I recently got hold of an emulator copy of Final Fantasy IX, and I have to say, I'm enjoy the hell out of it. Out of the three PSX heroes, Zidane is the one who comes close to Squall's pedestal, and for totally different reasons.
I'm an unemotional jerk, and I understand that side of myself at all times except for the endings of Crisis Core and FFX. I still haven't had the emotional stability to bring myself to finish Crisis Core, in fact.
So when I find a game that almost leaves me in stitches, it's a rare and mostly enjoyable experience, and Final Fantasy IX is one of those games. Despite liking characters with thoughtful backgrounds and general jerkiness (Cloud and Squall) Zidane's happy-go-lucky attitude has me playing the game avidly. I've accumulated 27 hours of playtime since I acquired the game last Saturday, and I've also been playing Dissidia in the meantime, as well as throwing in a bit of mapping and spriting for Cosplay Crisis.
What disappoints me in comparison to other FF's is the lack of side-quests. In all honesty I enjoy breaking away from the story into some back-breaking dungeon of despair trying to discover a new Guardian Force or going after a WEAPON, and compared to FF8 and FF7, FF9's side-quests are difficult, but few in number and rather short. I was recently exploring Gaia before leaving for Terra, trying to find the equivalent of the Islands Closest to Heaven and Hell, only finding areas that had Grand Dragons as their strongest monster. When I began the levelling crusade I was about level 40, and did get wiped out about twice, but after I equipped Antibody and gave Dagger a coral ring I've massed leveled to about level 50 and can't find anything stronger D:. It sucks, and I know I'm not ready to attempt Hades or Ozma...but they're the only two bosses!
Thinking back to FF8, there was Jumbo Cactuar, Odin, all those Tonberries, Bahamut, the Ruby Dragons and co., Ultima and Omega Weapons....and a number of them required dungeon crawling to get anywhere! (especially Ultima Weapon...the descent through the DSRC was worse than the fight!)
I know that some people would probably just say 'Oh, you're being picky', but this is my third playthrough and usually I go for everything at this point. And everything in FF9 isn't that much, disappointingly. Most quests are pretty basic and don't really require much thought on your part.
I hope Final Fantasy XIII has plenty of side-missions. >.> (You can probably tell I thoroughly enjoyed Crisis Core, lol =P)
On Cosplay Crisis notes I haven't really done much...I've finished mapping out the entirity of Kumo's apartment, and the Residential District, and half of the Town Square. I mapped out the main event cave for the area after the incident on the plane (I need to map out the plane still...D:.) I almost finished Zane's character set, implemented Mognet, implemented the new Equip menu, finished the run animation templated and made Kumo's run animation, made the ready pose for Kumo's buster gun weapon, made Levi's intro, ready and half of his skill and item poses, fully fleshed out the Armors tab and set the Materia slots correctly.
Yeah I haven't been up to much. Oh and I also redrew Kumo and Zane's facesets, AGAIN, but this time I'm using the Dissidia character models available in the Museum mode to base their faces correctly.
(Squall's Dissidia face is fucking hard to draw D:)
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