Final Fantasy IX/YMMV

"Zidane: He said waltz, right? Don't you think No. 3 would be the last one?"
 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * Angst? What Angst?: In contrast to his immediate predecessors, Zidane spends most of the game either chasing skirts or being Garnet's knight in shining armor and not much time being moody and depressing, with the notable (and brief) exception of his Heroic BSOD.
 * Awesome Music: Final Fantasy IX has Nobuo Uematsu's favorite FF soundtrack. Needless to say, it has a lot of these.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: Very first fight in the game. Zidane and co. are waiting for their boss Baku to show up, which he does. Wearing a dragon head and attacking them. After the fight, nobody questions this. Presumably it happens all the time.
 * Well Zidane later has to fight Baku to be allowed to leave the troupe and in a flashback mentions Baku beat the crap out of him when he came home after Walking the Earth trying to find his birthplace. So it seems, yes, it does.
 * One that really takes the cake is the ceremony performed at Cleyra that keeps its powerful sandstorm of magic in place: a riverdance jig.
 * This game is littered with random moments that do not really do anything for the plot. About half the Active Time Events can be skipped without missing anything.
 * Which is kind of the point. The dev team wanted to include loads of world-building and character-developing material which doesn't really fel crucial to the story or gameplay, but becomes nice to have when looking back at everything. The AT Es that are important plotwise are not skippable.
 * Demonic Spiders: Yans. Just under 20,000 HP, very fast, they spam the Comet spell almost every turn which does random damage and thus can KO even the strongest characters, use Virus Powder to inflict the Virus status so you don't get Exp, and like to counter attacks with Snort to remove a party member from battle. Oh, and they can attack in pairs or even trios. Sadly they're the best source of Exp in the game.
 * And are also the only renewable source to steal for Elixirs.
 * Ear Worm: One of the wormiest soundtracks in Final Fantasy, and that's saying something. Particularly tenacious pieces include Dark Messenger, Melodies of Life, and Vamo' Alla Flamenco.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Black Waltz No.3, the flying Black Mage who is Made of Iron and whose CG sequences are usually awesome. Some people may question why he gets this when he slaughtered the Black Mages, but, well, Draco in Leather Pants and all that. And if it weren't for him, we wouldn't see the ultimate manifestation of a Heroic One-Winged Angel in Vivi.
 * Vivi HIMSELF is one of the most loved Final Fantasy characters ever. The Final Fantasy Wikia has held two tournaments for the most popular character of the series. Vivi won the first one, beating Kain Highwind of all people, and in the second narrowly defended his title against Terra Branford.
 * Blank, the Tantalus badass who appears briefly as an optional party member.
 * For the female characters, there's Beatrix (for her awesomeness in battle) and Ruby (who has a good amount of fanart on deviantART).
 * Epileptic Trees: Fans have come up with any number of theories for Necron's role in the game (See Giant Space Flea From Nowhere below) and some have been listed as "official" explanations on this Wiki. The game supports approximately zero of them.
 * For the record, the game only gives hints that he is some incredibly powerful being that watches over all life and has the power to destroy the Crystal. It is possibly a manifestation of 'evil' emotions of sentient creatures.
 * Every One Remembers the Stripper: Anyone who played through this game will remember "Ooo, soft!"
 * Evil Is Sexy: Kuja, though he looks the wrong gender of sexy.
 * Fan-Preferred Couple: Amarant with Freya, even though she already loves Fratley.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: Kuja
 * Faux Symbolism: For people who really pay attention to the plot, it's obvious what Necron is supposed to be; the real theme of the game is death and dealing with its consequences (with everyone dealing with it in their own way), and so Necron literally is death (in case the name didn't give it away) and so as the final boss, the player and characters literally have to "fight death" to resolve the core issue of the game. The developers might have thought this was clever, but it's unfortunately about as subtle as a brick to the face. (The ending is still awesome, though.)
 * Foe Yay: There's enough between Kuja and Zidane to make it the most popular yaoi pairing in the game
 * Fridge Horror: Upon first viewing the ending, many players do not realize that
 * When Blank and Zidane first mug the Pluto Knights for their outfits, both are still recognizable and two naked Pluto Knights appear later... but when Zidane mugs the Lindblum guard, he (by way of reusing the 3D model) has somehow replicated the guard's eyes and nose peeking out of the helmet, while the real guard is never seen again...
