This weekend, my Internet was down, meaning there was almost nothing productive I could do. Well, there was something productive. We got snowed in, so I’ve spent a couple of hours yesterday and today shoveling snow. Other than that, I was free to game and free to spend hours playing Final Fantasy IX. Since a lot has happened during this “marathon”, I’ll try to keep it short.

The Story

There was some story building in Alexandria, where Kuja attacks and destroys most of the city with Bahamut, in a battle against Alexander, who gets summoned by Eiko and Dagger. These events do psychological damage to Dagger, which causes her to lose her voice for a period on the story. In the process, a new villain is revealed. His name is Garland and he’s working against Kuja, but that definitely doesn’t make him a friend. Not much is revealed about him, though.

This is the coolest version of Alexander ever.

The party escapes to Lindblum, where Cid develops a plan to track down and defeat Kuja. Before that, there’s a realization the black mages are working for Kuja again, so the group decided to go back to their village and see what’s happening. One of the remaining mages there tells them where Kuja’s base of operations is.

We enter the base, but it’s a trap and the group gets captured. Kuja sends Zidane and three other people to an area on the Forgotten Continent to the west, to get an item. The place has an anti-magic barrier so he can’t get it himself.

While one group is getting the item, the rest of the party manages to escape on their own. Zidane and his group returns and everyone faces Kuja, but in the whole mess of it, Zorn and Thorn managed to kidnap Eiko. They take her to the Lost Continent to the northwest and the group follows them to Esto Gaza.

Oeil Vert was the place for backstory.

From Esto Gaza, they take the route to Mount Gulug, where, just as the group is about to engage with Zorn and Thorn, Mog intervenes and reveals that he’s an eidolon meant to protect Eiko. She saves Eiko and stops the eidolon extraction, but sacrifices herself in the process. Kuja flees, but there’s a positive.

It turns out, Kuja was keeping Cid’s wife prisoner at mount Gulug, so she’s free now. She turns Cid back into a human and is able to tell the group everything about Kuja’s plans. Apparently, there are two worlds. One is Gaia, where everyone is now. The other is Terra and it somehow exists in parallel to Gaia. That’s where Kuja is from. He wants to destroy Gaia and get an incredible amount of power that way, all in order to get rid of Garland.

The plan now is to somehow get to Terra and get more information there. Instructions on how to get there are at a castle on the Forgotten Continent – Ipsen’s Castle.

The Game

Alexandria was mostly storytelling, with a couple of minor side quests mixed in. During the attack, Steiner and Beatrix were kicking some serious but as a team and I definitely loved that part, especially the music, but that was about it. Same goes for Lindblum – lots of interesting story telling, but little actual gameplay.

Before I got to the mage village, I used the ship I now had to train my chocobo more. It took me a couple of hours, but I got him to the point where he was able to climb mountains. Then I got to the mage village and Kuja’s palace, which got finally got me access to the Forgotten Continent. I used my chocobo to explore around for a bit, but eventually entered Oeil Vert and got the item I needed.

The escape part with the other group allowed me to play as Cid for a bit. It was funny, and involved some skill based challenges, as well as a puzzle, but it didn’t take long. The group that was left behind was also behind in levels, so for the first dozen or so random battles, I basically gained levels after every victory.

The more thoroughly you explore the desert palace, the less “enhancing” the boss can do.

When I finally went after Eiko, I was already familiar with Esto Gaza, because I got there a bit earlier, while treasure hunting with Choco. However, the store had much better items this time, including a staff for Vivi, which taught him the *ga spells (Blizzaga, Firaga, Thundaga). Mount Gulug was tough, but I didn’t stay there long, so I managed to get through it without to many issues.

After I finally got everyone back together, I also got the airship, meaning I now had access to most of the world. I got to Daguerrero, which is a sort of a “bonus” city of this game. It contains some puzzles and high level shops, so I made use of that. I also tried to train on the grand dragons in an area nearby, but, although I get a lot of experience, I don’t think the difficulty makes it worth it.

I decided to complete the rest of the chocobo treasure hunting side quest, so the next several hours were devoted to that. I upgraded chocobo all the way and got all the chocograph treasures apart from the one in the middle of the ocean. I hope I’ll stumble into that one eventually, but for now, it seems ridiculously hard to find. In any case, I got some nice items from all of that, as well as access to the optional boss of this game. I won’t even try to defeat him at this point.

