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[Xanonano]

Developer: Squaresoft/Silicon Studio Thailand
Price (on Steam): $20.99/€20.99/£15.99
Release: Out now (finally)
Platforms: Steam, iOS, Android
Achievements

No longer doomed to be lost in oblivion, Final Fantasy IX at last gets a PC release after a wait of only 16 years. One of the best-loved games in the series, FFIX eschews the futuristic aesthetic seen in the previous PSX entries in favour of a medieval world of airships and castles. The light-hearted tone only adds to the charm of the world and its inhabitants, without stopping the story from getting serious at times. It has a memorable and varied cast of characters, each with their own abilities and strengths in battle. In-depth minigames such as Chocobo Hot & Cold and Tetra Master mean there's plenty to do when you're tired of battling monsters.

Zidane is a member of the Tantalus Theater Troupe, who are travelling to Alexandria to perform the popular play, 'I Want to be Your Canary'. But the performance is actually a ruse to achieve their real objective of kidnapping Queen Brahne... err, Princess Garnet. Meanwhile, a young boy named Vivi is sneaking into the castle to see the play. Needless to say, the abduction does not quite go to plan, and pretty soon they all end up on the run and lost in the forest, thus beginning an epic journey of adventure, heartbreak and discovering what it means to live.

Updated character models!

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New

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New

High resolution cutscenes!

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New

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New

Speed boosting features!
• Skippable cutscenes
• Auto-battle (J/RT during battle)
• Disable pre-battle fly-bys (found in Config menu)
• High speed mode (5x all movement speeds, both in and out of battle) (F1/RB on pause menu)
• Always full ATB/Trance/HP/MP (F2/LB on pause menu)
• 9999 damage (F3/LT on pause menu)
• No random encounters (F4/RT on pause menu)
• Master abilities (equipping an item automatically unlocks its abilities permanently) (F5/in Config menu)
• Level and magic stone max (F6/in Config menu)
• Gil max (F7/in Config menu)

Original music!
Thankfully, the music hasn't been replaced with knockoff midi versions this time. Here are a few samples of the soundtrack's greatness:
Swords of Fury
Over the Hill
Zidane's Theme
Something to Protect

Why does Zidane keep running to the right without pressing anything?
You'll need to unplug the controller and plug it in after starting the game.

How does the autosave work?
It seems to save on every screen transition. This is separate from the standard save system, which means that if you use a save point, using the Continue option will actually return you to where you entered the screen before you use it. You'd have to use the Load Game option to actually load the save you made.

How can I adjust the speed of the battles?
Byvar has made some mods that allow you to either slow down the high-speed mode, or speed up the default mode. You can download them here.

 

[dc89]

Finally! One of my favourite games ever.

The only question is do I just give up on my current run (disc3) and start again on the PC?

Great OT too.

 

[Falk]

Finally! One of my favourite games ever.

The only question is do I just give up on my current run (disc3) and start again on the PC?

Great OT too.

Should finish the game then do a 100% run on PC.

Spoiler

good luck, even with fast forward lol

 

[artsi]

My favourite Final Fantasy, can't wait to play it again.

Music, story, world, characters, sidequests, all is just perfect.

 

[Magnus]

That's awesome. Finally. The backgrounds aren't magically restored from high res sources discovered in the last few months, are they?

 

[GinoFelino]

*sniff*

Hello old friend.

Spoiler

Hope to see you on PS4 soon

 

[Kyonashi]

So as someone who has never played this title but has heard the load times are pretty horrific, particularly getting into battle, have they fixed that or do you have to just stick the 3x speed cheat on every time you get into a battle?

The new character model updates looks fantastic! I'll still probably wait for the PS4 port though.

 

[Robin64]

So as someone who has never played this title but has heard the load times are pretty horrific, particularly getting into battle, have they fixed that or do you have to just stick the 3x speed cheat on every time you get into a battle?

You can also turn off the initial camera pan that battles have.

 

[Aurumaethera]

The graphical improvements are totally gorgeous, but it's worth noting that the Steam version uses the Mobile port's UI, which, in battles particularly, is pretty unpleasant to look at, largely because it's big enough to cover a chunk of the action.

Here's hoping for a UI mod!

