168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy's famous for featuring many of the coolest side quests in video games. But there's a clear-cut gulf in quality and quantity between individual installments — Final Fantasy 13, for example, is so focused on its here-and-now narrative beats that it has fewer than any other modern entry, and the earliest FFs hail from a time before Square started sprinkling mini-games so liberally.
While it's a close match against multiple other games, it's probably Final Fantasy 9 that takes the cake for the most side quests in the series. Even better, many of them are quite a good time. That's why we've assembled a list of FF9's side quests, and we've done what the internet just cannot resist doing: we've ranked them all, because of course we did.
15 ꦯ Jumping Rope
You can try your luck at the jump rope side quest as early as a handful of minutes into Final Fantasy 9. Alternatively, you can wait until the game's third disc. If you're struggling to decide which route to take, you have to ask yourself the following question: "will a bad time pressing a button thousands of times ruin your desire to carry forward with the rest of the game?" If the answer is yes, our advice is easy: skip this thing altogether.
Jumping rope is a cinch. In theory. You time a button press to the appearance of an exclamation mark, allowing Vivi or Eiko (depending on the point at which this is played) to hop over the rope rather than falling on their behind. At set intervals, the timing shifts; generally, this means you're going faster, though sometimes it's trickier.
You get some Tetra Master cards for this. And a trophy, if you hit a thousand without tripping. You also get a digital handshake. From us. For suffering this mundane anxiety-inducer's cruel whims.
14 Racing Hippaul 𓄧
Does anyone truly love button-mashing? The notion of pressing the same button (or two buttons, in this case!) again and again, as rapidly as possible, and hoping that your manual presses outnumber a CPU's predetermined parameter, just isn't terribly entertaining. Racing Hippaul in Final Fantasy 9 to earn a handful of Tetra Master cards and a unique key item doesn't sound so bad on paper, but once you get into the weeds with this stupendous hippopotamus, you'll soon understand our agony.
Hippaul's mother, whose name is, of course, Hippolady, wants you to race her son to get him into better physical shape. OK, whatever, lady, we'll do it. We're thorough gamers. But tapping a pair of buttons with wild abandon goes from dull to downright dastardly as Hippaul's racing 'level' increases. For the full rewards, which aren't that great to begin with, players must help Hippaul ascend to level 80, at which point he has become some kind of god among mammal-children.
Quirky concept meets painful execution. Next time you're worried about your kid's health, Hippolady, please just race him yourself.
13 🌃 Excalibur II
Insidious. Flat-out insidious. That's how we describe FF9's 'Excalibur II' side quest, which tasks players with reaching the tail end of the game in under 12 hours for the ultimate reward: Steiner's second-form Excalibur, the only thing that eclipses even Zidane's Ultima Weapon in pure power.
This quest tests not just one's ability to blitz through Final Fantasy 9, but also their willingness to do so in the first place. Think of it this way. You've foregone so much stuff, racing past story scenes, ignoring all other side quests entirely, and generally not just having a brilliant time with your life, all for the one thing you cannot acquire otherwise. It's brutal.
On the other hand? If you happen to detest Final Fantasy 9? We're not sure why you're playing it in the first place, but at least Square Enix has a treat at the end of the road for all that hastened torture you've gone through.
12 💙 The Nero Family
Nine. That's the number of times you have to exit FF9's final dungeon and take a trip out to the city of Lindblum on the fourth disc in order to successfully complete the Nero Family side quest. Is it funny? Yes, it is. Is the Protect Ring you can earn at its conclusion worth the hassle? No, not at all. Not when you can find several elsewhere. (We dare say the Protect Ring is Final Fantasy 9's favorite trinket to toss at us like some sort of dog toy distraction.)
We're being pretty down on this, so we need to reiterate that this is some funny stuff. Seeing how massive a family these guys have is inherently comedic, and witnessing their interactions is another prime example of how FF9's script is, for the most part, a gem in its own right. But unless you depart from Memoria every single time something happens there, you may come up against the bitter wall of defeat. Missing enough instances of the invisible time-to-go timer means mission failure. Ouch. Just ouch.
11 Treno's Monster Arena
Over the course of the game, a quartet of monsters can be battled in a makeshift arena beneath Treno's weapons shop: the Griffith, the Catoblepas, the Amdusias, and﷽ finally the Behemoth. These are one-on-one grudge matches that test either your skill, your willingness to overlevel, or (ideally) some combination therein.