Besides digging for treasure, you can also fight a difficult optional boss at the Air Garden.

From my first play through, I remembered there was something important at one of the islands in the center of the map, but I immediately regretted going there. The only enemies there are some extremely dangerous sheep. I’m sure the rewards for beating them are great, but for now, I don’t stand a chance.

In any case, that was about all I did during these two days. It’s a lot, but there’s still a long way to go. For now, I need to go to Ipsen’s Castle.

I had to fight a boss before I left the mountain path. Thanks to me having two healers, the fight was easy, but it took a while, especially since my only dealer of larger amounts of damage was busy stealing. I eventually ended up resorting to Vivi’s magic and Dagger’s Ramuh in order to kill it. Even with the long time it took, Zidane didn’t manage to steal everything from the boss. I’m starting to remember why the stealing mechanic sometimes annoyed me on the first play through.

Eiko starts out with Auto-Regen.

The Iifa Tree was accessible from an alternative route in the Mountain Path, so I went there and finally reached the tree itself. The route through it was long, and it was soon obvious that the tree is what generates the mist on the Mist Continent. Eventually, I got to the bottom and was soon attacked by a boss.I finally got to Madain Sari, where the story advanced a lot. To put it short, it turned out Eiko was an orphan, living with just her moogle friends there. Dagger also realizes that she must be from Madain Sari to, because she has vague memories of the place. Eventually, the story focuses on the Iifa Tree again, and Eiko agrees to guide he party to it.

I guess an undead boss appears at least once in most Final Fantasy games. Soulcage was one of these bosses. For a moment, I thought about killing him the legitimate way, but after I’ve seen how much damage it does, I promptly used on elixir on it.

Soulcage is really tough, unless you use an elixir on him.

As you can probably tell, this game is a lot more focused on storytelling and I’d even say it treats battles and dungeons more as filler than anything else. In most JRPG’s, I’d have a problem with this, but somehow, the game manages to keep all the talking and storytelling fun and interesting. I’m really starting to see why a lot of people considers Final Fantasy IX the best one in the franchise.The boss was gone and the tree stopped producing mist, but there wasn’t much time to be happy about it, because Kuja flew in on his silver dragon. Brahne and her fleet followed, so there was a huge battle scene, in which Brahne got killed. Eventually, the screen went black, and the story shifted to a short time later, with everyone back in Alexandria.

Once out of the Fossil Roo, I didn’t really have a direction to go to. However, the only place I could really go to was Conde Petie. Conde Petie is a town of dwarves, which is basically just rest stop between several important game locations.

It’s been a long time since dwarves appeared in a Final Fantasy game. There’s a whole village of them in Conde Petie.

Anyway, before I got to the village, I decided to spend some time learning new blue magic with Quina. I got a few new spells, but nothing really important. I also summoned Choco at the local tracks and used him to open up a Chocograph treasure chest. I’ve spent quite a sum of money to buy fresh gear at Conde Petie, so I also used the opportunity to get my cash supply back up, since I knew the mage village has an amazing synthesis shop. With all of that, my four characters got to around level 25.The first one was the village of the black mages. You get there by stumbling into a black mage who has been trading with the dwarves. He runs away, showing he’s extremely afraid of humans, but the dwarves point you in the right direction – “deep in the forest, where the owls don’t fly”, or something like that. I’m not sure if this is a reference to the Final Fantasy VIII rebel password or if I’m just reading to much into it.

Ramuh was very useful during training, since Zidane was the only physical damage dealer.

Anyway, after that, the game took me back to Conde Petie, where I found out someone’s been stealing the dwarves’ food, and a hint of a new character is shown. This subplot got a bit postponed, though, due to a new problem arising.I finally got to the village, where some storytelling happens. It’s revealed that some of the black mages sometimes gain sentience, which is how that group wound up on this continent. It’s also revealed that they have an extremely limited lifespan, with most of them simply “stopping” after about a year of activity. No one ever explicitly states that the same applies to Vivi, but there’s no reason not to think that, since he’s a black mage to.

The only way to get to “The Sanctuary” on the other side of the mountains is through Conde Petie. However, the dwarves only let through people who are on a kind of honeymoon. This makes for a nice, comical moment, but also leaves room for Zidane and Dagger’s relationship to grow a bit. Overall, Final Fantasy IX handles these things in a much more lighthearted manner, compared to the other two games on the PlayStation.

