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Final Fantasy XI: Chains Of Promathia for PlayStation 2 Videos >>
Final Fantasy XI: Chains Of Promathia for PlayStation 2
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Final Fantasy XI: Chains Of Promathia for PlayStation 2
328 reviews   4.48 of 5

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Sound

The best on PS1. The boss music was a little disappointing. But I love the battle music. Black Mage Village, Hilda Garde 3, Trance Kuja's music, Kuja's theme,"Your not Alone", Melodies of Life, are all great musics and the best out of any Final Fantasy!!!

Gameplay

Same as others, but with a twist. Certain characters can only use certain abilities. This cuts down on the easiness of other Final Fantasies. So, only Vivi can use black magic whil only Quina can use Blue Magic. And in the very unlikely event thhat you get bored, you can play fun minigames like Tetra Master. The final boss is the most challenging in any Fianl Fantasy game. Now the story. I got very attached to the charcters. That means I cried on some parts. Because Vivi did not fit in, and Freya can't find her boyfriend. Very emotional. The main villian looks like a complete fag however.(Is Kuja really a fag, or did Square make a mistake?) I like the ending, brings you on the brink of tears.
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Sound

OMG!!!! Best part in the game period! Very Impressed! Several good songs that stick in my mind. Most out of all of them "Your not alone!" I can listen to that all day long. It sets the setting for that sene too and it makes great battle music during those 3 fights. Love the electric guitar in it ROCK ON!! :) Others i must include, freyas theme (haha the river dancing rat LOL) (Gizamaluke's Grotto music ) also black mage village, Mount Gulug, Beatrix & Steiner theme, (when fighting together during attack on Alexandria) mystery sword, Hilda Garde airship theme. hmmm i still can't decide if i like that or the ragnorok one better. The battle theme is the best yet i say. Better than all the other ff battle themes. all the others got old and annoying but this one doesn't get old or annoying what so ever. Boss battle theme was lacking but it was ok. "Your not alone!" is the best though. OVERALL BEST MUSIC IVE HEARD FROM A FF GAME!

Gameplay

Err... what should i say. Game Play is "good" when you start to play it you love the battles and they are fun just as any other FF game. But as you go along, you get kinda mad and annoyed when your trying to do somthing and "BAM" a battle. Sometimes it makes you want to scream. Chocobo mini game is alright but its taking too long. I like the abilities and such. From ff8, i like how you once again can equip different weapons and the juntioning system of ff8 took awhile to get use to and could be confusing. Its good how certain people can do certian abilities (zidane- stealing, garnet/dagger & Eiko- white magic and summons, Vivi- Black magic and so on) Kuja is a little freaky. He looks like a she. But i heard in the Japanese version kuja is female (might explain the girlish look and the thong) I must say that i love how they made the 4 party member things. It helps in battles a lot. Trance.... BLAH. I would better prefer the old limit breaks back. I don't like trances because it is easily wasted if the enemy is killed right after the trace. Overall good gameplay.
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Summary

When I first saw Steiner in a preview in Gamepro I thought it was going to be a horrible game and told myself that I wouldn't buy it at any cost. Of course I gave in and bought it. My fears grew even further when I found out that Zidane was the main character and that he was a guy. To people who read the intruction manual and actually believed that there were no main characters that all eight were equal in ever way,I feel bad you. It was obvious to me that Zidane and Princess Garnet(Dagger) were the main characters and love interest from the start. As I begin playing I slowly forgot about Zidanes dandy clothes and Kuja's thong and got into the story. I found myself actually careing about the characters. I felt sorrow that Vivi didn't fit in regular people
and that Freya's long lost love had forgoten her.
I was a little disappointed by the story, but I almost cried when I saw the ending.
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Sound

The sound is, like in all Final Fantasy games, absolutely perfect. Not much sound effects as usual, but the music is really good. I especially like the ending theme by Emiko Shiratori.

