Final Fantasy IX's mobile port is surprisingly good
During our latest Tetracast recording, I talked about my experience with the Final Fantasy IX mobile port - which essentially released out of the blue last week. Check out our discussion in the video above, or read the highlights here:
The most noticeable difference - immediately seen - are the improvements to all the character models. Final Fantasy IX 's artstyle has always looked great, but now - 15 years later - it looks better than ever. The CG scenes hold up well, too, and even the pre-rendered backgrounds have seemingly been touched up as best as possible. While the distinction between models and backgrounds is perhaps a little jarring, it doesn't take much away from the visual charm of FF9.
The user interface have been redone similar to other Final Fantasy mobile ports, allowing touchscreen control both in battle and in the rest of the menus. Icons have also been cleaned up and look good while staying true to the original images. Overall, the touch controls work well enough when you are playing while traveling - you can even tap anywhere on the screen to move Zidane to that position if you don't care to use the virtual d-pad. The mobile version does support controllers, so there's always that option too.
The game also now auto-saves on most any screen. While it may only seem like a small addition, it makes playing on the go that much more feasible.
Like other PC releases of the Final Fantasy series, new to this port are Cheat options to make replays a bit less of a chore. You can have your characters set to always deal 9999 damage, you can turn off enemy encounters, you can double the game speed(!), and you can can have your characters always in the Trance state (this one isn't that great because going through the Trance animation for every battle gets old). These can be toggled at most any time, including in the middile of battle.
Other cheats include max levels, max gil, and learning skills as soon as you equip new gear. Once set, these can never be removed.
The port retains some of the small issues with the original version, however. The world map screens suffer from some slight frame-rate issues (feels like this not too uncommon in JRPGs) and battles still take a little time to load. You can turn off the pre-battle animations which help get you into and out of combat more quickly than you ever could on PlayStation, though, so I can't complain too much there.
All in all, this version of Final Fantasy IX is the best version yet. That's good news for the soon-coming Steam port which should have all the same enhancements in addition to the typical benefits of a PC release - such as the potential for mods.