The D-listers

[ElectricMutt]

Do any of you use the following and if so, why?

Freya
Amarant
Quina

I remember trying to dedicate my team to utilizing Freya, but I also remember that she was kind of, not good. Just some jack-of-all-trades kind of stuff that the pure roles can do much better.

Zidane, Steiner, Vivi, Garnet/dagger (Eiko is a good alternative to Garnet) are all great, but I always feel like I'm going for the safe choice playing these. Especially Vivi seems to fizzle out in potential around the other side of the middle of the game and Steiner seems to be tied partially to Vivi

Quina can use blue magic, but isn't most of it kind of bad? Also very high investment required just to learn the abilities.
Amarant seems like F-tier to me.

Are any of those actually good? Did I miss something?

[Devsman]

I use everyone so I can learn everyone's abilities.

Also I kinda think Quina is not bad. A weirdo, sure, but he packs a decent punch.

[koma]

Quina is good but you gotta invest so much time into learning abiltiies then she becomes really good.

Amarant you need to buy throwables and even then he's still pretty weak but its a nice alternative to steiner if you dont wanna have vivi or can act as an off support to focus on more damage(so you can do amarant, steiner, vivi and zidane)

Freya is cool because you can use her to avoid damage while not being targeteable which fine since it can help you keep control of some battles while you heal up. Even then. i think the best party overall is either Zidane/Steiner/Vivi/Garner or Eiko.

[ElectricMutt]

Yeah basically confirming my suspicions here. Blue Magic is kind of the black sheep of final fantasy games though, so I'm seriously considering to bring along that ugly ass toad for my main team. I just hate when stuff can't be used against bosses.

Tank role aside, can Amarant do any real damage?

[Moridin]

Quina can put out some pretty decent damage if you know what your doing with them but isnt really worth the work if using garnet/eiko. getting Level 5 death before a particular dungeon works great since everything but the boss is level 20, and i think Magic Hammer can kill that dungeons boss.

Amarant gets a pretty cheap skill that restores hp and (iirc) mp in small amounts and has some other useful skills but most of his damage output comes from throwing weapons.

Freya is best of the bunch as she's the easiest one to get to do 9999 damage with her late game skill Dragon Crest. her support skills have some use and Jump while tranced has won me boss battles before.

[ElectricMutt]

Death has a high chance of missing, even on regular old mobs, yeah?
Maybe I never saw the potential in Freya because I didn't bother with the dragon grinding.
Don't think I will for the next time either.

On a different note, is Eiko + Garnet a good combo ? I was wondering because it seems it could make you immortal, but on the flipside it'll make every battle far too long.

[Moridin]

normal death yes. the level 4 holy and level 5 death skills always hit enemies who's levels are multipuls for 4 and 5 (depending on which spell).

i dont bother with the dragon grinding, even if she dose only need to kill 100 of them.

My normal end-game party is Zidane using Theivery skill. (number of times stolen X speed)divide by 2. its only 8 mp and ignore defence.
Garnet/Dagger for Heals and summon damage since Odin with the "odin's sword" ability dose more damage the less ore you have in inventory dose about 3-5k damage a cast even to bosses.
Eiko back up healing but mostly Holy spam.
Vivi damage output, flare dose pretty good.

i know there are better parties but dont really mind this one. all of them having the status effect null passives and auto-regen helps too.

funny enough the game has a hidden min-max system for stats where the better the gear you have equipped the more stat growth you get. so early leveling's kinda a bad idea. there is specific gear that dose best for each stat, but even without knowing that i did a run like that last time and was doing about double the damage i normally do at the 60s.

[ElectricMutt]

Great info, thanks a bunch @Moridin. I'll go for this exact setup myself for my upcoming playthrough. Weirdly specific conditions for some of the data behind abilities that I never knew about.

[WhateverWorks]

Quina and Freya are the easiest members to have a guaranteed 9999 damage skill with. So there's that. Quina is so OP is honestly ridiculous. Ever do a LVL 1 game? Or an EXIIPG? Do a playthrough like that and you'll realize Quina is the strongest character, by a lot.