Gameplay

It's good as usual, but it also has several disturbing gamingelements in it. For example, the chocobo hot & cold game gets really boring after you've played it like 10 times. But in order to get alot of good stuff, like many characters best weapon and stuff like that, you must play hot&cold aLOT! It must be hundreds of times before you've found all the chocographs. The story itself is good, not perfect, but good. I liked the unexpected turns in the game, of course I will not mention them here as that would ruin the gaming experience. ;)

Overall, a really good game and a worthy sequel to FFVII, play it!
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Summary

Final fantasy 9 is a great game to play and experance. The recent final fantasys were more modern and futuristic than the fist final fanatasys on nintendo so going back to the old times was good. though there was not much enphasis on the 'crystal' like in the original final fantasys. the game also has hummor instead of seriousness, which adds a good effect.

final fantasy 9 is one of the funest games i've ever played. its music is captivating, its gameplay is so damn fun(parden my french) and its graphics are clean and beautiful. compared to the first final fantasys is unfair. final fantasy 8
had graphics but wasn't much in story and 7 was the best in story but not so much in graphics. final fantasy 9 has both plus has good music to boot. over all its one of the best games i've ever played and the funnest. though if played to death, it can become tedeous.

Sound

the music and sound effects in final fantasy 9 are stunning to say the least. the songs match the current enviorment making a very good effect from the cheerfulness of alexandria to the saddness and dullness of brumencia. the music itself is very good to listen to. the chocobo music is fun to listen to and beatrixs 'loss of me' keeps you in beat. 'you're not alone' is one of my fav's in this game thought it apears only once. kujas theme is good and the ending theme is the best ending theme i've herd since... ever. all in all...5

Gameplay

final fantasys gameplay can't be beat, its simple ability system is simple and easy to understand. the ease of the system makes it much more easier to manipulate and use. the characters are also very fun to use with there own abilities, and the fact that you can use four characters instead of three makes it even better.
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Summary

Ok, IMHO, FF9 was the weakest of the PS1 FFs, but it was the most fun. Just because its the weakest doesn't mean it's bad. FF7, FF8, and FF9, are, in my opinion, the 3 greatest games of all time. (in that order) Since this site doesn't have a 'storyline' section, for reviews, I'll mention it here, after I finish what I'm saying.

FF9 was a throwback to FFs 1-6, so its not futuristic like FF7 or modern like FF8. However, Square did bring back a great quality from the old-school games: fun! This game is much more fun than FF8 or even FF7. It's just a great game. Total, I give it a 5/5. Now, on to the storyline. (the most important part out of any game.)

Fans who didn't like FF8's story but liked the stories of FF1-7 will love the story of FF9. It is very similiar to the story of FF7, (which is a good thing, considering Ff7 is the greatest story ever written) with the big plot twists that keep you on your seat. One place where the storyline fails is the villain department. This is something Square has been struggling for a while, since FF8. After FF7's great villain, the villains in FF8 and FF9 aren't very well-developed and just aren't evil the way Sephiroth was.
Besides that, the storyline is great, and could possibly be better than the story of FF8. You really get to love (and hate) the characters. So, I give storyline a 5/5.
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Sound

Well there is really not much to say about the sound I guess its good.I mean i havent really been consered about it .I dont think the soud is thatr important.But its really clear and great .Iam not trying to say the sound is bad but I dont really have much to say about sound in any game.

Gameplay

The game play as i said is great. The game is long but fun.It is also sometimes frustrating because you cant find one thing you really want to find , butwhen you do find or beat it you will fell so happy you start jumping on a bed like a crazy person.That is what i did whaen I beat a boss I tried to beat for about 3 months.There is many side quest secrets that are fun to find and could add several extra events in the game.If you really want to know how the game play is buy the game and see for your self.
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Summary

The Final Fantasy series is old and tired. Each new installment is an exerise in boredom as Square takes the same old game and dresses it up in new graphics.

With that said, I had a surprisingly good time with Final Fantasy 9. It is still quite tedious in spots and has most of the same faults of the rest of the series. None the less, Final Fantasy 9 does manage to capture some of the old fun from way back when the series was still a bit creative.

It is a real pity that Square had to move *backwards* to accomplish this, but you do what you need to do. It is an even greater pity that the next game, Final Fantasy 10, holds the dubious distinction of being the Final Fantasy game that unseated Final Fantasy 7 as "worst ever". It seems that Square has truly lost their edge, and that the fun of Final Fantasy 9 was merely a fluke.

