying other Memoria settings. Open the Memoria.ini file from the game root folder using any text editor, such as Notepad++ .

 

I should note that the rule of thumb in configuring the settings FPS of the game is to understand that the Setting FPS should always be higher than Setting TPS, except for the menus.

BattleFPS = 60
BattleTPS = 20
FieldFPS = 60
FieldTPS = 30
WorldFPS = 60
WorldTPS = 30
MenuFPS = 60
MenuTPS = 60
BattleSwirlFrames = 13 

 

The BattleSwirlFrames is a new setting in the launcher to turn off the battle swirl animation, but I prefer it to be on and fast instead. 13 is about as fast as when the animation is turned off, but it doesn't just go black and start the battle. If you wish to skip the battle intro camera, you can disable that in the game config menu.

 

RopeJumpingIncrement = 1, this is essentially cheating but if you don't want to sit there jumping rope for a 1,000 times in succession without a mistake, you can edit this so that each successful jump = whatever number you want. There is an achievement for hitting 100 and 1,000 and you need 1,000 to obtain the item from it. So something like 50 makes it possible to get everything to pop and that leaves you only having to successfully jump 20 times.

 

ExcaliburIINoTimeLimit = 0, set this to 1 so that the Excalibur II isn't locked from being obtainable. As you're probably aware in the vanilla game you have to bumrush the game in 12 hours to obtain this sword. This setting simply disables the time limit so regardless of time the sword will be available when you reach it. To me this is a highly valued quality of life improvement, but for others they may see it as cheating, but whatever. I want to enjoy my time with the game not rush it for a sword.

 

MaxCardCount = 100, this is how many cards you can have. By default its 100 and it discards any more cards you get. You can set this higher so you don't have to keep tossing cards. 100 only allows you to have one of each card if you're trying to collect them all. There's some other settings around there that have to do with the card game you can read the notes about them in the file.

 

[Koby]

Been watching a buddy's "lets play" on his youtube channel where he's playing through this game for his first time and it got me itching to replay the game. I've played through it probably 4 or 5 times but it's been ages since I last did so and that was all on the PS1, so it's my first time going through it with all the mods and such so figured I'd share the method of modding and the options and such and make a thread talking about it while I play through the game again. Didn't intend to play the game now, lmao... that means I'm putting some games I was playing on hold or on the backburner longer than intended but y'know when you got an itch you got an itch... and FF9 is one of the greatest titles in the series.

[Zemekis]

On 8/10/2024 at 5:59 PM, Koby said:

that means I'm putting some games I was playing on hold or on the backburner longer than intended

FF IX is worth it. My wife is currently replaying it, my most recent playthrough was in 2022. It was my favorite game for ~15 years until I decided that VIII edges it out ever so slightly for me. IX has the cozy-factor for sure. It's worth many playthroughs & always scratches an itch. I put it in once in a while just to play through the first hour or so. Until the end of Evil Forest. Sometimes I play up to Dali in a quick session just to feel that vibe. Excellent choice, @Koby

[Koby]

 

Being familiar with it, I've been breezing through the game. In just a matter of like 3 nights, I've already gotten to Disc 3 after the point that Dagger and Eiko summoned up Alexander to defend Alexandria from Bahamut. I've been doing all the side content and such and using the Cotton Robe synth trick for easy/quick Gil for Auction House bidding, etc. So unless I start dreading having to put the game down when it ends like I usually do which slows down my progress of any game near the end that I'm really enjoying.. I may actually have this one completed within the next week.

 

It's been an amazing retread through the game especially with the graphical mods that "remaster" the game and some of the quality of life improvements like being able to turn off random encounters when they start bugging you too much or you've already got all the AP you need for the time being. I even maxed out my Chocobo Beak in the Hot & Cold mini-game, did the 1,000 jump roping mini-game, and got to level 100 in the Hippaul Racing mini-game with vivi. As for the Card Tournament in Treno, I got a "Perfect" win against the Champion. Managed to successfully steal every rare drop from bosses, even the timed bosses up to this point and making may way through the achievements the game has. The PS1 version obviously didn't have achievements so this is a first for me.

 

[Zemekis]

9 hours ago, Koby said:

did the 1,000 jump roping mini-game

What's the trick to this? I've done nearly everything the game has to offer, but never that.

[Koby]

On 8/13/2024 at 12:16 AM, Zemekis said:

What's the trick to this? I've done nearly everything the game has to offer, but never that.

The trick is just to be repetitive in your timing. Gotta get the rhythm down and then it's just repeating that.

