/vr/ - Retro Games

More development time. I felt like the second half was just rushed. Develop a few of the characters a bit more.

Also, I would have liked a secret party member, like Gogo.

>>6192370
>Also, I would have liked a secret party member, like Gogo.
The entire Tantalus crew and Beatrix should have been playable after you first enter Memoria

>>6192342
faster battles, faster battle animations.
Don't the ports fix this?

>>6192342
I would fix the loading times and that's it. Only literal faggots bitch about the greatest FF for PSX.

>>6192342
Develop Amarant. He might as well not be in the game.

>>6192582
He shows up too late, too.
Some more foreshadowing would help.
It's been a while since I played, but I don't recall seeing him in Treno at all. Maybe his description was on a wanted poster or something, but that's it.

>>6192342
>> Only 1 playable country per continent
Kill yourself

i'd change the NA cover "art" back to the original style

maybe an item to tone down the encounter rates would have been nice but other than that it's fine

>>6192342
> Awful combat system
This is basically the only problem that I have with FFIX. Going back to JRPGs with menu-based combat systems has killed a lot of my nostalgia for it, and that goes double for the ones with random encounters. I'd turn them all into ARPGs, RPG with action elements (like FFXIV), SRPGs, or RPGs with RTS elements.

>>6192950
The only issue I see with turn-based combat is the slow speed and long battle animations, but games like DQ8 (3DS port) fixed that problem with built-in speedups.

>>6192617
I think he makes a few appearences earlier as a silent character. Despite him not getting a ton of development, i liked his design and he was fun to use. Sorta like a monk ninja hybrid

also the minigames suck ass aswell, they're all "hard"/tedious or very luck reliant, so they're not that bad if you're just taking your time but are a pain in the ass if you're doing one of those perfect game challenge runs

Tone regen the fuck down.

>>6192342
One thing: Beatrix as a party member.

>>6192342
>Only 1 playable country per continent
Trolling?

>>6193470
I think he means you only recruit a new party member on each continent. There's Freya, Quina, Eiko, and Amarant. That's just 4, so his point is that it's sparse. Because Zidane, Dagger, Vivi and Steiner are default characters of sorts that are playable essentially from the start.

>>6193096
The biggest flaw by far for me in Final Fantasy IX is that it makes such a point of pushing the card game on you but in equal measure goes out of its way to ensure you don't understand the basic mechanics and rules whilst going in playing thinking you do, meanwhile there is calculations going on in the background that if you had 3 sentence's worth of explanations on would entirely change your play strategy. Now you can read about it online of course, but at the time you would have no choice but to use their PlayOnline atrocious online guide that they tried to sell with the game so crookedly, and even that probably didn't properly explain it. Of course the internet was around and people talked about the truth, but I garner most people at the time didn't go out of their way for such information or were simply kids who didn't really use the internet.

>>6192342
bring back triple triad instead of the inferior tetra master

>>6192342
Pair the beautiful art and music with some writing that has balls

>>6193096
I don't think any mini game in FFIX that is difficult is important at all. So I can just ignore the skipping or Hippaul race. That fucking Chocobo race in X is worse than anything in IX

>>6193502
>The biggest flaw by far for me in Final Fantasy IX is that it makes such a point of pushing the card game on you
You're only forced to play it three times and it's all in the same section. What are you talking about?

I remember I wrote an essay in my spare time on why FF9 had some better plot elements than 7, I think primarily to do with the antagonists but idr.

>>6192393
There are patches for the PS1 ISO that do. Also that "fixes" Ex2 by making the manner to get it less retarded.

>>6193876
Could you please link to them or refer me to the name of the patch(es) if you know it? I searched to no avail and romhacking does not have it. Thanks.

>>6193906
curious about this^
If you play FF9 on an emulator can't you just speedup the run speed?

>>6193452
>One thing: Beatrix as a party member.
that would be sick

>>6193876
>Also that "fixes" Ex2 by making the manner to get it less retarded.
It's called getting good.

