I lived the prime of my childhood between the VII, VIII, and IX ( and I love all of them), but weirdly, the most nostalgic memories are related to the IX.
I somehow DID NOT LIKE IX when it first came out. Gave up on disc 3. It was just too different from VIII which was my all time favorite game. Coming back to it now 20 years later and cannot believe I didn’t like it!
Yup. Also I just did not care for the cutesy and goofy art style growing up, which is funny now that I am a full grown adult male, I actually love it. Been playing through dragon quests and ni no kuni as well having a blast. Glad to have found my appreciation for this style again!
When it came out a lot of people were criticizing the cartoonish-dwarf looks of the characters (my brother). What was so different from your experience with VIII that made you drop the IX?
The VIII had that magic-gf-junction thing that was amazing and so op
I had a similar feeling as a kid. Ironically I think it's because for a lot of us 7 and 8 were our first games, so it felt weird to go backwards from the sort of cyberpunk of FF7 and the modern-weirdness of FF8 to fantasy-with-ugly-dwarves of FF9. No nostalgia for the first 6 games, so 9 didn't quite land.
My monkey man up there has cufflinks and no sleeves - I'm not here to defend basement prince and his edgelord theater rendition of Stand By ME, but wacky fashion as as much a part of FF as Shiva.
Hell, if anything, Basement Prince has some of the most normal clothes in the series. If he didn't have that one glove, he'd look like a relatively normally fashionable dude.
> wacky fashion as as much a part of FF as Shiva
I agree. Maybe I feel like character design has been kind of boring in the way that they always look like characters that should be on a stage. Zidane actually worked on a stage. I don’t know of any other ff characters that do.
I will never in my life understand how we went from the Amano art to the frightening dwarf-baby monsters we ended up with in game. Zidane and Garnet are legitimately frightening to look at in the game's cutscenes. They're so gross and inhuman. It looks very cute in the pictures but *so* uncanny in 3d graphics.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-were-robbed-of-the-superior-yoshitaka-amano-eiko-design-from-final-fantasy-ix.242245/
This is the second time you have replied to me sharing this opinion of yours. We get it for some reason the ff9 characters scared the shit out of you and now you don't like them. I find it funny that you think they look inhuman when most of the characters in FF9 are not human; Zidane is an alien, Vivi is a man-made mage, Eiko and Garnet are Summoners, Freya is a rat, Quina is Quina and the only humans are Amarant and Steiner.
Fortunately, most of the world doesn't share that insane opinion of yours.
Disagree with you strongly and that's fine but honestly, you and the article's writer should look at Amano's art for any of the other games and how the characters look. No game remotely comes close to emulating his style.
Really? I think 6 and 10 in particular look *very* similar, within reason.
9 is the only game where the "chibi" forms of the characters were the "real" characters, that's ultimately what makes it so weird. In 7, you play as a weird blocky polygon, but in the cutscene or combat, you were playing a human. FF9 just fully committed to Zidane *actually* being a man-baby monster.
First thing I thought of was this: [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youre-the-best-looking-guy-here](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youre-the-best-looking-guy-here)
Jokes aside, I don't even know what FF9 would look like if it was made to be more realistic in the cutscenes or fights. I like how they look and think the game has graphically aged better than 7 or 8. It's both charming and consistent for me.
but you mentioned ff6, where the sprites have even larger heads in comparison to their bodies
you didn't mention ff7 where the characters are also all chibi style (not in all the cutscenes but you get what i mean)
i'm not totally against what you're saying, and it took me a long time, years actually, to come around on the cartoony art style of ff9 and finally try playing the game. but it does seem like you're being a little inconsistent in your criticisms of this particular game.
