Final Fantasy IX is well-polished and well-rounded Final Fantasy. Perhaps the best Final Fantasy of the previous generation.
By "previous generation", I meant FF9 was last Final Fantasy to draw 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds. FF7 was the first Final Fantasy to do that, and the result was vastly more spectacular backgrounds compared to the tiled 2D graphics of FF6, at a cost of losing the pixel-perfect character expressions seen in FF6. Perhaps 3D graphics just wasn't meant to be seen in low resolution screens of the day but FF7 made a valiant attempt nonetheless, and then FF8 made things worse by trading the few available pixels for better body proportions. But FF9 learned from everything that came before it, kept the beautiful backgrounds, went back to the exaggerated body proportions, and pushed the limits as far as it could with better textures and far superior animation. It was a truly beautiful game with expressive characters, and it didn't have much of the dizzying camera work that dominated the fully 3D games that came later.
The superior character animation also came with superior dialogues, which came in very dynamic dialogue boxes that follow each speaker, plus overlapping dialogues for crowd banter. The contents of the dialogues were even better, including some serious dialogues that reflect on life, mixed with some silly dialogues that are pure comic gold. FF9 have some of the best characters in the series and lots of memorable lines to go with them. All these personalities and dialogues are linked together in a grand story that paid tribute to memories of all the Final Fantasy games that came before it, a story that is worth following to the end where the significance of the crystal in the title text is revealed to the patient players.
Some patience and perseverance is needed to reach the end due to the battles being more difficult than average. Central to the battle experience is an ability system, which is quite elegant in its simplicity, unlike the complex materia combos of FF7 or the level up bonus of FF6. It's also very gratifying since abilities are usable immediately with the right equipment, and grinding is only needed to make the abilities permanent. The difficulty with battles comes from the fact that abilities are restricted to specific character roles, which meant players need to be more strategic in how they assemble their parties and skills, unlike FF6 where the characters are more interchangeable and overpowering. Also, there isn't a defend-against-all-ailment type of accessory despite the increased number of bad statuses (ribbons in FF9 are much weaker than they were in FF6). Finally, FF9 tries hard add variety to battles, such as reversing all stats in Ipsen's Heritage to encourage players to use their weaker characters and weapons, and generally the game was made such that a single setup and strategy is unlikely to work for all battles. The battles present a hurdle for players who are more interested in progressing through the story, but overall they made the game more fun. There are also some optional bosses for players looking for the extra challenge.
Besides optional battles, there are a lot of optional games and side quests available in FF9, larger ones include a card game and digging for Chocobo's treasures, and lots of small ones such as a statue game and a shuffle game. And for item collectors, FF9 comes with a new system of combining lesser items to forge new items, which often require having bought and keep multiple copies of the same weapon from early on in the game. Given all these detail, I would say I probably saw less than 90% of the game on the first time playing through. It's possible to reach the ending in less than one day of real time, but for people who prefer to explore the game slowly, FF9 is a very large game with a great variety.
The best part of FF9 is perhaps the soundtrack, and this is really the reason why I started playing FF9. Few years ago I bought the Final Fantasy Guitar Solo Collection and have been slowly making progress in practicing those songs until finally getting to FF9 in recent months. The first song selected for FF9 was "Vamo Alla Flamenco" which was very much a song made for the guitar. I felt inspired enough that I just had to play the original game to get more context, and all the songs lived up to my expectations, including some that were remixes of familiar Final Fantasy songs. There was a wide variety of memorable themes and they all match up to their corresponding story arc perfectly.
Everything did fit perfectly, and that is really the best aspect of FF9. It was the perfectly matched soundtrack, the unobtrusive Mog who would pull out a huge book whenever you wanted to save your progress, the carefully placed on-screen dialogues that provide a manga-like experience for a videogame. FF9 is very smooth game, it's hard to say whether I like FF9 or FF6 more but FF9 was certainly well worth the over 100 hours I spent playing it.
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