I was out of town most of the past week, but I had my Switch and PSPgo with me. That meant that I had a good deal of time with Breath of the Wild, but not exclusively. I actually found the PSPgo easier to take with me, so I made even more progress on Final Fantasy IX. It's great having these on the go, as it makes things so much easier.

If you want to catch up on my prior pieces, here's a link to last week's Issue 9.

Final Fantasy IX (PSP, PS1 Classic)

After finishing up the Festival of the Hunt, I got the summons that Burmecia was under attack. Dagger drugged my party in a daring attempt to be a hero, which I find highly impressive. She's a great protagonist so far, and I love how the game handles the split party story segments. Taking Zidane, Vivi, and Freya to Burmecia, I did the typical stop-off at Qu's Marsh to get Quina. Can I just say once again how much I hate the implementation of Blue Magic in most Final Fantasy games? Weakening enemies to be able to eat them is just as annoying as hoping that you get hit with a specific spell. Hard to say if there's a better way of doing this, but I'd love to see it. These tend to be tedious methods of building characters that I never feel like wasting my time with.

After getting Quina, I fought through and got to Burmecia. My party feels very unbalanced right now, but I still enjoy the division. After working my way across the rainy townscape, I finally got to Queen Brahne, Beatrix, and the Mysterious Man. On my friend Jon's and my first playthrough we both seemed to miss the "Mysterious Man" moniker on Kuja, as we both thought he and his hips were lovely and ladylike. Eventually we saw the error of our ways, but it was hilarious at the time that we both thought the same thing. With the Beatrix fight down Disc 1 was done, and after just over six hours I wrapped up this week's play session. My third playthrough of Final Fantasy IX is going well so far. So glad to be doing this.