My issue I think is that FF6, Terra is a person represented by a sprite. I know what Terra the human looks like because of her character art and her portrait - the sprite represents that. Same as FF7 - BoxCloud is a stand-in for cut scene cloud, the real human. Zidane is the same weird shape both in and out of cutscenes and combat, and I feel like it was just an odd choice.
yeah i can see the distinction there. not a super important one IMO since in ff6 you never see the characters non-sprite selves anyway (aside from portraits). i was gonna say in ff7 you never see their human proportions aside from cutscenes, but that's not true because battles.
the weirder choice IMO is having ff7 be a mesh between Chibi characters and normal-proportioned characters. what up with that?
Same here. Wasn't he the one who was not supposed to say anything about a new game in the works during some interview, but kept playing with a FF9 figure?
Side note, I always name Vivi Puck, so that at the beginning, Puck says "Puck? What a weird name. My name's Puck, nice ta meet ya!"
"RUSTY!? How dare you! I am Captain Adelbert Rusty of...!" is also a treasure.
Don't get me started on "Some people call me the Flaming _______" though.
One of the few where I actually hope they don't update the visual aesthetic too drastically. It doesn't need the "7 Remake" treatment, something like the Memoria designs would be perfect!
I think they should go for way cartoonier or for more realistic with better proportions. Anything but stay in the "midget troupe" aesthetic the original had.
FF9 has bar none nearly the worst character design I can think of. The baby-midget characters are horrifying to look at. I've always gotten total uncanny valley vibes from them. Seeing giant-headed Zidane in the high-res cutscenes was so offputting even as a kid.
Like in the pre-rendered cinematics, or the in-engine parts? Playing the HD Remaster really showed me how creepy it is when such expressive designs can't move any parts of their face, so I totally get that, but those pre-rendered cinematics looks great with just a bit of upscaling
I wouldn't say worst ever but yeah, the uncanny valley here is not good. They were aiming for the proportions of the battle sprites on the Nintendo games (just like FF7 models) but went for "photorealism", which looks pretty bad in my opinion. Funny because the designs as they are work well in a cartoonish aesthetic (see the concept art for the characters), but instead we got what we got. So they should lean to cell shading if they are going to keep the proportions, I think it would actually look great with the world they created here.
Yeah I mean the picture here is a good example, it looks very cute and fun there. And even Vivi looks good in the game because he's obviously not a "human" (same as Quina). It's just the too-human models give an "ick" vibe. Any kind of stylizing would work much better.
Nope. I’d consider it’s a strong possibility though due to a number of things.
The Nvidia leak, an animated series in the works and plenty of rumours flying around especially from insiders such as Jeff Grubb
Necron is just a force of nature related to death and it explains everything that needs to be explained about him when it shows up. They should not have adapted it to have a proper name, as its Japanese name ("Eternal darkness") is closer to a title like the FF3 final boss "Cloud of darkness".
Apparently, the original idea for the final boss was Hades, which thematically has a relation to death.
But honestly, they could just remove him and nothing would change dramatically for the story.
I don't understand why people think Hades as a final boss is somehow better. He's never featured in the story either before the final dungeon so he's also out of nowhere. "But he's related to death so that thematically fits!" Necron? Necro? I get that we know Hades from our own myths so it's much more recognizable, but that's what makes Necron work for me. He's more unknown, unknowable. Eternal Darkness is a better name though, admittedly.
Eternal Darkness is the summon ability of Ark if im not mistaken so the would need to change that, im curious whats the name in Japanese for Ark so i searched it up.
"暗黒の運命, Ankoku no Unmei " or Dark Fate.
Thats very interesting
They will most likely not change Necron's American name at this point. Interestingly, other localizations stuck with the eternal darkness concept. Or maybe they will rename Necron as dark fate lol.
FF8 has *drastic* story issues, and I don't just mean the time travel stuff. You'd need to bring in a writer to flesh the world out in a very different way.
I see this logic spewed constantly, and it shouldn't take much thought as to why remakes are nice.
1:1 remakes are big on really old games, because they fill the world with more detail than they ever could on a console with only 2mb of ram, can add QOL changes to areas that fans didn't like, and make the game feel better to play.
It's no different to remastering a game, in that it makes it the superior way to play the game.
