It's the 3rd greatest game of all-time, and 1 of the few video games that actively aspires to be high art. I've gushed enough about it.
*copies and pastes pet theory about it here*
1. It has the series' best music. I can provide favorites if you like, but I think The Place I'll Come Home To, Someday is a chorale that tops even V's Distant Home. That it's used and remixed so effectively is a bonus. There are so many fantastic songs that are only used once that I feel Uematsu's just playing me (This Blade Is My Life is a perfect early example). When he made Sakura Note's soundtrack in that style, he could only muster the standard 35-or-so songs.
2. It has the best cast in the series. That's up for debate, of course, but even though I really love, say, Freya, it's mostly the uniform strength of the characters that makes the cast appealing. Even Beatrix delivers. The world's fully realized, too.
3. It has the BEST ability system. I love that it's been used again. It provides linearity and flexibility. It challenges you to fight smarter when using weaker or disadvantageous equipment. There are tons of abilities. I adore it. It's my favorite RPG ability system, genuinely. It also lends itself well to strategic battling.
4. Insert the usual praise for the aesthetics, town design, and other miscellany here.
5. It's the smartest game in the series (use "RPG" everytime I say "game in the series," too).
Final Fantasy IX is absolutely an existentialist examination of Final Fantasy and of human life. The creators (unwittingly?) formed a moving meditation on the player's and the franchise's existences. Archetypal party members and their experiences (below, so you know I'm not constructing something of nothing), the spectacular final boss, the profoundly meaningful bookends - each slice uses the series' symbols, 19th century Russian novel-style, to examine the ways in which we define the self. The series, torn between 2 traditions, turned its questioning back on itself: "Does Final Fantasy's future sever it from its past?" This is not to say that Chocobo Hot And Cold is a Kierkegaardian metaphor for repetition leading to the self, of course.
Zidane: Virtue - You don't need a reason to help people.
Instead of living to manipulate, he lives to preserve and serve, becoming his true self (literally) in the process.
Vivi: Sorrow - How do you prove that you exist...? Maybe we don't exist...
He doesn't know whether he has a soul and he never finds out, but since no one knows for sure, we can only hope that we acted rightly (which his kind children prove).
Adelbert: Dilemma - Having sworn fealty, must I spend my life in servitude?
He doesn't know whether one can truly become one's self if he lives to serve others, but he comes to understand that servitude is the best mindset for achieving that.
Sarah: Devotion - Someday I will be Queen, but I will always be myself.
She has an identity crisis twice, but learns that her actions define her self, not some hypothetical potential to act.
Freya: Despair - To be forgotten is worse than death.
Does experience cease to exist if no one's around to recognize it (including the person with whom you experienced it)? No, to live is to be forgotten, and the actions you do exist ouside of time. She's my favorite.
Quina: Indulgence - I do what I want! You have problem!?
The aesthetic person who only lives for sensory pleasure leaves the party to pursue pleasure throughout the game, but ends the game using her love to care for others.
Eiko: Solitude - I don't wanna be alone anymore...
We can only experience repetition in relation to other souls, so the girl who tries to destroy a repetition (between Garnet and Zidane) ends up finding her own (her new family).
Amarant: Arrogance - The only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty.
The nihilist who lives by recollection (i.e. hateful of the future, recollecting the past) instead of repetition (less exciting repeated experience to generate a meaningful life) learns to repeat (with Lani).)
The existentialism isn't formalized, but it is sketched and filled in a way that doesn't make this overbaked theorizing. That's especially true because it's also unambiguously about the existence of Final Fantasy itself. There are the obvious postmodern references to the player-game relationship, especially the opening and ending. The 1st run of the play is "faked" to deceive the crowd (the audience), while the 2nd alters the play (the video game) in order to directly relate to the crowd. There are loads of references to past games. The final boss, Necron, is a masterstroke. He doesn't just attempt to kill the characters, but to wipe the world out of existence. The entire game (Genomes/Black Mages without "souls," lost memories, essentially everything listed above) is a metacommentary on RPGs in this new age and how Final Fantasy fits into them. If it changes, is it still Final Fantasy? Will past entries cease to matter if it does change? If it perpetuates, will it remain unique or will it become another "soulless" series? Necron attempts to prove that Final Fantasy cannot last without its Nintendo/Super Nintendo trappings and tropes, while you struggle to revive its spirit. I could go on, but it's even more plainly obvious than the human-related stuff I listed.
All of it's couched in a traditional tale that's genuinely moving. The opening/closing bookends are legitimately mature storytelling. I still can't believe that Square did something so daring with its flagship series. It remained fantastic when I was 13 and didn't understand it, but I replayed it at 16 and suddenly saw how they fed the player every double meaning.
6. Charm is, by far, the most important thing in video games. All of my favorite series and games have it. This game has charm and care etched into every detail.
...Most people just like it because it has a sense of humor about itself, though.
I'm so sorry, but I HAVE to post it every time.
*salutes*