>>6194108
>>6193452
There's actually a mod that does this. It doesn't just put her into your party but gives her dialogue and new skills as well. I haven't played it but I'm sure her dialogue is awful like all fan additions

>>6192342
skip battle intros

faster animations

that’s it really

>>6194108
Yeah, I would rather have had her white magic than Steiner's Swd Mag.

Bringing Marcus, Blank, or even Cinna to the final boss could have been cute, if only they had some extra abilities on them.

>>6194267
Are there any sexy FF9 mods??

>>6194476

>>6194476

>>6194048
Not really because that would speed up the music. Ruins the whole point if you ask me. If you could somehow toggle clocking the speed of things and leave the music intact...I doubt it. I would rather have the game be slower and hear the music even if it's the same song each time. I want the experience, not the experience jumping and skipping around every moment.

There is a good chance he meant there was a patch to speed up the battles in the PC port, as far as I know this exists. But I've never found such a thing for the Playstation 1 version. It would probably be on romhacking if it existed, not that they have everything.

There's a lot of fluff in this game involving quests and battles and equipment and whatnot - most of that could be removed in favor of the element the developers left severely and obviously unfinished, which is Beatrix. The entire game should involve alternately battling and romancing her. It's inarguable that this would produce a far superior experience to what we actually got (though the game is pretty good as it is).

>>6192342
it doesn't need fixing. it's the best jrpg on the psx, and it's not even fucking close. it goes a little bit fast in the last disc or so, and there are some low points that last a bit long, but it's still the best the console has to offer (in english anyway).

>>6194561
Kys yourself you pathetic, cooming femdomfag

>>6194537
Just turn the music off and play the OST on your phone or PC. I usually turn sound very low on games and listen to podcasts while I play.

Speeding of slow animations; removal of furry characters; improvement of visual designs of Zidane and Eiko; deepening of Amarant storyline; huge overarching rebalancing of everything so that the game is actually challenging (i.e., not a normal JRPG at all). There it is fixed.

>>6194537
>>6194574
Make a fast-forward macro, only use it during battles. When you're in the world the music will be fine. When you're in battles fuck the music I'm not watching a 3minute summoning animation 1000x in a row.

>>6194573

I said nothing about femdom.

>>6194581
>I want to date a genocidal, strict general of a medieval army
>not into femdom
Yeah right.

>>6194537
>If you could somehow toggle clocking the speed of things and leave the music intact...I doubt it.
The PS4 port lets you speed up the battles but the music stays the same

>>6194575
>removal of furry characters
This so much. I don't mind a furry character here and there but in FF9 almost everyone is a fucking furry. Maybe one of the developers belonged to these degenerates, I can't explain it.

>>6194476
CUTE!

>>6194635
You're over exaggerating or thinking of fan-art hentai? The furry wasn't sexualized, get your mind out of the gutter.

>>6194662
>freya and the rat tribe
>mc and antagonist both have tails
>summoners have horns
>every 2nd npc is either an oxe, a hippo, a pig and whatnot
>all the furries you can summon
Kys furry.

>>6194676
>>mc and antagonist both have tails
>blablabla
none of that is sexualized except in your dirty mind.

>>6192398
>Only literal faggots bitch about the greatest FF for PSX.
I agree, but it's not relevant in a FFIX thread.

>>6194687
If it wasn't in the game it wouldn't have been sexualized by thousands of degenerate freya fags. Checkmate.

>>6194696
every character in video games can be sexualized, keep crying

>>6194575
>>6194635
>removal of furry characters
Boo fucking hoo, man. That's pathetic as hell. One of the best parts of FF9 is the massively diverse character design, both in the party and the NPCs. It made the world a lot more exciting to explore and interesting to look at. Stop trying so hard to fit in.

>>6194703
>>6194706
yiff in hell dog fuckers

>>6194707
epic retard lmao

>>6194728
>epic
Reddit is that way ------->

>>6194706

I'm the one who suggested it first and I don't care about the popular anti-furry attitude, or about the possibility that people would fantasize about scritching Zidane's lower back to make his tail stand up so you can fuck his butt or whatever. I am fine with people doing that. And I agree that diversity in character design is nice. Anime sameface repels me.

In spite of all this, I still want the furry characters to not look furry in that way. The reason is simply that I think furry characters are usually ugly, and that FF9's furry characters are always ugly.

