FINAL FANTASY IX

The writing doesn't suffer for this however, and it does keep the story moving at a good pace; Though I find there is a lull once you hit the end of Disc 2 and the story takes a pretty big turn that's somewhat divisive within the fan base.

It's tougher to grind character levels in this one which I gladly welcomed, because I found myself leveling up too easily in FF7 and 8.

The story feels authentic to Final Fantasy, beat by beat, the combat, the characters, the mechanics, the minigames... everything screams “this is what a Final Fantasy game should look like”.

I remember when it came out not wanting to play it because it looked too childish for me and I had loved the slightly serious/realistic style and graphics of FF8.

The art direction, sound design, and music are stunning and represent some of the most beautiful art you'll see on the PSX, with the vast world of IX rendered beautifully through a mix of paintings and 3D rendered backgrounds layered to immerse the characters and featuring cleverly animated portions that prevent the world feeling as static as VII and VIII did.

A pretty standard combat system but it does the job and some pretty in depth character customization and some pretty interesting achievements to go for.