It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do

So I've spent about three hours with the new Steam version of Final Fantasy IX and my first impressions are extremely positive. Square-Enix is not known for their ports on PC so I was a bit worried about what I would find here but so far I'm happy with it.

Look at those resolutions!

Something I wasn't expecting with this update were several decently substantial changes that came along with all of the modernization enhancements common with these types of projects. You've got your resolution settings going up to 1080 (what I'm playing it on thanks to my new laptop!), controller support (which actually changes button prompts this time which is incredibly useful during the quick time events this game has), and updated graphical sprites which were all expected but masterfully done all the same. If I have one complaint about the graphical enhancements it's that only the characters were redone in higher resolutions so they sometimes stand out against the lower res backgrounds or unrefined characters. It's not as glaring as the PC port of Type-0 but same basic idea.

The other changes I'm talking about are minor but welcome. In the original game, you could find things on the ground by walking around and hitting X a whole bunch in hopes that the character will find an item. Now, whenever there is anything of interest to your character, an exclamation mark appears above his/her head. While some may be irritated by this modernization, I won't miss running into walls constantly as I mash the X button. Also, on top of the standard controller support, they actually made sure that all controls are completely re-mappable. Finally, they appear to have added a few tutorial screens that I don't recall seeing in the original. This is something I could do without as tutorial screens have been a pet peeve of mine for a while but hey, that's the way the world is going and I know I'm in the minority on that issue.

Just in case I'm too dumb to figure out how cursors work.

 There are some other changes too like optional boosters (read: cheats) that work similarly to how Final Fantasy VIII on PC had it but with more robust options such as no encounter modes, maximum Gil and other things. I won't be using any of these for my playthrough but I know some will appreciate being able to blaze through the story quickly.

Otherwise, things are so far pretty much the same as in the original. Quirks and all. I haven't delved too much into the battle system so there is still a ton to see and I look forward to every second of it. I realized I haven't spent much time talking about the background of this game so I'll probably get into that in my next post. For now, enjoy this scene showing off some of the new character models. They're pretty great!

Game on!

Try giving him the wrong answer 64 times and see what happens. No joke.

Oh Hi! Fancy Seeing You Here

This may come as a surprise but as it turns out, I didn't play Final Fantasy IX! I know, I know. It's a major shocker to everyone. I believe I did turn the game on again once after my last post but I didn't get far. The thing was, that lag that occurred whenever battles started became just too much to handle. I couldn't take it anymore. Imagine playing any RPG with random battles but instead of the standard load times, it took 20 seconds to load. The game was playable but not in any fun sort of way. Then there was the promise of a better tomorrow.

You see, at the point of my last blog, I was fully intending on getting a new laptop. One with much more gaming strength than what I had. So, I quietly tabled Final Fantasy IX until I got my new laptop. Then that kind of got dragged out longer than I expected. But now, I have my new laptop and it's gorgeous!

My exact laptop against my perfectly white wall and table!

Not to gush too much about it, it's got an Intel i7 processor running an Nvidia Geforce 940M graphics card. Needless to say, it's much better equipped to deal with emulation than my previous laptop which used integrated video processing on an i3. However, by the point I got this, there was another new promise. One granted to us by the RPG gods on high from the fabled land of Japan. A Final Fantasy IX Steam port was coming! Screenshots would again be a possibility and thus, my blogs would no longer look like giant blocks of text.

Then it came out on Android/iOS but a Steam port was nowhere to be found. I asked Square-Enix and received the nebulous response of, "coming soon". Well... that was a bummer. But I didn't want to fight with those damned PSX emulators again, risking further problems since I knew that as soon as I managed it, the port would be released because karma.

And so, I waited... and waited... and waited... and looked at the viability of playing it on my Android tablet... and waited some more. But the fabled day has arrived for a notification on my phone that came in not 30 minutes ago has told me that Final Fantasy IX has finally been released on Steam! Needless to say, the game finished downloading about halfway through writing this blog and I am just about ready to jump in. I'll have to replay the first few hours but it should be well worth it for decent performance with the game.

So, even though it's almost a year later, nothing from my previous blog posts has changed. I still haven't read or heard any spoilers about this game's story and am still excited to experience this game for the (sort of) first time. You can look forward to my first post about Final Fantasy IX very soon.

Game on!