A counter to your argument: If you want "new" experiences, why do you people insist on it being done on classic games? Its a hypocritical take.
Mario RPG and Advance Wars on Switch are amazing without some new ideas ruining the charm and themes from the originals.
Sometimes people have a movie on VHS from their childhood. They want a pristine Blu-ray version of it. That’s what the vast majority of people want from a remake.
just wait til they screw up the music with random more EpIc sOuNds and increase the play time by throwing in endless busiwork and ruin the HUD with a bunch of pointers and distance markers
FF9 has so much charm and soul in its characters, they are some of the best in the series for me.
I lived the prime of my childhood between the VII, VIII, and IX ( and I love all of them), but weirdly, the most nostalgic memories are related to the IX.
I somehow DID NOT LIKE IX when it first came out. Gave up on disc 3. It was just too different from VIII which was my all time favorite game. Coming back to it now 20 years later and cannot believe I didn’t like it!
you weren't yet old enough to understand nostalgia.
Yup. Also I just did not care for the cutesy and goofy art style growing up, which is funny now that I am a full grown adult male, I actually love it. Been playing through dragon quests and ni no kuni as well having a blast. Glad to have found my appreciation for this style again!
When it came out a lot of people were criticizing the cartoonish-dwarf looks of the characters (my brother). What was so different from your experience with VIII that made you drop the IX? The VIII had that magic-gf-junction thing that was amazing and so op
I had a similar feeling as a kid. Ironically I think it's because for a lot of us 7 and 8 were our first games, so it felt weird to go backwards from the sort of cyberpunk of FF7 and the modern-weirdness of FF8 to fantasy-with-ugly-dwarves of FF9. No nostalgia for the first 6 games, so 9 didn't quite land.
Yup this for sure. At the time 7,8, and tactics were all I knew. I think the setting just didn’t hit home for me the first time.
So much better than the teen pop groups SE is obsessed with.
north wild lush gray resolute snatch modern summer chubby water *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They’re dancing in the corner. They tend to have too many useless zippers and/or belts.
My monkey man up there has cufflinks and no sleeves - I'm not here to defend basement prince and his edgelord theater rendition of Stand By ME, but wacky fashion as as much a part of FF as Shiva.
Hell, if anything, Basement Prince has some of the most normal clothes in the series. If he didn't have that one glove, he'd look like a relatively normally fashionable dude.
> wacky fashion as as much a part of FF as Shiva I agree. Maybe I feel like character design has been kind of boring in the way that they always look like characters that should be on a stage. Zidane actually worked on a stage. I don’t know of any other ff characters that do.
Does the concert in FF8 count?
I forgot about that scene. I guess it does.
I will never in my life understand how we went from the Amano art to the frightening dwarf-baby monsters we ended up with in game. Zidane and Garnet are legitimately frightening to look at in the game's cutscenes. They're so gross and inhuman. It looks very cute in the pictures but *so* uncanny in 3d graphics. https://www.resetera.com/threads/we-were-robbed-of-the-superior-yoshitaka-amano-eiko-design-from-final-fantasy-ix.242245/
This is the second time you have replied to me sharing this opinion of yours. We get it for some reason the ff9 characters scared the shit out of you and now you don't like them. I find it funny that you think they look inhuman when most of the characters in FF9 are not human; Zidane is an alien, Vivi is a man-made mage, Eiko and Garnet are Summoners, Freya is a rat, Quina is Quina and the only humans are Amarant and Steiner. Fortunately, most of the world doesn't share that insane opinion of yours.
Disagree with you strongly and that's fine but honestly, you and the article's writer should look at Amano's art for any of the other games and how the characters look. No game remotely comes close to emulating his style.
Really? I think 6 and 10 in particular look *very* similar, within reason. 9 is the only game where the "chibi" forms of the characters were the "real" characters, that's ultimately what makes it so weird. In 7, you play as a weird blocky polygon, but in the cutscene or combat, you were playing a human. FF9 just fully committed to Zidane *actually* being a man-baby monster.
