LogFAQs > #950025374

I'm rebeating FFIX right now (pretty far in, just did the four seals thing where the party splits into groups of two), and I'm enjoying it a lot, but yeah, it does have flaws.

Namely, it has no idea what to do with its cast at all. You could almost cut anyone that's not Zidane, Garnet, and Vivi without losing much for the main plot. Maybe Eiko too.

Freya gets a great arc early on, but then it ends quickly and she spends the rest of the game just kind of existing.

Literally none of the party ever care whether or not Quina is there. (Though that adds to their charm honestly, hilarious character)

Steiner is incredibly important early on, then just borderline stops getting dialogue. Sadly the game doesn't know what to do with him at all post-disc 2.

Amarant just joins too late. His plot is interesting, but it's mostly crammed into a few scenes and his really awkward mini-arc in Ipsen's Castle, which was just too rushed to be impactful.

Honestly, even Garnet isn't handled all that well. She has like four moments where she seems to grow, but then fails or gets bailed out by Zidane, only to feel useless and go through the same story beats all over again later.

Also, a lot of the guest characters really should have been fully playable, especially Beatrix and Blank. Probably Marcus too. All of them got a good deal of plot development (and probably honestly more than some of the main cast), and it felt like them not joining was pretty arbitrary.

I'd be interested to see a remake of FFIX eventually, and how it might rebalance the characters and their screentime a bit. In particular, I'd either have Amarant join way earlier, or have the subplot with him and Lani start significantly earlier with them both encountering the party multiple times before Am joins. And give Quina some sort of plot relevance.

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