I just beat it! It took so long to get out of that slump in disc 3, but wow... I must say that disc 4 and the ending were incredible... Probably the best ending in any Final Fantasy yet.

The most interesting part of the game was how many references it had to previous Final Fantasies. Walking through the game saying "That's from FF4! That's from FF6!" However, I was very surprised by how many elements were taken from FF1. Garland, the four fiends of Chaos, the way the last area worked, Gulug Volcano's music, several of the monsters... So much fun. :)

I'm having trouble deciding whether it was better than FF8... I know for a fact it was more of a Final Fantasy, but as a game, FF8 was so addictive.

FF9 had quite possibly the cheapest skill I've seen in a while. Auto-Regen. :) Once I had one person learn it (and saw how quick and effective it was), I had everybody else in my party learn and equip it. The rest of the game was very easy. :) By the time everybody had finished using auto-potion, each person had gained about 2000 hit points back from regen. It's great. ^_^