Criticism aside, Final Fantasy 9 *is* a breath of fresh air in a dull and decrepit game series. The plot is utterly typical: small band of adventurers travel to save the world. Where it departs from the standard is the main character/hero, Zidane, who is a bandit, as well as a braggart and a womanizer. What? No moody yet noble swordsman seeking to atone for past misdeeds in service to the villain? Square! You actually thought outside the box for a change! I didn't know you had it in you!

The other characters, while mostly typical, add to the old-school fun. For instance, the white and black mages are pulled quite directly from Final Fantasy 1. The white mage even wears a white cloak with red trim for a little while...until the black mage accidentally sets it on fire. This humorous reference to the old Final Fantasy games is subversively subtle.

All in all, Final Fantasy 9 is the best Final Fantasy game to come along in quite a while. It is plagued by most of the same faults as the rest of the series, but it manages to entertain despite them. Because of its flaws, I would hesitate to recommend this game to anyone. However, I believe that it was worth my time and money.

Sound

The sound, on the other hand, is average at best. It is nothing more than the usual Final Fantasy fare, no different from the other Playstation Final Fantasy games. Indeed, some of the music and most of the sound effects are pulled quite directly from earlier games.

There are a few pieces of music that really are good, even so. A couple piano pieces in particular are really quite catchy.

Gameplay

The area where Final Fantasy 9 really gets dragged down is the gameplay. This game is typical Final Fantasy. That is to say, tedious and slow.

As is the way for most RPGs in general, and Final Fantasy in particular, the random monster battles make up a huge portion of the game. Even in the best RPGs, this gets more than a little boring. The Final Fantasy series exacerbates this problem by making the fights move very slow. They take forever to load at the start, take forever to get through, and then take forever to wind down and return to the map.

Final Fantasy 9 is no exception. If anything, the battles are even worse this time around, taking even longer to load and play through than in previous games. This is particularly irritating at certain points of the game, when you have a clock ticking and need to hurry through as fast as you can.

However, there is one saving grace to the battle system. The characters all have differing skills. Despite certain unknowledgeable people complaining about this, it is a *good* thing. For example, it is *good* to have a character who can steal (the thief) without being a powerhouse of white and/or black magic. And it is also good that your white or black mage can not steal.

The reason this is good is because the player has to think about the party and actually use some real tactics to carry the battles. This is entirely unlike Final Fantasy 7 where all the characters are exactly the same and completely interchangeable. Thought and strategy are good things to have in a RPG because they make the game more interactive. Without them, the player merely watches from the sidelines.

Games that fail to engage turn the player into just a spectator. This is not fun. Final Fantasy 7 and 10 are the most egregious examples of this in the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy 9 manages to avoid this to some degree, and that makes it worlds better than the others.

On the other hand, there are still problems with the game. Magic spells and advanced techniques are learned by equipping different items. This is handled much better than the materia system in Final Fantasy 7, but it still makes little sense. How does putting on a new hat help your Black Mage learn the Fire spell?

Still, as said, it works better than the materia debacle. Often, weapons, armor, and accessories have multiple skills that can be learned from them, but no one character is allowed to learn all those skills. This is how the materia system *should* have worked.

Then there is the Trance system. Trance replaces the limit breaks from Final Fantasy 7 and 8. For the most part, Trance is far superior to the Limit Breaks. For example: you get more than one attack with Trance. The character in Trance keeps using it until the Trance meter is empty. Another advantage is that the extra power of Trance applies to *all* your character's skills, not merely to the special techniques it unlocks. Physical attacks and magic spells become powered up as well. It offers the player a wide range of choices.

The one disadvantage to Trance is that it can not be saved for a later battle. When Trance activates, that's it and you have to use it. If any of the Trance meter is left at the end of the battle, it is lost and the meter goes down to zero when the battle ends.

This can be a major pain. More than once, I have had a monster get in one last hit and send one of my characters into Trance. Then one of my other characters strikes and ends the battle right then. The Trance is completely wasted, and the character's meter starts over from zero.

All in all, the gameplay is the weakest part of the game. But it has a couple saving graces that preve