Dagger was really eager to “get hitched”.

While running, she ends up stuck on a cliff, her faithful friend Mog ditches her and Zidane ends up saving her. This starts another funny subplot, where this six years old ends up having a crush on Zidane. Quina chases Mog, so Eiko replaces him/her as a group member. At this point, though it’s still unclear what Quina’s gender is, most of the characters in the game refer to it as “him”, so I will to, from now on.The ceremony is quick, and it’s time to get through the city, but not before I encountered the infamous food thief. The thief turns out to be Eiko Caroll, the new playable character. She’s a summoner, which means she uses White Magic and Summoning, just like Dagger. However, she learns her spells in a different order and her eidolons are different to.

Mog ditching Eiko is a recurring joke.

Eiko invites the group to her home in Madain Sari, but I still had a ways to get there. The area I was in was yet to be explored and a boss was waiting for me. Before that, though, thanks to the PSP’s pause function, I was able to end my session here

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I got to the Marsh and met up with Quina again. It turns out she backtracked all the way to here from Cleyra, all on her own. She rejoined the party and helped me find the entrance to the tunnel I’ve been looking for.

I’m not sure if this boss is beatable, but I haven’t really tried anything other than running.

The tunnels involved some track switching puzzles. The location was full of untamed gargants, which I could lure with flowers and ride from one area to the other. In order to make them go in the right direction, I needed to pull various switches, which changed the track layout. Some switches led me to dead ends containing treasure, but I’m absolutely sure I didn’t get all of them before I got out.Soon after I entered, I started getting chased by some weird machine. I’m not sure if I could’ve killed it, but after a few chases, it fell down a hole and that was it. In the room after that, though, I met Lani. She and some red haired guy got hired by Brahne to get Dagger’s pendant back, so I had to fight her. Again, the fight wasn’t to difficult and I used the standard tactic. Zidane was stealing, Dagger was healing and the other two, Vivi and Quina in this case, did the damage. The fight was over soon and Lani ran away. I went into the tunnels.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

In the central room, I also met Stilzkin, the traveling moogle, who got his usual tree random items for sale, which I bought. One of the rooms also had a treasure hunter which let me dig for items in exchange for a potion, but I didn’t bother with it. Eventually, I found the exit and I was outside, at the Outer Continent.

The Gargant Roo was traversed even faster this time. In fact, it all went a bit too fast. As before, the gargant got attacked by a monster, but this time a stronger one. It was easy enough to kill it, but once we got back into the cart, it came back and the gargant started running like crazy.

We passed Treno and crashed at some mountains near Lindblum. Now, the queen extracted Dagger’s eidolons before we got to her, so she was a bit shaken up. Not all hope was lost, though. We met an old man in the hills, who turned out to be the eidolon Ramuh. He offered to give her his powers if we get all the pieces of a story his five copies scattered around the hills have and create a complete story out of those pieces.

Every Final Fantasy fan knows Ramuh.

As we were leaving the hills, a sequence started where the group noticed the Alexandrian army attacking Lindblum. Everyone ran towards the castle, hoping to get there in time, but one of Dagger’s former eidolons, Atomos, I think, got summoned and did a huge amount of damage to the whole city.The random battles slowed me down a bit and I had some difficulty getting the final piece of the story, but eventually, I got all five. I had to eliminate one piece and figure out the order of the remaining four to complete it. It was extremely easy if you understand the language, so I didn’t have any issues. Which of the two duplicate entries I picked didn’t matter either. It was more about how I feel about it than what the correct one is, which Zidane noted before we left the hills. In any case, we got a Peridot, which Dagger can wear as an accessory to learn summoning Ramuh.

I think this is the first time Atomos appeared on the PlayStation.

Luckily, there’s a possibility of a tunnel in the Qu’s Marsh, leading all the way to the Outer Continent. This will be my next destination.When I regained control and entered Lindblum, it was under Alexandrian occupation. I went to the business district and met the minister there, who took me to see Cid. Cid had a plan. Since Kuja was supplying Alexandria with weapons, we need to destroy him. Cid’s intel tells him Kuja’s base is somewhere on the Outer Continent, north of the Mist Continent. Since we had no ships, air or naval, I had to find another way to get there.