 

[Falk]

So as someone who has never played this title but has heard the load times are pretty horrific, particularly getting into battle, have they fixed that or do you have to just stick the 3x speed cheat on every time you get into a battle?

You can completely disable the flyover that the camera does at the start of each battle, which already helps on its own, but if you're in a hurry you might as well set ATB speed to max and fast forward anyway.

 

[Aurumaethera]

So as someone who has never played this title but has heard the load times are pretty horrific, particularly getting into battle, have they fixed that or do you have to just stick the 3x speed cheat on every time you get into a battle?

The new character model updates looks fantastic! I'll still probably wait for the PS4 port though.

Like Robin64 said, the battle pan can be removed, and that accounted for 90% of the irritation waiting for battles to start.

 

[Kyne]

Ooo, soft...

 

[Lanf]

FF IX released and they don't expect me at work before Monday! These will be 4 glorious days.

 

[-MD-]

So glad this finally made it to PC, I loved it back in the day.

 

[Renmyra]

An extra 20% off on GMG with code APR20. The game is ~7GB, quite a lot compared to FFVII's 1.2GB and FFVIII's 1.7GB.

 

[Famassu]

Finally this game isn't a slog to play through and it can shine as it always had the potential to.

 

[Omnicent]

I know what I'll be playing tonight. Been a long wait, but finally it is time to kill Ozma again.

 

[syndrom101]

So how do you activate the boosters. I've found 3 of them in the options menu, but couldn't find the other 4? What am I missing?

 

[Enthus]

Does this game not have Steam backgrounds? If so, that's a shame. I've been rocking the Kain Highwind one since FFIV came out and I'd like to change it up a bit.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

So how do you activate the boosters. I've found 3 of them in the options menu, but couldn't find the other 4? What am I missing?

Pause the game, and each one is tied to a trigger button. Speed boost is R1, but I forget what the others are.

 

[Isaccard]

Port report?

 

[syndrom101]

Pause the game, and each one is tied to a trigger button. Speed boost is R1, but I forget what the others are.

Oh I see, thank you.

 

[dawid]

Will the boosts disable achievements?

 

[Falk]

Port report?

Gonna self-quote here from other thread:

Okay, impressions:

Mouse support! Doesn't do everything, but you can click anywhere to move there, then click thought bubbles and menu selections to interact with them, and do battles completely with mouse.

Battles:
- Camera and animations at 15FPS, UI (ATB, damage numbers) refreshes much faster at refresh rate or 60fps (i'm not bothering to change my refresh rate around to test this).
- Speeding up or skipping battles deals with my biggest gripe with replaying FFIX

Music:
- True to PSX version. Thankfully avoided the shenanigans that VII and VIII Steam had at launch. Maybe not having a prior PC version is a blessing in disguise, hahaha

Graphics:
- Updated models REALLY pop
- I'm pretty sure the FMVs, or at least some of them, and at least the intro, are higher reso than the PSX encodes. You're welcome to make your own conclusion from screenies below
- Backgrounds are upscaled, still has some tiling issues. Oh well

Definitely looking forward to sinking time into this again. I dunno if I'll ever have enough time to do the cheevo grind but I need to play this again at some point.

Screenshots: Sorry, was playing in a 1600x900 window, so no 1080p. edit: I don't' know why I wasn't just playing in a 4:3 window, heh. Oh well, at least the shots are useful for people asking how widescreen is handled.

More on the enhanced mobile/Steam UI: Interactions show up this way now

You can tap (or click, w/ mouse) on cards to play cards, etc.

 

[Mental Atrophy]

Pause the game, and each one is tied to a trigger button. Speed boost is R1, but I forget what the others are.

They're also attached to the function keys in the keyboard. F1 was speed, I think. Don't remember the rest.

Also, regarding the port quality... The analog stick isn't fully supported. It's locked to the same eight, relative directions as the d-pad is. If you're like me, it's very disorienting to press the stick straight up and see your character walk at a 120-degree angle or whatever the relative direction happens to be for that specific scene. It bothers the shit out of me.

 

[Yarbskoo]

Finally. I look forward to hearing the impressions, and when I replay it I'm sure this will be the version I use.

 

[artsi]

Will the boosts disable achievements?

You could even get PS4 trophies with FF7 when you used them, so I would be surprised if this was the case.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Will the boosts disable achievements?