Steiner doesn't look the same as other humans. In another game, he might have the same face as every other male character. Vivi and Quina are cute. (I claim that Quina isn't a "furry character".) Some of the beastly people look cool - Marcus, for instance. There's a lot of variety. Zidane looks a lot like Garnet; I'd rather see his tail removed and his face made more distinctive. And yes Freya would of course stop being a rat. But there's still plenty of room for wild designs.

>>6194806
Who cares about optics I definitely would have made it possible to get excalibur 2 a different way. If you want to be an autist ok, you can race through the game in 12 hours, but ALSO giving another option would have been better like including some insane super-boss or something.

>>6194853
>but ALSO giving another option would have been better like including some insane super-boss or something.
bad players would find a way to complain anyway
just get good

>>6194878
I don't want to play the game twice moron.

>>6194885
>entitled petulant child mentality
lol
It's made as a challenge for players who like to replay the game.
You could use a strategy guide and multiple save files if you screw up?

like everyone has said, faster animations and battle intros revamped would be great. FFIX will always be my favorite game, but there's some minor stuff i wish was improved
>reduce/remove/fix card game RNG
>don't make tantarian boss fight have such a small window (always fightable instead?)
>revamp chocobo mini-games to be slightly less obnoxious, which in turn doesn't make getting to Ozma feel like a chore rather than a quest
>more mini-games scattered throughout
>expand upon the monster pit fighting in treno
>slight rework of the story after you meet zidane clones. it's not terrible, but to go from figuring out Garland's intentions to this part just feels like a weird lull
>more abilities, take direction from FFVII
>1 or 2 more optional bosses
>reduce amount of random battles
I could probably go on and on only because I've played the game so many times I think of little things here and there.

I still don't know if E2's quest line was worth it in the end, that's a whole other topic to discuss

>>6192370
>I felt like the second half was just rushed
I feel like this was the case for just about every Square RPG around that time. After FFVII blew up, it felt like they kept trying to one-up themselves, but it always just resulted in them running out of time on everything.

>>6193813
No no no, the problem is not that it pushes the card game on you, that's a good thing, if it's a feature in the game they put work into. The problem is like I said that they push the card game on you AND never properly explain the rules.

I made it a little more complicated than it is, yes they don't explain the rules to you but the card game is far too RNG dependent to the point where skill is completely out the window. They could have easily tweaked it to involve skill, but throughout the calculations it's laughably thrown out the window. The fact that the game itself never properly explains the rules and hides how it all works is insult to injury.

>>6193906
"FInal Fantasy IX ATB Gauge SpeedUp", maybe.
http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1799/

>>6195802
that idea sounds horrible and the review for the person trying it out confirms all of my suspicions

>>6193452
>>6194257
Yes, the FF9 Alternate mod.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFFC7rOXFXg
Her lines of dialogue seem out of character...

Apparently, there are also new superbosses in that mod. Is it worth to install it for those? The original Ozma is such a slot machine that it barely qualifies as a superboss.

>>6192370
Quina is kind of a secret party member in that he's optional and the game doesn't really explain much about him or even that he can join your party initially.

>>6196107
Yeah I was right. That dialogue really is awful

It needs optimizing more than anything, which thankfully the pc version fixed.

>>6192370
>I felt like the second half was just rushed.
I don't think it was rushed, I think they just frontloaded the FMVs hard to try and sell people based on just the early hours. Because replaying it, Disk 3 is still really long. Disk 1 is the one that's 90% cutscenes and very little gameplay by comparison.

I would remove the fact that how your stats level up is dependent on the gear you have equipped which means if you want the best stats then either you try as hard as possible to not level up in the game until you're in endgame and then grind like crazy, or you cheat and give yourself the items at the start.

>>6194575
I don't know, FF9 never really came across as "furry" to me. Maybe it's because of the time period it came out but for me I was reminded more of disney cartoon characters than furries when I played.

>>6197148
There's literally no reason to care about stats in IX. You can beat the game at lvl 1. I would do the complete opposite of what you said and remove stats growths entirely except for HP and MP

>>6197157
Well, that's basically what FFXII did. Yeah you did gain stats from leveling up but the vast bulk of your damage and defense came from your equipment, not your base stats.