 * Actually, if the player goes into the room where Zidane steals the guard's outfit, check the closet in the room and you'll find out Zidane actually stuffed him into a closet while he whimpers to be let out. Zidane promptly tells him to quiet and he will let him out later.
 * Game Breaker: Take the time to learn Quina's spells and you win.
 * Same deal with any attack that you can power up, such as Zidane's Thievery, Freya's Dragon Crest, etc. Also Steiner's Shock, which doesn't get a unique power-up method, but is ungodly powerful from the get-go.
 * Get Auto-Regen for everyone and your chances of dying go down by roughly 95%. Having regeneration continue during battle animations was not a good choice from Square's part.
 * Also, the x2 Reflect ability for Vivi. It causes any spell Vivi casts that gets reflected to do twice the damage it would normally do to the target it hits. Now, normally, this would be a bad thing, but keep in mind you can cast any spell on your party, and that there's an item in the game (called the Reflect Ring) that grants a permanent reflect effect, and that mass-casting a spell on a group of reflected characters causes every instance of the damage the spell did being focused on one creature on the other side, and you get to meet the Damage Cap.
 * Genius Bonus: The Rule of Three applies to the Black Waltzes because the waltz uses a three-quarter beat.


 * Goddamned Bats: The Seeker Bats in Fossil Roo. You're about to get to the Moogle to use a tent/save, and all of a sudden, woosh! Made even more annoying is the fact that they have a bad tendency to spam you with status effects that make the battle last even longer than it should. Goddamned Bats, indeed...
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: During Zidane rescues Garnet from a crumbling balcony by swinging on a line.
 * And later on, he's able to
 * When Kuja has your heroes locked in deathtraps, Cid gets to play a little game... of Grandmother's Footsteps.
 * One that's only hilarious in light of the other Star Wars references: as you proceed into Memoria, Garland speaks to you quite clearly several times before actually saying "can you hear me?"
 * Ho Yay: "This is an ancient ritual between male friends!" but you Yaoi Fangirls would have to be insane to get off on it.
 * Pretty squicky to read that much into it, as Zidane is obviously trying to be a strong bigger brother figure to help Vivi through his issues.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Kuja, so, SO much. To really put this in perspective; he  When he's confronted the first time he has the heroes in a death trap and you have to do what he wants to survive. After he   and you fight him directly for the first time, he essentially toys with you while you feed right into his Batman Gambit,  . Then he   He then proceeds towards this goal while all attempts to stop him fail, eventually   And even in the final confrontation with him there's a major question as to whether or not the party actually defeats him, or he just   And to top it all off, at the very end,   This makes him as close to success as Sephiroth in terms of villainy, and only right below Kefka.
 * also qualifies, as he is the one who truly orcheastrated most of the events in the game, successfully performs a Mind Rape on Zidane and actually gets him to feel ANGSTY and
 * Magnum Opus: Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi considers this to be his favorite game in the whole franchise. Nobuo Uematsu also agrees with this sentiment, as he considers the soundtrack to be his masterpiece.
 * Memetic Badass: Zidane has reached this status in some circles due to his ability to create blasts of energy despite apparently having no magical powers.
 * Memetic Mutation: CLANK CLANK CLANK.
 * Memetic Sex Goddess: While not really a Sex Goddess, Garnet's rather shapely rear is quite memetic. Zidane declaring its softness didn't hurt.
 * Moral Event Horizon:
 * Most Wonderful Sound: "K-KWEEEHHH! Found a treasure chest!"
 * "Choco says he can't find any more Chocographs here for now."
 * As always, the victory fanfare too.
 * Needs More Love: This is probably the most underrated game in the main series. If you like modern FF (VII - VIII onward), you'll dig the dark story, the well-developed characters, and the PS 1 performing at the height of it's graphical capabilities. If you like old FF (VI - VII and older), you'll like the brighter look of the game, the return of a more familiar character customization interface, and the well-developed characters. If you like the series in general, you'll dig the fantastic music, and well-developed characters.
 * Nightmare Fuel: Atomos's rampage on Lindblum, Meltigemini, a good portion of the song "Last Battle", etc.
 * The Scrappy: Either the bizarre Quina or the Bratty Half-Pint, Clingy Jealous Girl Eiko. Zorn and Thorn also get Scrappy points for being annoying lackeys to Queen Brahne who habitually repeat what the other just said. All the time. Steiner might also count too for being the narrow-minded Jerkass he is in the first half of the game, but his great fighting skills make up for it (and he eventually washes away all Scrappy points in the second half).
