FINAL FANTASY 9+

Honestly after sinking 20+ hours In on this game I’ve really come to enjoy the touch to move feature and auto battle. I think the touchpad or a controller just takes too much time and sure it’s classic and you’d feel like you are playing an old school game but these features are great for someone with a bad attention span like myself who gets tired of turn based combat. I am on a journey to beat each Final Fantasy in order and I’m very glad to have played this pixel remastered edition. It’s not my first time playing FFI but it is my first time beating the game and I do believe it was those features that sold it for me. I’ll be back to write a review on FFII when I’ve beaten it!

I do like the tap to move feature and moving diagonally. Seeing your position on the map as you move about is handy, too. Being able to boost your exp or GP up to 4x from each battle is great as is making these increase by 0x if you so choose. Turning off random encounters completely is a nice option. It’s worth noting that the more rare monsters like Tyrannosaur, Basilisk, Ochre Jelly, Iron Golem, etc. seem to appear more frequently. Even Warmech has popped up faster in my play throughs. The tweaks in graphics are just fine, but I really the magic effects—those are a big deal. The music has improved, too.
However, I truly enjoyed the bonus dungeons from the old version and am seriously disappointed they are missing from this release. Also, it seems you can’t move more than about 25 paces before a monster encounter. I remember going through an entire floor of a dungeon without an encounter and it feels this new version isn’t as random. I wonder how many random drops are left out as I have been unable to find the Deathbringer sword. Finally, there is no peninsula of power and no way of switching the magic to the mana system. This means you will never be able to cast more than 9 spells for each level. I find myself playing the old version more than this one.

Thank you so much to everyone who made this game a reality. I love everything about Final Fantasy games, the stories, the music, the emotional feelings the games evoke… everything. I will play Final Fantasy for the rest of my life. Thank you so much for these games.

As far as this version goes if I could change anything about the game it would be to make the status effects on enemies more obvious. Some effects are obvious like when an enemy is confused they will be backwards. However when an enemy is asleep or has dark there are no signifiers. I also believe the sleep status effect on enemies should last longer so that a Saboteur play style is more viable.

Thank you again to everyone at Square Enix who works hard to make these games for all of us to enjoy ☺️