>>6196107
>>6197028
That's why I never fucking install mods. The original work is a finely tuned machine, you don't fuck with it.

Play the game as it was supposed to be played.

>>6197228
For this game in particular I agree. Some games though live or die based on their community.

>>6196203
By optional you mean not at all optional... right?

>>6192342
Drop Amarant for Beatrix

>>6192342
set the entire game in Lindblum. that setting was fantastic

Now I wanna play it again. What are some self-imposed challenges that could mix it up?

>>6198650
I do not recommend attempting to challenge yourself in this game just abuse all the game systems and devastate everything

>>6198558
Or hell, Amarant for Lani. At least she was a constant presence for the point up until Amarant joins the party.

>>6198650
The lvl 1 challenge is reasonable. It forces you to become more intimate with your equipment and it isn't anywhere near as time consuming as other low level challenges. There's only really 2 areas I can think of that are luck based and rage inducing.

>>6198650
only equipment you get is from zidane stealing

>>6198868
I was about to mention this, but the game pretty much expects you to steal all the high level gear from bosses, so it's not like this is really a challenge. Are there even any abilities that you could permanently miss out on if you don't buy equipment?

>>6198876
I remember permanently missing one of Freya's ability the first time I played (the random "heal everything or put everything at 1" skill I guess).
If you don't go to the shop at Esto Gaza and buy weapons, you can miss that... it is even more perfidious because you need to go shopping after finishing the Desert Palace as the shop changes its items and there's no hint for that.

>>6198876
>game expects you to steal all the high level gear from bosses
don't think this is the case, you can get really good gear via shops and synth. i've played through the whole game twice never stealing a single thing, there was no real change in difficulty.

i guess you obviously ramp up the difficulty if you don't do steepled hat gil trick lel

>>6192342
Just make another FF8 instead but more polished

It's a good game and clearly OP is just exaggerating it's flaws but there are some things I'd change. Obviously the loading times and battle speed are the most pressing issue so I'd fix that. Then I'd overhaul the abilities and make it so that they're all useful in the right circumstances instead of having characters like Zidane have so many shitty pointless combat abilities that you eventually stop giving a shit about learning them. Another important thing to fix would be stealing. Just make it more likely to succeed or at the very least have items like the thief glove available much earlier in the game. It's no fun feeling like you have to spend every boss fight banging Zidane's head against a wall over and over just waiting for the steal attempt to succeed so you can finally beat the fucking thing. Finally, just completely replace Tetra Master with Triple Triad. I wasn't broke but they tried to fix it anyway and it was a disappointing, convoluted mess of a mini-game.

>>6193090
That's literally what he is, his class is monk and ninja.

>Fagger doesn't end up mute and unable to concentrate. Replace that with severe depression but can otherwise function in combat
>XP and AP goes to all party members, in battle or not
>The scaling of Frog Drop and similar gets tied to stats only
>Summons break damage limit
>Zidane and Fagger adopt Eiko as their daughter

>>6192393
this right here. a few tweaks to greatly improve the slow and tedious combat is all it would take to turn the game from a 6-7/10 to an 8-9/10.

>>6198690
Lani was a fucking cutie.

Why does FF9 have so many cute girls?
>Garnet
>Beatrix
>Lani
>Mikoto

>>6197153
Yeah, it’s because the fur characters are animals that generally are shunned by furries, like rats and hippos. That’s why I don’t have a problem with it, it’s not like it’s shitty wolf-like things for 90% of the characters.

>>6201619
Based FF9 BTFO furry fags

>>6196107
>>6197028
Huh. On the contrary, that's pretty much what I would have expected in a cutscene in which she would join.

Look at Vincent in VII: he starts blabling about his mood and events related to both himself and the plot. Then he states a credible reason for him to join.
Same things happen in that video.

Sure, it could have been done better, but I rather prefer a minimalist credible dialogue that goes right to the point than a fanfiction that has no logic.

>>6200335
This.

