Forget Call of Duty, Real Men Need the Retro Love: Final Fantasy IX

Why yes, we are playing fast and loose with the term retro again. Still, a thirteen-year-old is quite a droopy-boobed old pensioner in video game years, so you'll forgive us for including Final Fantasy IX in this series. It was a throwback to the early days of the series, after all.

This is the tale of Zidane Tribal, a young thief with a foppish boy band hairstyle and a goddamn monkey's tail. He sets out to defeat the nefarious forces of Queen Brahne, a portly old warmonger with a face like a bulldog's ballsack (while ogling her rather sextacular daughter). Aiding and abetting him in the quest are a hairy rat-faced lady knight, a midget with glowing eyes and no visible face, and a young girl with a horn protruding from her forehead. All of which is, it has to be said, not screwy at all by this franchise's standards.

Arriving in 2000, this was the third installment to venture onto the PlayStation. The first thing you will notice is its visuals; it's remarkable that this is running on the same console that powered Final Fantasy VII. Whether you loved that game or feel righteous fury-bile rising into your throat at the mention of it (which happens to some crazies), we can all agree on one thing: in the cold light of day, it really does look like ass. New players often take one look at those huge, rectangular, Elephant Man-hands, and mock, like the mocking mocksters of mock that they are. The cheeky bastards.

Final Fantasy IX, though, isn't showing its age at all. Through a combination of digital botox injections and that charming storybook aesthetic, it has a kind of timeless quality.

Which is ironic, as its goal was to revive some of the games' more traditional elements. The job system, for instance. This gives every character in your party set ‘skills' for use in battle, and affects their stats. The previous two Final Fantasies were a shitstorm of ‘equip whatever you want to whomever you want,' so it's nerdily nice to see White Mages, Black Mages and Polka-Dot Mages back where they belong. A sense of balls-out, dragon-flying fantasy also returns to the series, after the technological shenanigans of the recent ones.

Final Fantasy IX is also memorable for its storyline, a cutesy little tale of princess-stalking which escalates into a heaping helping of interplanetary war. The villain of the piece, Kuja, is about as manly as Elton John during his sequined Seventies phase; yet is loved by fans for his power and/or megalomania. It is, all in all, a classic entry in the franchise.

The pace of the battles is a little slower than before, and there are other quibbles to be had, but there's a reason why this is the most critically-acclaimed Final Fantasy thus far. There's a toon-tastic magic about the world and its inhabitants, and so much to explore. There is also, lest we forget, a giant angry planet to stab in the face. You can't argue with that offer.

Source of images: gamefaqs.