There's nothing fancy about it — just bring your best fighter and bludgeon the monsters to a pulp. Unfortunately, like many of FF9's optional interludes, you can get permanently locked out of completing this if you wait too long between plot points, as the monster available for battling is steadily replaced over time. Do your due diligence and swing past Treno on the regular. Or don't! You're not missing a ton.
10 🍎 Tetra Master 🦩
Tetra Master is an in-universe card game with relatively complex mechanics. It follows in the footsteps of the more popular Triple Triad card game from Final Fantasy 8. Is Tetra Master objectively worse than Triple Triad? Truth be told, it would be unfair of us to attempt to categorize anything here as 'objective', but the somewhat random nature of the game's outcome (cards level up to achieve higher parameters, but it's never a guarantee that a higher-leveled card will win against another) and the lack of tangible rewards (you're pretty much collecting cards simply for the sake of it) makes Tetra Master tougher to love.
That's the crux; you have to enjoy Tetra Master on its own merits to get much out of it, which may sound obvious, but compared with Triple Triad — where cards could be 'modded' into many of the absolute best spells and items in FF8! — it's a downer to invest so much time and effort into something all in the name of a hardware-side trophy... or, if you're playing the original PS1 version, not even that.
9 🔴Coffeesജ For Morrid
Some folks just love coffee so much that they enlist the aid of adventurers to fetch them the finest and rarest brews in all the world. Morrid is one such man. There's a trio of coffee flavors he simply must sample, and eagle-eyed FF9 players will successfully snag them all. Doing so nets a Mini Prima Vista model, which rather than popping up in your inventory, actually appears in full back at the Tantalus hideout in Lindblum. Neat.
This quest's about as straightforward as they come, neither irritating in the least nor especially fulfilling. That is, unless you're a fellow coffee lover. In which case, maybe you live vicariously through Morrid, and this is suddenly the most important side quest in Final Fantasy 9 to you.
8 Another Man's Treasure
There's a four-armed fella in Daguerreo whose real name might ring a bell: 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Gilgamesh. The series-hopping icon of somewhat dweeby coolness — yes, we are of course aware thܫat the original Gilgamesh is a hero of ancient Mesopotamian lore, but this is hardly the only time Finaꦚl Fantasy has adopted a familiar myth for its own — is entertainingly unimpressive in his Final Fantasy 9 appearance. He rather looks like any other bloke, save for a couple of extra limbs.
Gilgamesh, however, retains his cross-franchise namesake's penchant for treasure-hunting prowess. Zidane is a proud thief in his own right, so naturally, there's a side quest to become Rank S Treasure Hunter. You won't get much out of this other than a customary modern gaming trophy/achievement pop-up noise and the shattering of Gilgamesh's bluster, but that's still more than can be said for gaming quests that only give you the trophy.
For a mercy, you don't need to seek out every treasure in FF9 to pull this off. But you'll still need around three-quarters or so, meaning this is no easy feat.
7 F﷽riendly Monsters🥂
Final Fantasy, like most RPGs, pits us against a plethora of monsters. It's an unwritten rule that the monsters want us dead, hence we battle them to the death. What a quirky bit of good cheer, then, that a small group of friendly monsters exist out in the wilds of Gaia, and if you give them nice sparkly gemstones, you'll receive suitably shiny items in return.
Ask a dozen Final Fantasy fans what makes the series so enduring, and you'll get as many answers, but one of the things that's always stood out to us is that the developers go the extra mile in a myriad of fascinating ways. Take the friendly monsters, for example; a light and fluffy, piano-led rendition of FF9's ordinarily fist-pumping battle theme plays whenever you bump into one of these nice fluffy creatures, enshrining the mood in a unique sense of wonder that's matched only by...
6 ꦗ Ragtime Mouse
...the Ragtime Mouse side quest, which also involves unusual combat scenarios, and borrows the friendly monsters' chipper cover of the classic battle theme to help establish the titular Ragtime Mouse's bizarre quiz-obsessed antics. Instead of requests for gemstones, this footloose, uh, one-eyed, mouth... thing tests the player's trivia skills with a series of 16 questions. You're asked a new one every time you find the lad, or he finds you, or whatever the heck is going on here.
The Ragtime Mouse revels in Final Fantasy 9's distinctive absurdity, a creature of the forests whose only purpose in life is to put travelers' situational awareness on trial, and who showers the successful in cash while scorning incorrect responses. Should you happen to answer Ragtime's final question accurately, he explodes. Which is weird. Really weird.