>>6202065
I mean, the last thing she says for example is not well written at all, but that's not as awful as I thought from a fan addition.

>>6198650
"speedrun"

>>6193576
>>6194695

Thinking edgy 7 and faggy 8 are superior to Sakaguchi’s magnum opus, his return to classic FF form, before the series descended into muh religion bad commentary with 10 and androgynous gayboi anime characters ever since, has to be the most painfully zoomer take I’ve seen on /vr/ in a long, long while.

>>6192342

I finally decided to play this game, this is the most boring RPG I ever played, and I played all the FF games from 1 to 8. Is there a point in which it actually gets good?

>>6202193
Based.

>>6202274
When you cure your autism it will be great.

>>6196203
You eventually get Quina even if you skip the marsh because you have to go to it to get to the other continent.

>>6201619
No it's not even that, it's just because they aren't drawn in the way furries generally are. Even in this guy's pic >>6194662, Freya looks more like something I'd see in Blacksad or Disney's Robin Hood than in what I associate with the internet furry culture. It's hard for me to explain why but it's just a feeling.

>>6192342
>speed up the combat animations
those take forever.
>reduce random encounter rate
is like a pokemon cave in this regard.
>have easy access to mp recovery items
all mages become useless after a while of walking because of the previous point.

scrap the whole thing

>>6204156
Speedups are fixed in the port, or just use an emulator fast forward macro.
Game is literally almost perfectomundo

I was 13 when this game came out. I just loved it, i spend hours just enjoying the music, the sceneries and the lore. The world seemed huge, full of life and magic. For me this game was pure gold, at that point I'd never experienced something like that in a videogame. It took me 1 year to beat FF9, and when this happened I really felt like a big part of me was over.
Then I replayed this game some months ago: boring, boring as hell, and unbearably slow. Too much dialogues, cutscenes, quick time events and such. Christ, I've dropped at disc 2

>>6206702

>i spend hours just enjoying the music

I meant to write "i spent hours...", sorry I'm still learning english

>>6202087
how did people figure this out with a strategy guide?

>>6194476

>>6206775
I guess you meant "without a guide"?
they didn't.

>Make battles 2x faster and skip the dumb slow rotation
>replace card game with expanded triple triad mechanics
>leave locations accessible
>streamline sidequests

>>6192342
Remove any part of the game where any character uses ellipses
Fix the story from about the point where eiko shows up

>>6206775
FFIX promoted the shit out of Square's "PlayOnline" service with leaflets in the game case as they were also wanting to promote their online gaming platform which had an online version of Tetra Master and they were working on what was to be FFXI too. The website had walkthrough infomation that PiggyBack and BradyGames weren't allowed to publish in their walkthrough books.

>>6192342
Less sophomore existentialism, more princess-saving high adventure.

>Remove the random chance in the fucking card game
>Remove Kuja, make Garland the main antagonist.
>Make Zidane just a thief who's trangled up in bigger events, no tail.
>Make Vivi the center stage protaganist, focus should be on his growth and learning about himself.
>Vivi finds out that he is a prototype weapon created by Garland that precided the other black mages to cause war in Gaia, not monkey boys.
>Cut out disc 3 of filler fetch questing and put the actual important plot beats in the other discs

Basically make the game they were going to before they slapped the IX number on it.

>>6192342
Make steal have a higher success rate
Lani replaces Amarant
Zidane and Lani romance

>>6192342
Tweak out the downtime on attack animations and make battles start faster, akin to FF7 where the camera loads in and the bars are already going. If they want their sweeping battle BG shots, keep it during mid gameplay. Just that tweak alone would probably shave an hour at least.

>>6202193
>androgynous gayboi anime characters
As opposed to paragons of manliness like Zidane, one presumes.

>>6202193
Sakaguchi had very little to do with the series after V, he went full producer after that and the series was handled by Kitase and Ito who co-directed VI. Sakaguchi was also very uninvolved because he was in Hawaii working on Spirit's Within.

>>6209540
This shit was insufferable back in the days of dial up. It was a total goddamn cocktease.

>>6209574
The hawaiian outfits treasure makes a lot more sense when you find out some of the game's development was done in hawaii.