Dragon Crest only needs you to kill 100 dragon type enemies to hit the damage cap, you can manage that in a couple hours. Quina just needs frogs, which you have to collect for Gastro Fork anyways. The multiplier is Frogs Collected x Quina's level. You do the math and tell me it's hard to hit the cap. Every enemy in memoria is weak to either heat or freeze. Quina has both. I feel like people who don't think quina is useful just have never actually learned how any of the skills work.

[WhateverWorks]

Also Steiners Iai Strike will auto death basically every enemy in the game, if his spirit stat is high. Same goes for Odin. The only character that genuinely has almost no real use over the others is Amarant.

EDIT: For spelling

[Moridin]

pretty sure its a Iai strike, i not L. like iifa tree. Odin's damage output and kill chance are related to the number of Ore in your inventory. less ore more damage, more ore higher kill chance.

there's loads of bosses you can kill in various fun ways if you know how. like Ipsen's castle boss you can inflct heat on it using Flamebrand and added effect passive then watch it kill itself.
the Black waltz 3 fight when you have steiner, marcus and garnet will beat itself up if only garnet is alive.
Plant Brain in evil forest is interesting in it only has about 450 HP and only takes damage after Blanc turns up after X amount of time or Zidane going into yellow HP.

[WhateverWorks]

I stand corrected on the spelling. Point being that this isn't a hard game and every character has pretty equal usefulness compared to the others. Except Quina, Quina is the most all around useful.

The most fascinating thing about FF9 is that they clearly designed it so that it could be beaten at lvl 1. The degree of planning and forethought that went into that, imagine not seeing a lvl 1 guide pop up for a decade and thinking the players were never going to figure it out?

[Moridin]

they probably didnt design it for that. lots of companys/people make games and then are surprised at the crazy stuff people do on em

[WhateverWorks]

The challenge would be impossible if the Oak staff wasn't obtainable EXACTLY when you can get it, and you can't get it again until disc two if you don't know to get it there. It'd be impossible if Limit Glove worked any other way and was gotten at any other point in the game. And that's just one small part of what makes it possible. For sure someone knew what they were doing.

If the Evil Forest had even 1 more forced battle it would be impossible. The list is very long. And no one aspect makes it possible, every required item or skill becomes available exactly when it's needed. I don't believe for a moment that isn't by design.

[ElectricMutt]

Originally posted by WhateverWorks:

Quina and Freya are the easiest members to have a guaranteed 9999 damage skill with. So there's that. Quina is so OP is honestly ridiculous. Ever do a LVL 1 game? Or an EXIIPG? Do a playthrough like that and you'll realize Quina is the strongest character, by a lot.

I am considering to go for a run with Eiko, Quina, Freya and Zidane. Honestly only ever had my childhood memory of this game as my backdrop for what "works" so yeah. This kind of info is why I made this thread in the first place, so thank you for that and also to the others who have contributed.

Is there a decent replacement for Zidane if my other 3 are the above? Anyone other than Amarant though, I simply cannot invest myself in his potential, whatever there may be.
I previously considered double white mage, so maybe Garnet? I dunno.

That way, I'd basically have a full setup of characters that I never gave a real chance before.

[Darkling]

Quina's issues are:
1. Forks are random damage, which isn't good when you need to hit a somewhat narrow damage range to eat a monster.
2. Eat and Cook work at too low of a current hp to max HP ratio.

If forks were just normal weapons, possibly ones that were less powerful but dealt useful debuffs for foe eating, then they'd, Eat worked at 34%, and Cook worked at 67%, then she'd be considerably better.

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Amarant needs more powerful weapons, and that's about it really. It would improve No Mercy.

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Freya needs stronger weapons too, which would improve Jump and some of her Dragon skills. Beyond that, 6 Dragons isn't reliably useful but the rest of her skills are fine.