Final Fantasy 9

As the Playstation Era came to a close, and the Final Fantasy Series was at its last single digit installment, the original series creators wanted to create a game that would tribute the series as a whole. A bold undertaking at creating a masterpiece, Final Fantasy IX would be a unique blend of elements of the series from the first to the last.

Amano would return to design a unique cast of characters, and a world more akin to the fantasy themes of the original Final Fantasies, with the scope of the later titles, riddled with allusions from all the titles in the series. The game revolved around a war with several nations, sparked by the Queen Brahne of a region named Alexandria. The main protagonist, Zidane Tribal, is requested by the King of a nearby region to capture Brahne's daughter, princess Garnet in order to protect her. Along the way Zidane meets up with a large cast of characters, including the black mage Vivi, the knight Steiner, and the lancer Freya. The group comes to learn that Brahne is a simple piece of a much larger scheme, one devised by the ruthless weapons dealer Kuja. The party will set out on a long journey attempting to stop Kuja, with each character learning about his or her past and reflecting on what they want out of their lives. Because of the frequent transitions between character to character, FFIX introduced the ATB system, which allowed the player to see multiple events happening at different locations at the system time.

FFIX also had a card battling minigame, quite different from FFVIII's (and according to many, not as good) but still fairly popular called Tetra Master, which would eventually get its own online game. The battles in FFIX returned to the standard four party members. Each character had a specific job and set of abilities (for example, white mage, black mage, etc). To learn new abilities, characters equipped weapons, each tied with abilities, and used ability points gained from battle to master them. A new form of limit called trance appeared as well.

While clearly not the most popular title (in comparison to its two predecessors), FFIX was regarded by the series creators themselves as their favorite among the series. Sakaguchi and Amano threw their greatest talent in the game, with Nobuo saying he preferred IX's music over all others. IX would be highly regarded as one of the most memorable games of all time, and a wonder final swan song to the Playstation Era of Final Fantasy titles.