Final Fantasy 9 (FF9). Another lead in of just the games title. This is an interesting title to me. This is the game that would follow FF8, a game that Jen and I loved, but much like Star Wars with Episode 1, had fans that lost their minds that it wasn’t the previous entry but, you know, cooler. Whatever cooler meant, which back then usually meant, “darker”. Which itself meant nothing but the complaining nerds wanting it to be something that gave them a sense of feeling cooler for having watched. Adding love stories or Jar Jar Binks, were some of the first things to then be hit back with internet backlash.

Because this phenomenon was new, studios seemed to overreact thinking the minority of imdb posters must be consistent were their whole market base. Interesting that now they assume all negative feedback is from this minority, what I crazy pendulum swing. But that is an issue for people to get mad over elsewhere, not here. The point we are making is that Square soft did a quick recoil and made this Final Fantasy nostalgia title they had been working on, from what I recall wasn’t going to be in the mainline of games, into the quick next year follow up.

Promising a return to its roots, we regress back to 3D models that look like fancier concepts of the SNES sprites. In theory this should be great, but there is something to the fact that FF7 and 8 moved the bar forward, so we don’t want a total regression. Whatever, in the end after hearing all the stories, Jen and I still pre-ordered a copy from the local Gamestop. It couldn’t be that weird to go back to older titles after FF8.

Well, maybe. When I did come out in the winter of 2000, Jen never really played it. I started in on it with some excitement, but then never really made time to continue on with it. In fact, it started collecting some dust. Jen in fact went back to playing FF8, and I went back to wanting her to play FF7. The title wasn’t the great next game that was going to bound me with her like the older games did with other friends.

I didn’t really get down to beating the game until after I left San Diego in 2001. Eventually I trudged through the ending at the L street house. Verdict, it was okay. And I tried, I really tried to have it feel as “cool” I mean dark and real, just kidding. I did try to have happy feelings for it, but it was the first time I actually felt kind of disappointed in the franchise. I liked 7 and 8 enough I didn’t want a 3D FF6 to come next, I wanted FF9 and I didn’t get it.

So, it puts the game in a weird place. Where I didn’t hate it, I have watched playthroughs later on in life, I have some merchandise, but the game still always fills me with the idea of lack of potential and that maybe this was the turning point, where making a fun fantasy game wasn’t the main goal and appeasing the most marketable crowd was.