Much love for this one. I didn't even mind Gargan Roo (which, according to the internet, is the most annoying part of the game.)
Those are the ones I meant. It had some insanely long loading times when entering combat. It also had the most random encounters of the PS1 games, so that's not a bonus. it's still my favourite in the series though
I wonder if this wasn't as much if a problem because I played it on my PSP? Disk versions tend to have longer loading times
I've played the PSN version too, it's still the same. IIRC, I remember reading something about Sakaguchi specifically asking for them to slow down the combat (both the transitions + how slowly the ATB filled), so that it would be more similar to the old Final Fantasy games.
Old Final Fantasy was FAST though. If there's one thing I can say is bad about 9 it's that everyone takes their time with EVERY action you take in battle. Slowed things own WAAAAY too much
The SNES ones were, sure. But the NES ones didn't even have an ATB gauge, so naturally he had to slow it down really badly to appeal to those, yo.
But 9 wasn't turn based. The turn based ones were slow because that's how they worked, ATB was specifically introduced to speed up combat
I agree man, but this was at the time when the Gooch was at his craziest. It was around the time he was directing Spirits Within.
I own an original copy of IX (though I can't play it because lol still no PS2), and personally, I don't think the load times are that bad. XIII-2's load times are waaay worse.
I would love to get a chance to talk positively about FFIX, but this just isn't true. Not only does XIII-2 not have random encounters, it's also a much shorter game, so it won't be as jarring in the long run. But even then, the battle transition in FFXIII-2 are four seconds long, where as IX's are a whopping 16 seconds.
It wasn' t just the ATB, the loadings and the never-ending summons, all the animations were borderline slow-mo in combat. The only version I played was the PAL version, which made it that much more obvious (20% slower than NTSC). Huh ? Adding loadings was meant to speed things up ? I thought it was just a way to add a touch of "realism" (i.e. different speed stats for each character and action). Too bad they didn' t think of the FFX system right away, which had that going for him sans loadings. Their next step on the road to realism was to try and have everyone act at the same time (X-2, XII), which became a freaking mess when they also decided entering a 397 miles long menu wouldn' t pause the game anymore whether you like it or not (XIII). Meh, let' s just add an auto-battle button. Who cares about strategy when you can have realistic speed.
They appear randomly, but they're completely avoidable. FF9 has tradional random encounters, which take you completely out of normal exploration That explains everything Well maybe directly speeding it up isn't exactly the right thing, but rather they wanted to increase urgency, and acting fast by extension, by making ti so you couldn't wait around because enemies would keep attacking you. With a turn based system you can sit on one person's turn infinitely and plan, with the ATB system... well you can still wait if you go into the item menu, but eh
Well, I was more talking about load times in general than just the battle times. Lies. The enemies in XIII-2 are not always avoidable. At least half of them will chase you if you try to run away, and then you have no choice but to turn and battle if you don't want to be stuck without the retry button (which doesn't always matter, but yea). I can think of several places with narrow hallways and enemies that chase you (like fuCKING ACADEMIA 400AF).
