Hands up who knew the OG ps1 release allowed for 2 controllers

A little add on to the coffee quest secret

If you return to the village of Dali on the last disc of the game, you'd find that a massive root would be blocking the old man's airship watch tower home. Talking to the people of Dali you would learn that Morri died in the incident. However if you had performed the coffee side quest, one of the kids has a bit of dialogue saying that he had a smile on his face, even after passing away, hinting that he died happy and content, going to hopefully join his late wife in the afterlife.

And the fact that the airship model, which you went out of your way to get because Cinna lost his in the crashing of the prima vista in evil forest and this bit of world building are your only real rewards for this quest make it my favorite side quest in all of 9. It's as sad as it is wholesome and I love every bit of it

A bit of trivia about Morrid's Theatre Ship model is that it actually works. When you first meet him, it's floating but when you defeat the Soul Cage and the Mist disappears, the ship stops and lies on the ground.
In the final disc, when Mist covers all of Gaia, the ship is floating again.

There actually is a reward for the Nero family sidequest. You get a protect ring from a chest inside the hideout

FINE I'll start my 10th play through of Final Fantasy 9

Quina just straight‐up devouring the Earth Guardian while Zidane stands back and watches in disbelief is the canon outcome of that battle as far as I'm concerned. 😂

The Hilde Garde 3 being in the cut scene makes sense because Cid mentions using the Hilde Garde 2 in the construction of 3 along with the Blue Narciss

The one Easter egg I'm aware of in 9 is that you can find a Wayne and Torres in a synthesis shop (I think in Lindblum). In Parasite Eve, Wayne and Torres were the two guys who worked in the armory of Aya Brea's precinct.

FFIX is hands down my favourite game in the series still to this day.

You forgot to mention that you get a protect ring for completing the Nero sidequest.

That's definitely just the lighting on her eyes in the FMV

I always enjoyed watching the doves in de card gamer house in Lindblum. Each new return to Lindblum story wise you can see them laying eggs and hatching them

You didn't need Vivi's Reflect x2. All he had to do was cast one of the -aga spells on everyone, if you give everyone auto-reflect. Easy 9999 damage. Then give your healer the break reflect ability, so you can still keep everyone alive.

What's funny about this strategy is Kuja is coded to break it. his Flare Star hits everyone regardless of Reflect. And if you have Reflect on any party members, his code has him double cast Flare Star. Which is pretty much gonna kill everyone.

“Tightly balanced gameplay system”

Auto-Regen: “Lol. Lmao.”

It awesome to see the ammount of love that IX is getting the last couple of years. The best ps1 FF if you ask me, but I might be biased since it’s my all time favourite game.

Oh! I remember the Nero family quest! I found that quest my first time playing through Final Fantasy IX in 2005. I was always so careful to not miss anything that I would travel from location to location talking to every NPC for new dialogue, more side quests, and if I found my way into the main quest before I was ready to move on I'd turn off my PlayStation so I could avoid the main quest area entirely. I was so happy the first time I heard about how people didn't know about it for over a decade. I think you actually do get a reward for finishing the quest, it just isn't handed to you by an NPC. What that reward is I have no idea.

Still, I wish I would have known the specifics about this quest. 14 year old me would have been like "Oh my god I hope people believe me when I tell them this!" I think my first playthrough took me a little over 230 hours(Not including the times I had to turn off my console because I walked into the main quest and got stuck in a cutscene) because I felt so much joy in exploring Final Fantasy IX's world. Talking to the residents of that world... Hands down my number 1 FF game of all time. I even remember naming Zidane NotGoku, Vivi was NotMerlin, Steiner was NotArthur, Garnet was NotMorgana, Freya was left Freya because I thought she looked so cool, Amarant was AmonAmarth, Quina was Obesity, Eiko was NotLittle. I need to replay that game some day. I have it in my steam library.

Funny enough, I didn't realize why abilities would just randomly appear like my character learned them. The whole armor teaching abilities thing went above my head. It was my first game where you could learn things by gathering AP, so as a kid, I was like "Eh, I guess it's just random."

I can add something for reflect. I had the PAL version and the reflected magic grew stronger by the number of characters it was reflected off. If you had the whole party on reflect and cast it on all of them, the spell did 4 times the damage on the enemy (5 times with Vivi's double reflect ability). With this you easy hit 9999 with the basic elemental spells Fire, Blizzard or Thunder for the few MP they cost.

Like many FF games, 9's secrets and side quests were great. Just a shame the strategy guide wasn't much help in finding them ^^;

1:50 I love GameFAQs! I had no local gamer friends and was isolated at home because of being disabled, so that was my go-to place when I started in 2003. I printed things out, posted some subject guides, and also a single bad review to warn other people not to waste their money on a truly broken game that didn't keep promises made before release.

This will always be my favorite Final Fantasy game. The graphics, the gameplay, the call backs to the originals.... best by far in my opinion. Everything went down hill after 10 and 10-2