 * According to the localization team, Zorn and Thorn's speech-patterns were a conscious choice -- in the original Japanese dialogue, they spoke with a very specific phrasing that's next-to-impossible to translate sensibly into English. As a compromise, the localized dialogue was written in the nearest English equivalent, which was 'Yoda'-style speech for Thorn (while Zorn speaks normally).
 * Scrappy Mechanic: Trance mode. It fills up very slowly, and is activated automatically. After the battle that Trance was activated, it wears off no matter how long the duration was!
 * Imagine this -- your Trance bar is almost filled, when you order an attack on an enemy in a random encounter. Before the attack goes through, the enemy attacks, the Trance bar fills, and you enter Trance. You attack, kill the enemy, battle ends, Trance gauge is depleted. This will be happening.
 * The card game, Tetra Master, qualifies too. The only in-game instructions of how to play it come from the Moogles in Qu's Marsh, who only give you vague hints. Moreover, playing it the way it looks like it ought to be played (stronger cards beat weaker ones) doesn't actually help you much, because there's some kind of random element to it, to the point where even FAQ writers haven't been able to fully figure out how the mechanics work. On top of that, you're forced to play several rounds of it at one point to advance the plot.
 * Stop does not wear off with time. As such, this is the only game in the series where you lose the game if the entire party is afflicted with Stop. There is also a worse version of the Poison status called Venom, which combines the slow HP drain of Poison with the effect of Stop and adds a slow-MP-drain on top of that.
 * Sidetracked By the Gold Saucer: Chocobo Hot & Cold. The fact it has incredibly catchy music to it doesn't help.
 * There's also the fact that the best armor for half your party, which absorbs damage from the Darkness element (used by pretty much all the hardest bosses in the game plus the strongest spell you learn in the game), is the best prize to earn from it. It only takes a few hours of it to give you Game Breaker levels of power.
 * Surprise Difficulty: This is considered one of the easier games in the series, without breaking it. Now tell this to the people who thought it'd be easy when they suddenly had to fight Gizmaluke.
 * That One Boss: Gizmaluke. Especially since a lot of people dind't know they could get Quina.
 * The battles with Beatrix can be intensely annoying due to how difficult it is to steal all her items, two of which each time are powerful equipment pieces you can't acquire by other means yet so you have incentive to get them, and it's a Timed Mission so you only have so many turns to try and get them before she gets bored and deals a Total Party Kill.
 * That One Puzzle: The "red light, green light" game where Cid has to evade the notice of a Hedgehog Pie enemy.
 * That One Sidequest: Obtaining the Excalibur II sword for Steiner, which requires a very difficult Speed Run of the game.
 * Tier Induced Scrappy: Character-wise, Amarant is relatively popular; maybe not as much as Vivi or Steiner, but he has his fans. Gameplay-wise, not so much. Of course, it doesn't help that you get him towards the end of Disc 2.
 * Toy Ship: Many shippers interpreted Eiko's bossiness and Vivi's nervous compliance as cute enough to warrant one.
 * Unfortunate Character Design: Turns out it may not be a great idea to put a six-year-old girl in tight, flesh-colored pants.
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: Kuja, very infamously.
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs?: The Chocobo upgrading scenes. You open a treasure chest and suddenly a white mist consumes you. The next thing you see is your Chocobo walking through a field of stars to arrive at a planetoid topped by a temple full of various-colored Chocobos and ruled over by a giant Chocobo who grants him new powers, then suddenly the sequence ends and you and your powered-up Chocobo are back where you found the chest.
 * Woolseyism: Possibly Zidane's name. Zorn and Thorn's speech patterns are a definite (and welcome) example.
 * The Woobie: Vivi. You spend the first half of the game visiting places the Black Mages have been too and thus Vivi is demonized while he just shakes, cowers and protests he has nothing to do with them and doesn't even know what they and he are.
 * There's even an optional, easily-missable cutscene (it's a message instead if you find Quan's Dwelling early in disc 2) that you'd have to go out of the way at a certain point in the game to watch that turns this Up to Eleven. His adoptive "grandfather" Master Quan
 * Granted, it's implied that Quan, but yeah, it still counts big time.
 * Garnet and Freya would also count as being Woobies.
 * It's implied that your chocobo ran away from an abusive owner before being taken in by a Moogle.