Part 1: The Beginning

Come, let me tell you all a story.

A long, long time ago,



a company by the name of Squaresoft made games that weren't shitty.

This

is one such game.

We begin

in a giant fucking storm.


Weaksauce, there are huger waves at Pe'ahi right now




No, it was just a dream.


If Nobuo Uematsu's philosophy is to be believed, a dream within a dream, as it were.








I love all the little details they put into this CG. It's hard to see in a picture like this, but there are little beams of sunlight dancing along the mistclouds.




Our hero.






Sure is a shitty window color...


But we'll fix that soon enough.


This is the first room in the game, but there are lots of little things to be found.


Also, if you don't like classic blue windows, then you are a communist.


Get out of here, you communist.


"Who goes there?"


Kilika is phonetic Hawaiian for



SUDDENLY

OH BOY DRAGONS!


"hey is that a dime on the ground"


Standard tutorial battle. You get four guys who can use Steal. While it's basically impossible to die short of being clinically retarded, we move Cinna to the back row because his defense is abysmal, and when trying to steal an item at a 1/256 rate, you want all the actions you can get.


SEE


Every boss in FF9 (and most unique normal enemies, like this one) has a super-rare item that has an abysmal steal rate. The Mage Masher is a little stronger than our current Dagger, but provides an extra ability. But more on that later.

After that, just hit Attack a few times and...

Ah. It's a furry. In a fursuit.

... What

(This is what you call low-hanging fruit)


And he speaks African American Vernacular English.








"... Why?"
"uh"
"You haven't actually thought this out, have you."








"Alright, quit jokin' around!"

Keep doing this fifty times or so, and...

... another member of the Tantalus troupe shows up to scold you.


Okay, for real this time.


You gotta hand it to the localization team. They did one hell of a knockout job. Silly modern colloquialisms in a silly anachronistic setting, much better than this Xytegina shit Enix is doing these days.

And more than just that,



look at this cinematography. While it's completely in CG, someone knew what they were doing well enough to understand that this is how shot setup and progression works.








Now this is clever: it's actually a reflection of the city of Alexandria in the giant fuck-off crystal/sword/thing sticking out of the castle. Another thing you can't really appreciate unless it's in a still because shit is just moving so fast in the actual CG that you don't get a chance to gaze upon it.




THE BEGINNING

Aloha kakou, welcome everybody to Let's Play Final Fantasy IX. I'm your host, The White Dragon. You may remember me from such LPs as