Games: Final Fantasy IX – The characters

In my last post, I talked about this game. Now here are my thoughts on the characters. Mild spoilers in this post.

Zidane

Zidane, the main protagonist, is a good-hearted thief – casual and a bit reckless, but the kind of guy who’ll rush to help anyone in need.

He’ll do anything for his friends, and he has the knack of bringing people together, but apart from that, he has (at first) less personal stake in the adventure compared with the likes of Dagger, Freya, Vivi, etc, who have a more intense personal motivation.  (Of course, he lives in this world and therefore would not want it to be destroyed, but that could be said of every inhabitant of Gaia.)  This is probably helpful, as when things go wrong, he’s the one best able to keep a constructive mentality of ‘okay guys, what do we try next?’ rather than sinking into despair. For the most part, he’s an upbeat and friendly character – very likeable.

Later in the game, it turns out that he does in fact have a personal stake in this adventure and a backstory that is – well, rather unexpected, to say the least – but does tie him more closely to the villains and what they’re trying to do.

Zidane fights with swords and daggers. When I use Zidane, 90% of the time I’m just using his default attack – no thought required. It’s not bad to have at least one character like this as it keeps things moving quickly. Most of his special moves have proven kind of crappy, except when he’s in Trance. That said, he has lots of passive abilities to equip in the background. He’s one of my stronger characters and, being the main character, is always one of the highest-levelled characters.

Steiner

Steiner is a knight sworn to serve the queen and princess of Alexandria. One of the older (human) characters in the game, he’s self-righteous, slow to catch on, and not very flexible in his thinking. He’ll shout at anyone he deems disrespectful or unworthy. But he’s very devoted to the princess and to protecting Alexandria, and over time this makes him an ally well worth having.

Steiner was actually my favourite team member, not just for his humour, but for his strength in battle. He was my most powerful character (well, others could do more damage with certain moves, but only if they used up vast amounts of MP; Steiner could do respectable damage with just his default sword attack). When fighting alongside Vivi, he can do magical sword attacks, which are even better.

Dagger

What a stupid name Dagger is – I should have changed that default suggestion, really… Anyway.  Dagger is the pseudonym of Princess Garnet, chosen to help her avoid detection while she was undercover.  Dagger goes through a pretty rough time of it in this story.  At the beginning, she is kidnapped – sort of – and this is the least traumatic thing that happens to her.

Later, she has actual royal responsibilities that she basically ignores to go off voyaging with Zidane and co. I mean, I get that Zidane’s quest is pretty darn important – he’ll need to succeed or the whole world is at threat – but she doesn’t frame it as ‘my duty as a royal is to take out this threat so my people can live in peace’ but as ‘I want to stay with you guys a bit longer’.

Dagger is not a great asset in the first half of the game – she’s useful for healing, which is valuable, but that’s about all she brings to the table.  It’s later that she gains abilities that will also make her competent in battle – too bad they take so darn long to fire off.  She can do status effects on enemies with her white magic, but in my experience, magic that could do anything useful to disable an opponent will miss 99% of the time.

Quina

I can’t say Quina’s name aloud without saying it as ‘Quinoa’.  Quinoa is a blue mage who joins your party so s/he can travel around the world and eat new things.  That’s basically his/her entire character motivation.  (By the way, this s/he-ing is done by the characters in-game as well.  It’s not clear if Quinoa has a gender or if so, what it is.)

So Quinoa is entertaining enough but not really a major player from a story perspective. S/he is really just there to chip in comments in broken English about eating.  Still, s/he is a useful ally.  Quinoa’s main schtick is eating monsters to inherit their abilities. I found many of these abilities to be so-so (as with Dagger’s status-causing magic, any ability that sounds really cool and useful is 100% guaranteed to miss) but the novelty of it was fun.

Freya

A knight of Burmecia, Freya becomes involved in the story when her people are targeted and attacked.  As a character, she’s one of the least interesting and least developed. I can’t even think of how to describe her. She’s somewhat formal, cares about doing her duty, wishes to be with her lost love. But as one of the more dignified and less comical characters, she doesn’t stand out as much as some of the others. It’s a shame, because near the beginning of the game, she was more relevant and did get character time.

She was useful early game, and I like some of her abilities – she can cast Auto-Regen on all teammates, for instance. But I found her to be one of the weaker characters, with slightly fewer perks. It was not until I reached the end game and failed to beat the last boss, that I went off and killed dozens of random dragons. (Freya has a move that becomes stronger based on how many dragons your team has defeated.) This was tedious but effective, and Freya became my best attacker as a result. 

Eiko

Eiko is a young girl who is the last of her people – a summoner who can use eidolons (a kind of powerful monster/spirit). As Dagger shares this skill with her, Eiko is able to guide her and help her to use her powers.  

Eiko is small but forceful. I found it amusing that when I took the non-magic users off to Oeilvert, she became the party leader in their absence, with Dagger, Quina and Vivi trotting obediently after her.  

The trouble is that as Eiko and Dagger are both white mages with a specialty of a) summoning and b) using curative/protective magic, there’s rarely an incentive to keep both Eiko and Dagger on the same team. One of them is gonna get short shrift. In my case, I used Dagger more in the second half of the game, because she was a more plot-important character. It wasn’t until near the end when I realised that Eiko is actually way more useful – her support magic is better and she can use Holy, which is quicker and more powerful than any of the eidolons were.

Vivi

Vivi is mainly involved in this adventure because he is a black mage, and the bad guys in this game are using black mages as puppets, or slaves, to carry out their evil plans. He wants to find out why they’re involved, where they came from, etc. Through the game, his exact motivations change slightly, but they are always very much connected with the black mages’ fate. 

As a character, Vivi is sympathetic both because of his personality (meek, timid and earnest), and because he is misunderstood. Everyone who sees him immediately assumes he’s an evil killer, even though he’s doing his best to help people.

Vivi is the only character who can use the vast range of offensive magic that exists.  (Steiner can also borrow these abilities if Vivi is with him.)  As such, he’s a very useful member of the team. The only problem is his use of MP – the more powerful the spells he uses, the more quickly he eats through that not-easy-to-renew resource.

Amarant

Amarant is a thug-for-hire who was hired to go after Zidane’s party. After Zidane defeated him, he just sort of tagged along because he’s intrigued by Zidane’s way of thinking. 

Amarant had potential to be a more interesting character. I quite like the reluctant ally trope – the guy you wouldn’t expect to be on your side – the belligerent, proud guy who isn’t used to being treated with kindness.  His main problem was that he came out of nowhere (backstory? reason for being involved? reason for having such a massive chip on his shoulder?) and when his grouchy personality manifests itself suddenly, it often feels out of the blue (like at Ipsen Castle) – he was being a normal ally up to that point, so what suddenly flipped his switch?

Basically, if things felt a bit more established and less random with him, I’d have liked him more. As it was, he still brought something different to the team, both in personality and in battle.

As a member of your party, he’s a decent all-rounder. He has some handy support moves, like the ability to restore MP, and is a decent attacker. He’s quite versatile.

So, those are the main characters and party members you use during the game. There’s not one character I dislike – even the less plot-essential ones, like Quinoa, are good for a laugh.