Final Fantasy IX, Game EXP

I finished FFIX over the weekend.  It is a nice game.  

About midway through the third disc, I started using a guide full-time.  In my mind, there is a voice from the past, scolding me for doing this. But in the present, I just don't have the time for trial and error.  Honestly, when random encounters every 9 steps are bugging me for the amount of time they take, there's no way I could deal with fighting boss battles again and again.  The latest FF IX guide over at gamefaqs is quite good.  All thanks to author bover_87 for all their detailed work.  

It's kind of funny,  I primarily used the guide to find out what status resistances I should equip in certain areas and for certain bosses.  It helped immensely.  Not getting your party stopped, silenced or sleeped can really make a difference.  What is funny to me is that the guide offered a lot more detail and suggestions, which I usually ignored.  I followed maybe a quarter of the suggestions given to me, and I managed to cruise through to the end.  The last boss was tough, but I got it in two tries. The game would have been a cake walk if I'd paid more attention to the guide.

I am a little bummed out by the amount of in-game content I missed by choosing the shortest path to th end.  The guide referenced a few powerful spells that I never saw.  There were also a ton of sidequests I ignored.  If I had all the time in the world, I would definitely go back to this game and fart around, following the guide in detail, just to see all of the different aspects of the game.  It seems like they crammed in a lot of stuff.  I can guarantee the boss fights are a breeze when you have all the best weapons and spells.  

Ultimately, I think that I played FFIX at the wrong time of my life.  In my late teens, early twenties, I would have loved this game, I'm sure.  As it stands, I was pretty impatient through the last third of the game, just wanting it to be over.  I also didn't find the story all that compelling.  It was fairly generic, and, unlike previous iterations of Final Fantasy,  I don't have any rose colored glasses to make it seem better.  Oh well.  Most of my opinions of my earlier review of the game hold.  Zidane, the main character, is actually a pretty cool guy.  His passionate defense of his friends, of the value of friendship and comradery, that is all good stuff.  The game doesn't really get any deeper than that.  

-D