The PC version of Final Fantasy IX, announced last week in Japan, will be out this month according to Steam. And, critically, it will let you turn off random encounters.
Says the Steam page, which just went live today:
Additional Features
- Achievements
- Seven game boosters including high speed and no encounter modes.
- Autosave
- High-definition movies and character models.
This is wonderful. FFIX is without a question one of the best Final Fantasys Square ever put out, but it’s always been marred a bit by the super-high random encounter rate. And anyone who’s played FFVII on PS4 knows just how valuable these “game boosters” can be.
Comments
21 responses to “Final Fantasy IX PC Will Let You Turn Off Random Encounters”
“High-definition movies and character models.”
Maybe I’m just cynical, I’m pretty sure this just means they’ll be using a hardware renderer.
My favourite Final Fantasy with no doubts and one of my favourite games ever. It looks fantastic HD’d up. If they keep this as Japan only I’ll be miffed, but given that they’ve released everything else globally…
Zero chance it won’t make it to an English audience. At a bare minimum if they don’t officially release it in English a quality fan mod will be made.
Zero chance? Did you even check the steam store page?
It literally says that Interface and Subtitles in English are checked.
Sooo…I was right?
.
My second favorite FF after 6.
I hate these new features tho. ie. turning off the random encounters. I know as the player I have the choice to to use it, like the stupid heal button they have in the new FF7 rerererelease, but just knowing its there dangling like chocolate in front of my face, makes me feel dirty when i finally cave and do use it….
The only one I use in VII is the speed boost as it makes grinding so much quicker and travelling around the world map (on foot anyway). I’m not sure why you’d turn off the random encounters when these games were built around grinding though
For IX it’ll make getting Excalibur 2 a breeze. Thanks to the slower PAL version I’ve never been able to get it and it bugs the hell out of me so I for one will be happy to utilise the no random encounters for a speed run.
Anyone know what the achievements are yet?
I wasn’t even aware of that sword hahahaha I played it through before the days of (me having) internet and didn’t really look it up further on later playthroughs. 12 hours will be a challenge though. I’m usually still on the Mist Continent at 12 hours doing Chocobo Forest stuff 😀
I’d expect the achievements to be similar to VII though. Usual finishing game, finish chocobo forest, collect all the star sign doodads. I forget what’s actually optional in the game though
High encounter rates? Whaaaaaat??!!
If playing Bravely Default has taught me one thing, it’s that any game that has random encounters should have the ability to turn them off.
This is very much appreciated Squeenix.
Speedrunners rejoice! And this means I may finally be able to do an Ex2 run, never managed it on a PAL cart though I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it done
Still it does take away from the game overall if you ask me. So silly to lose what made FF’s unique. You never knew how many steps you’d take before you got an encounter.
I’m a long time FF fan and I’ve always despised random encounters. I have even less patience for them now when I replay the older games. When you have limited play time, any tedium just gets irritating. What always ends up happening is that I seem to get a crapload of encounters when I don’t want them and then none when I do want them for grinding.
Either way I’ll definitely be using the ‘no encounters’ option!
No encounters is fantastic. IX can be beaten at level 1 but is really hard to do so, due to the constant running away and requires a lot of saving. With this, no more worries in that regard! I just finished a no level up play through of FFVIII and found it super fun, but I was hesitant to do IX but no longer
Do the monsters in 9 scale with your level the same way they do in 8?
No.
I would wager this would add to the challenge of a no level up run quite a bit haha!
Definitely. It also takes away the dangers of spells like Level 3 Def-less, Level 4 Holy and Level 5 Death… the latter naturally being the deadliest of them all 🙂
I don’t even want to look *holds hand over eyes* but I’m guaranteeing there’s at least one person here transparently trying to puff their e-chests by rhetorically questioning why anyone would want to play a game that wasn’t hard.
It’s because they’re so good at video games that they love challenge and are better than you.
So you’ll be ready for all boss’s and scripted encounters regardless?