They do not. In fact, turning on the level 99 boost instantly gives you the achievement for hitting max level.

 

[ChaosSmurf]

Original music!
Thankfully, the music hasn't been replaced with knockoff midi versions this time. Here are a few samples of the soundtrack's greatness:
Swords of Fury
Over the Hill
Zidane's Theme
Something to Protect

I think this is the part most likely to lead to me playing it through again. Personal favourite (probably spoilers in comments).

 

[Copper]

Wish they would have downscaled the UI for PC. Is it really nessasary to take up a quarter of the screen? No 16:9 is kind of a let down too.

 

[Lime]

I hope this means that Final Fantasy Tactics HD will make its way to Steam as well.

 

[epmode]

I hope this means that Final Fantasy Tactics HD will make its way to Steam as well.

Yeah, I'd happily buy this again. It's a pretty good port.

 

[Nakazato]

Best FF

 

[Sesuadra]

Probably one of the best translations into German I've ever played <3 also the best FF game for me

 

[TheTux]

BTW what's up with the stealth release?

 

[Makoto Yuki]

About time.

 

[Omnicent]

Man I love this game.
I look foward to doing the first Beatrix fight again. It's my favorite fight.

The point leading up to it when entering Burmecia, the rain, the destruction, the atmosphe, battle music, all leading to the end of disc one.

It's engrained in my mind (also the fact the Beatrix kicked my ass the first time. I was not ready for what she was dishing out).

Anyone else have that one battle in FFIX they will always remember?

 

[Caffeine]

its funny i originally had 7 & 8 on pc and was always mad they never brought 9 lol and here it is.

 

[KojiKnight]

Do we have any proof at all that the source code DID survive? I mean, even if it did... how useable would it really be? We're talking code that was built for a PS1 dev kit and may have even been written in pure machine code... It would undoubtedly have to be completely rewritten anyways.

In fact, design documents would likely have been much more useful for 'porting' than the actual original source in this case (unless the source code was heavily annotated)... And judging by the higher rendered cutscenes, it's likely that a lot of this stuff was properly archived unlike older games.

 

[Syntsui]

I'm almost crying, can't wait to get home and play my favorite game of all time without it's only flaw.

 

[Falk]

Man I love this game.
I look foward to doing the first Beatrix fight again. It's my favorite fight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V9jZ9FFh7o#t=30s

 

[Meciu]

I hope this means that Final Fantasy Tactics HD will make its way to Steam as well.

A man can dream..., but we'll see.

 

[TheChaos0]

I'm still surprised how good the game and the cutscenes look. This was on the PS1 dammit!

Shame, I've played this game to death, aside from the speedrun thing but I'm not bothering with that.

 

[transience]

Has anyone tried to play this on lower-end hardware? Those specs are surprisingly high for a PS1 port, enhanced and all. My crappy video card Radeon HD 6520G) is lower than the min specs but I can play 360/PS3 games no problem.

 

[Falk]

It's a Steam game, you can always refund.

(Granted, the first two hours might not be nearly as demanding as later content in something like a JRPG)

 

[ZeroX03]

These new models are gorgeous.

Looking forward to see what modders do with background upscalers (I know lots of people are against it, thankfully are optional) because they're really the only things that standout. The characters and cutscenes look great.

e: yoooooooooo high speed mode

 

[Caffeine]

Has anyone tried to play this on lower-end hardware? Those specs are surprisingly high for a PS1 port, enhanced and all. My crappy video card Radeon HD 6520G) is lower than the min specs but I can play 360/PS3 games no problem.

gilibertify on steam forums says it runs on his hp stream 11 with 64MB video ram

 

[Mental Atrophy]

Has anyone tried to play this on lower-end hardware? Those specs are surprisingly high for a PS1 port, enhanced and all. My crappy video card Radeon HD 6520G) is lower than the min specs but I can play 360/PS3 games no problem.

It runs well on my Surface Pro 3. Throttled i5 at 1.9 GHz and an integrated Intel 4400 GPU. So I can't imagine it having performance issues on too many systems.

 

[TheDarkKnight774]

The steam page says only partial controller support. I want to play this via steam link/BIg Picture Mode. What makes it partial?

 

[Hesh]

Oh man, I can't wait to hear Kuja's Theme again.

Goosebumps.