Switching to Final Fantasy IX

I just beat Kingdom Hearts 3. And then Square Enix sent us a review code for Final Fantasy IX. Talk about perfect timing! I was totally ready to revisit this classic on the Switch. So how does FF9 hold up? Have I noticed any differences from the PS1 version? Am I having fun with the game so far? Here are my early impressions of Final Fantasy IX for Nintendo Switch.

Final Fantasy IX is the first of the PS1/PS2 classic FF games to come to the Nintendo Switch. There are more coming but lets just focus on FF9 for today. How does this game hold up on Nintendo Switch?

Right from the start, I was impressed by the visual upgrade of the cutscenes, the characters in the game, and some of the environments. I remember trying to play FF9 a couple of years ago on my PS1 and being disappointed the graphics weren’t like I remembered them. On the Nintendo Switch, the visuals are more like I remember them, possibly better in some areas, like the characters.

The graphics are not 100% perfect though. The world map has not been upgraded nor has some of the in-battle environments. Neither of these things are deal breakers, but it is a shame that the world map doesn’t look better.

Then there are some gameplay boosters that have been added to the game. The boosters are special options, basically “cheat codes”, that let you change the game a bit. For instance, you can turn on Max gil and that gives you a ton of money to play with. You can’t turn this option off, but you can reset it after spending some money, aka giving you unlimited gil.

There is also an option that you can turn on or off for “safe travel” (no random battles) and 9999 damage, which lets you kill an enemy with one hit! Yeah, these boosters are cheating but for some people, especially those who have played the game before, they add a new way to play the game and I’m sure speed runners will love these additions.

Final Fantasy IX sounds great on the Nintendo Switch, doesn’t it? It pretty much is, though I do have to report a couple of glitches I ran into. One time an item shop glitched on me and I had to restart the game to get out of it and another time, FF9 completely froze on me. I don’t remember this game glitching or freezing up at all back in the day. However, I did start a second save to test out some of the boosers and I didn’t run into the item shop glitch. So I guess the glitches are pretty random.

Despite these glitches though, Final Fantasy IX is a joy to play on the Nintendo Switch. On the TV or in handheld mode, FF9 looks really good and mostly plays well. I love that this classic game has come to the Switch and I can’t wait to play more FF games on this system.

I’ll have more thoughts on Final Fantasy IX soon! Also, keep an eye out for my review of the Nintendo Switch version.