 

Or if you really hate doing time wasting stuff like that for little gain, you can always cheat it with Memoria.ini edit to make 1 jump = however much you want.

[Zemekis]

On 8/19/2024 at 7:14 PM, Koby said:

The trick is just to be repetitive in your timing. Gotta get the rhythm down and then it's just repeating that.

I was afraid of that, but I'll try to do it someday. It's a bucket-list thing for me.

 

As for the mod discussion: I think they look cool. I've been well aware of these for a long time (and the FF VII / VIII ones too), even posting in their threads elsewhere during development. I really like looking at the more detailed backgrounds to pick out things I hadn't noticed before! But I don't like the more detailed character models. They just look too sharp to me. You know when a girl looks really good from afar, but then you notice something really f***ed up about her when she's up close? That's how I feel. You know how in the newer Yakuza games everyone is way too porous in cutscenes? That's how I feel looking at these newer models. This is 100000% my subjective take. It objectively looks way better and I have nothing to back up what i'm saying. I still play FF IX on my PSX and a CRT.

Mods can be a ton of fun, I think there was one that added a day/night system? That may have been FF VII. The bug fixes are always welcome additions, too. This is off-topic so I'll keep it short, but I did have a multi-year phase when I was crazy for Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask mods. I came up first on youtube for most of the more well known ones (at the time). So I'm definitely not anti-mod...I enjoy FF VIII Remastered too, despite the minor censorship. It mostly plays well and looks decent, but once I got the platinum trophy on that I went back to me PSX copy of FF VIII.

Question for @Koby so this isn't just "me me me" and "i think / I feel": Which do you prefer, the Moguri mod or Memoria? Are they compatible with one another? Can Echo-S be applied over top of the others to make a mod gumbo? Nothing would ruin the game more for me than voice acting, to the point that I may need to try it.

[Koby]

3 hours ago, Zemekis said:

I was afraid of that, but I'll try to do it someday. It's a bucket-list thing for me.

 

As for the mod discussion: I think they look cool. I've been well aware of these for a long time (and the FF VII / VIII ones too), even posting in their threads elsewhere during development. I really like looking at the more detailed backgrounds to pick out things I hadn't noticed before! But I don't like the more detailed character models. They just look too sharp to me. You know when a girl looks really good from afar, but then you notice something really f***ed up about her when she's up close? That's how I feel. You know how in the newer Yakuza games everyone is way too porous in cutscenes? That's how I feel looking at these newer models. This is 100000% my subjective take. It objectively looks way better and I have nothing to back up what i'm saying. I still play FF IX on my PSX and a CRT.

Mods can be a ton of fun, I think there was one that added a day/night system? That may have been FF VII. The bug fixes are always welcome additions, too. This is off-topic so I'll keep it short, but I did have a multi-year phase when I was crazy for Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask mods. I came up first on youtube for most of the more well known ones (at the time). So I'm definitely not anti-mod...I enjoy FF VIII Remastered too, despite the minor censorship. It mostly plays well and looks decent, but once I got the platinum trophy on that I went back to me PSX copy of FF VIII.

Question for @Koby so this isn't just "me me me" and "i think / I feel": Which do you prefer, the Moguri mod or Memoria? Are they compatible with one another? Can Echo-S be applied over top of the others to make a mod gumbo? Nothing would ruin the game more for me than voice acting, to the point that I may need to try it.

For FF9 there is no mods that touch the character models. In 9 those are just the standard models built into the game for the PC build since 2016 and the newest Switch port, etc.

 

In 7 I agree a lot of the model options look out of place, but the original models are so blocky. In 8 the Remastered models look like their Dissidia counterparts and nothing like the character looks in the FMVs which is weird. Thankfully for those who are put off by those models they still have the original 8 on PC and most of the mods are made for both versions. But 8 still has a long way to go until a lot of the graphical mods are up to modern standards and actually out to the public. Mainly waiting for the Angelwing Ultima mod that updates all the backgrounds.

 

Moguri and Memoria are not an either or. Moguri cannot run without Memoria. Memoria is the engine that allows modding and fixes a lot of things with the game while adding other modern features. Moguri is simply a mod that upgrades all the backgrounds and various textures. But yes Echo-S will be within the Memoria Mod Manager where all the mods worth using are available and will work with them.

 

I actually finished my playthrough last night. Platinum'd the game with about 53 hours of playtime.