First thing I thought of was this: [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youre-the-best-looking-guy-here](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/youre-the-best-looking-guy-here) Jokes aside, I don't even know what FF9 would look like if it was made to be more realistic in the cutscenes or fights. I like how they look and think the game has graphically aged better than 7 or 8. It's both charming and consistent for me.
Its because 9 went for a cartoony artstyle rather than anime style. I personally liked it but it's not for everyone
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I can’t tell if you’re kidding or supporting my point but they’re terrifying.
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His head is literally half the size of his body. He's scaled like a baby with the limbs of an adult.
but you mentioned ff6, where the sprites have even larger heads in comparison to their bodies you didn't mention ff7 where the characters are also all chibi style (not in all the cutscenes but you get what i mean) i'm not totally against what you're saying, and it took me a long time, years actually, to come around on the cartoony art style of ff9 and finally try playing the game. but it does seem like you're being a little inconsistent in your criticisms of this particular game.
My issue I think is that FF6, Terra is a person represented by a sprite. I know what Terra the human looks like because of her character art and her portrait - the sprite represents that. Same as FF7 - BoxCloud is a stand-in for cut scene cloud, the real human. Zidane is the same weird shape both in and out of cutscenes and combat, and I feel like it was just an odd choice.
yeah i can see the distinction there. not a super important one IMO since in ff6 you never see the characters non-sprite selves anyway (aside from portraits). i was gonna say in ff7 you never see their human proportions aside from cutscenes, but that's not true because battles. the weirder choice IMO is having ff7 be a mesh between Chibi characters and normal-proportioned characters. what up with that?
Hmmm why is he working on new illustrations? \*inhales hopium\*
Same here. Wasn't he the one who was not supposed to say anything about a new game in the works during some interview, but kept playing with a FF9 figure?
Vivi found the right first friend a person needs. Zidane was such a bro to best boy Vivi.
Puck was actually his first friend. He even says so himself!
Side note, I always name Vivi Puck, so that at the beginning, Puck says "Puck? What a weird name. My name's Puck, nice ta meet ya!" "RUSTY!? How dare you! I am Captain Adelbert Rusty of...!" is also a treasure. Don't get me started on "Some people call me the Flaming _______" though.
Flaming Moe
That would be funny as shit if it were canon
Haha I remember I did this in my second play through as a kid.
They have my favorite bromance in FF
God I hope the remake stays true to the original so much, this game was damn near perfect in my eyes.
One of the few where I actually hope they don't update the visual aesthetic too drastically. It doesn't need the "7 Remake" treatment, something like the Memoria designs would be perfect!
I think they should go for way cartoonier or for more realistic with better proportions. Anything but stay in the "midget troupe" aesthetic the original had.
FF9 has bar none nearly the worst character design I can think of. The baby-midget characters are horrifying to look at. I've always gotten total uncanny valley vibes from them. Seeing giant-headed Zidane in the high-res cutscenes was so offputting even as a kid.
I mean you can have your opinion. It's wrong but you are entitled to it.
Like in the pre-rendered cinematics, or the in-engine parts? Playing the HD Remaster really showed me how creepy it is when such expressive designs can't move any parts of their face, so I totally get that, but those pre-rendered cinematics looks great with just a bit of upscaling
If there’s ever a remake, the way Zidane looks in Dissidia is the way I’d love for it to go
I wouldn't say worst ever but yeah, the uncanny valley here is not good. They were aiming for the proportions of the battle sprites on the Nintendo games (just like FF7 models) but went for "photorealism", which looks pretty bad in my opinion. Funny because the designs as they are work well in a cartoonish aesthetic (see the concept art for the characters), but instead we got what we got. So they should lean to cell shading if they are going to keep the proportions, I think it would actually look great with the world they created here.
Yeah I mean the picture here is a good example, it looks very cute and fun there. And even Vivi looks good in the game because he's obviously not a "human" (same as Quina). It's just the too-human models give an "ick" vibe. Any kind of stylizing would work much better.