[Koby]

Moguri 8.3 vs 9.0 Comparisons:
Disc 1
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODM5
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODM4
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODQz
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODQ0
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODQ2
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODQ4
Disc 2
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODQ5
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODUw
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODUx
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODUy
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODUz
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODU0
Disc 3
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODU1
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODU2
https://imgsli.com/MjkwODU3

 

I think 9.0 really does a good job of not having all the sharpening artifacts 8.3 had while also bringing more visible detail and proper design to them, for example take a look at the pumpkins in the 3rd comparison. They're much more clear in 9.0.

[Zemekis]

Which segment of FF IX is your favorite? I like the first Disc the best. I feel that the first Disc to first third of the PS1 FF games are the best portions. As I get closer to the ending of those classics, I don't want things to come to a close and I sort of loathe the ending. I also don't feel that they stick the landing too well, and the final dungeon is usually a slog followed by some philosophical psychobabble. The bait & switch final boss of FF IX being the worst offender. Frankly, the late-90's to early 00's obsession with philosophy in JRPGs is my least favorite part. It feels like the writer's personal interests being forced where they don't belong.

I love the initial Alexandria segment of IX through Cleyra. In fact, I'm a big fan of everything up to Conde Petie or so. That's kind of the turning point towards the end of the game for me where I feel the warmth and coziness of the title drop off somewhat. It's still a top 5 game for me...just not perfect.

[Koby]

The first disc definitely feels more linear and story driven than later discs once the game opens up and the story kind of comes to a standstill for a while because you start roaming around for the various minigames, treasure hunts, and backtracking all over the map. The Chocobo Hot & Cold minigame was annoying at first but it kind of grew on me a bit by the end. Hunting for the Chocographs was rather annoying at times, especially when none were popping up for nearly an hour... But once I found them all it was a cinch to hunt the world map for the treasure and the rewards for doing so greet you with a lot of the best gear in the game. Then you gotta hunt over the world map once again to find all the beaches for the Fat Chocobo sidequest. And then the whole Kupo Nut thing where you can only hold one at a time so you gotta ensure you don't deliver any mail to a moogle until you've ran back to deliver the Kupo Nut you're currently holding, only to once again run back there to deliver the new Kupo Nut as well.

 

The ending to the game does seem somewhat rushed in the end and then the final boss literally comes out of no where... There was never any mention of him or anything that I'm aware of. He just shows up and is the final boss. Then the credits roll and you get a short extra scene that is suppose to close things off but ends up leaving you wanting more and having a lot of questions that obviously never get answered making the ending as a whole feel underwhelming. And unfortunately there's no New Game+ system to replay the game starting off with all the gear you've grinded for... and a lot of the late game gear underperforms to the stuff you already found from the minigames... Or you're hitting the damage cap anyways with weaker gear so it's like what does the higher numbers even do at this point ya know?

 

It doesn't help when the highest HP boss in the game only has like 55,000 HP, yet every character hits for 9,999 by that point. Hard mode whats that? Am I right? lmao. The game is a breeze if you do everything. Even the superboss Ozma, only managed to one shot two characters before I took him out without ever requiring healing or playing defensively. Simply running with the Attack button on physical characters and going with Flare on Vivi and Bahamut on Dagger is a strategy that works on everything by the time you get them until the end of the game.

 

Amarant is still easily the worst of the party members and his growth as a character happens painfully slow and by the end you're questioning if he's actually changed at all or if it was surface level.

 

The card game in FF9 was absolutely pointless. Other than the tournament in Treno you can go the entire game without playing it. The rewards for playing it are solely cards your opponent used that you beat in the game and you never are required to play it again past the tournament. So the only reason to play it more than that is if you either want to collect every card or if you're going for the 100 wins achievement. In the end I got the achievement but I didn't get every card. There is 100 different card types in the game, and by default you can only have 100 cards, so you're only able to keep 1 of each card if you want to collect them all. I think I got somewhere around 68 of the cards but I couldn't be bothered to try to collect them all as it'd entail finding select people to battle that hold whatever card I needed and then playing them over and over until I won a game while having taken over said card in the duel... and I just didn't care. The actual battles in the card game have a degree of randomness involved in the math determining which card comes out on top and it's just very annoying.

 

FF8's card game was infinitely superior.

 

In the end, I loved my time with the game all the way to the end... and I still rank FF9 as my second favorite of the series. FF4 being my absolute favorite for the story and characters, I've played both the 2D and the 3D versions of that one... Some day I'll Play FF4 Interlude and FF4 The After Years. Despite FF4 being my favorite I've never played those.