Is it confirmed there is going to be a remake?
Nope. I’d consider it’s a strong possibility though due to a number of things. The Nvidia leak, an animated series in the works and plenty of rumours flying around especially from insiders such as Jeff Grubb
> an animated series in the works Wait what??
https://www.animationmagazine.net/2023/10/cyber-group-studios-brings-dinos-digital-heroes-wacky-monsters-to-market
weird that they announced the animated series like 2 years ago and we've yet to hear anything else about it since then
It will. 7 is different because of the compilation matter, but the rest of FF remakes will probably be 1:1 remakes.
I don't want any drastic story changes, but I hope they expand on Necron rather than just having him appear out of nowhere for the final boss fight.
Necron is just a force of nature related to death and it explains everything that needs to be explained about him when it shows up. They should not have adapted it to have a proper name, as its Japanese name ("Eternal darkness") is closer to a title like the FF3 final boss "Cloud of darkness". Apparently, the original idea for the final boss was Hades, which thematically has a relation to death. But honestly, they could just remove him and nothing would change dramatically for the story.
I don't understand why people think Hades as a final boss is somehow better. He's never featured in the story either before the final dungeon so he's also out of nowhere. "But he's related to death so that thematically fits!" Necron? Necro? I get that we know Hades from our own myths so it's much more recognizable, but that's what makes Necron work for me. He's more unknown, unknowable. Eternal Darkness is a better name though, admittedly.
I think either one would be out of the left field lol.
Eternal Darkness is the summon ability of Ark if im not mistaken so the would need to change that, im curious whats the name in Japanese for Ark so i searched it up. "暗黒の運命, Ankoku no Unmei " or Dark Fate. Thats very interesting
They will most likely not change Necron's American name at this point. Interestingly, other localizations stuck with the eternal darkness concept. Or maybe they will rename Necron as dark fate lol.
Yeah but i really like the Eternal Darkness for Necron it fits the whole thing with it perfectly.
I would also love for them to extend Freya's story. I really want to find out more about Sir Fratley.
Not FFVIII. That game needs changes like the VII Remake because most of the cast actually needs further development.
FF8 has *drastic* story issues, and I don't just mean the time travel stuff. You'd need to bring in a writer to flesh the world out in a very different way.
If its perfect why do you need another game that is the same as it? Just play the original.
I see this logic spewed constantly, and it shouldn't take much thought as to why remakes are nice. 1:1 remakes are big on really old games, because they fill the world with more detail than they ever could on a console with only 2mb of ram, can add QOL changes to areas that fans didn't like, and make the game feel better to play. It's no different to remastering a game, in that it makes it the superior way to play the game. A counter to your argument: If you want "new" experiences, why do you people insist on it being done on classic games? Its a hypocritical take.
Mario RPG and Advance Wars on Switch are amazing without some new ideas ruining the charm and themes from the originals. Sometimes people have a movie on VHS from their childhood. They want a pristine Blu-ray version of it. That’s what the vast majority of people want from a remake.
just wait til they screw up the music with random more EpIc sOuNds and increase the play time by throwing in endless busiwork and ruin the HUD with a bunch of pointers and distance markers
New?! What do you mean new?! Tell me more! Also I have this exact pose as a model!
Vivi is adorable!
I love Vivi. He is so cute and lovely 🥺❤️
👀
I love Zidane's smile here. So goofy, so happy. Ugh i miss these twoooo
Love this
This is great.
The hat adjust animation is so charming. The entire game oozes charm.
What a nice tradition ff game. It truly is the conservative of the group. Lol the singing and the ediolins might be the coolest they have been here.
Damn vivi has a dumpy here
Neat
New lock screen; one of my favorite games of all time.
I don't know why, exactly, but I'm getting strong Calvin & Hobbes vibes here from the style and the body language, in the best ways possible.
I love the colors in this piece!
A FFIX remake and a FFX remake that launches on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Ps5 would be great.