All credit goes to Squaresoft. I own nothing. Well, here we are. My 6th consecutive successful extension. And I've gone for something a little more challenging. Final Fantasy 9's final boss theme Enjoy.
Vivi: "I'm out of MP." Zidane: "Then use an Ether." Vivi: "B-but you can't buy Ethers..." Zidane: "IT'S THE FINAL BATTLE!" Vivi: "But I only have 85 of them."
This fight is pure symbolism for the lingering feeling of death and loneliness constantly over the party's heads for the entire game. Not even Kuja was able to run away from it long enough
@@m74568 The song is written deliberately. This is how songs capture these feelings. This is often why people write songs. The song is designed to express the feeling of existential dread, nothingness, running away, despair.
FF9 is all nostalgia and references. Pretty sure Necron is just a reference to the Giant Space Flea From Nowhere final bosses of past games like Zeromus and Cloud of Darkness.
Necron is the embodiment of absolute nihilism, the belief that nothing matters and life is meaningless He embodies the belief characters grasps with through the story, from Freya's hopelessness to losing her home, her people, and the man she loved, to Garnet losing her mother, to Vivi knowing his existence is short lived, to Zidane for similar reasons questioning the point of his existence. And of course Kuja feeling that same way and believing nobody else should exist if he is destined to die. All those feelings of life having no meaning is what Necron is, so in that sense him being the final boss makes sense, he is what the characters are fighting to overcome in themselves. In the end, even Kuja overcame it, when he saved them in the end, teleporting them to safety.
It's honestly so weird but endlessly fascinating to see how often nihilism is percieved as being an inherently evil or destructive mindset, and is so frequently used for villains. I mean, it can work like that, for sure - when nihilism is taken in the wrong direction. But it is absolutely doable to be a nihilist and not be a monster. I mean, I'm a nihilist. I don't think our universe has any intrinsic purpose built into it. I don't think life carries built-in, univrsal, intrinsic value. No grand plan, no cosmic purpose, no list of instructions. Just a freak accident and a life I didn't ask for but have anyway. And I like it like that. I can see how it might be distressing for someone to settle on this mindset, but I find it liberating, in a way. If there isn't an intrinsic purpose or meaning to this universe or this life, then that means I can decide for myself what I WANT my purpose to be in my life. I can define myself and put personal value where I wish without worrying about breaking some nebulous, poorly written existential rules. It doesn't matter to me if the things I do are objectively pointless. Humans have never been any good with objectivity anyway. I didn't ask to be here, but here I am. Might as well have fun while I'm around, y'know? So from where I stand, as a nihilist, villains who use their own nihilism as an excuse to try and end everything and everyone else are just kind of silly. Like, Necron, Kefka, Fandaniel, you little bitches, brew a coffee and take up a hobby.
@@Skijaramaz "If there isn't an intrinsic purpose or meaning to this universe or this life, then that means I can decide for myself what I WANT my purpose to be in my life. I can define myself and put personal value where I wish without worrying about breaking some nebulous, poorly written existential rules." But what would Sartre say about all that?
@@SkijaramazHello, former Social Sciences Teacher here. Your viewpoint doesn't actually align with nihilism. It aligns with existentialism, which many consider to be the opposite of nihilism. Under nihilism, nothing can be attributed to having meaning in the way you describe this. Nihilism is true and utter lack of meaning in all things. Wandering through life aimlessly with no moral values or belief in any moral repercussions for any actions as all things are inherently meaningless and cannot be given any meaning by yourself or anything else. Existentialism, which I personally subscribe to as well like yourself, is a more optimistic view on the universe. Under existentialism, we can attribute meaning to all things. If there is no inherent value, then there can be attributed value to all things by all those who live with the ability to assign such value. Therefore, value is more flexible than it is worthless under existentialism. I like that you found yourself falling into this viewpoint as well. It shows deep thought on the matter of nihilism and displays good usage of the Socratic method in your own mind. It definitely displays good emotional intelligence on your part, good work discovering this on your own.
@@LucidNyte I don't know why you couldn't just share your opinion without including a reddit Hello, former Social Sciences Teacher here. Absolutely shameful.
Necron appearing out of nowhere makes sense as he answered Kuja's call to end the world, and the party are literally fighting the embodiment of death to make him change his mind.
He did not changed his mind, they beat necron and necron just had to leave, but he stated that as long humanity crawls for their death, he will exist and will comeback
@@parkouremaster Don't believe so, Necron is Death itself. If he really wanted to end all of existence, he could had done it easily but he was willing to give the party a chance to prove that people still wanted to live.
@@balanceherosmt7170 And what happened? He was beated and still said the last thing i said, that doesn't change anything, when you win he started like destroying his body, did he wanted to destroy himself to prove something?
@Mayks Again. He can not truly be killed. He's more of a force of nature than a living being and like you said, he is always around since life and death is natural. He is to remind us that death is inevitable but life simply keeps going on, something that Kuja has no understanding of.
@@AzurezeroArt The intro to Kuja's theme is good, the rest is too upbeat. This is a far more fitting final boss theme that represents the inevitability of death and the desperate struggle on the part of the characters to stop Necron.
I hear a bit of Neo Exdeath's theme in this. Quite fitting, considering that FFIX was pretty much a love letter to the pre-VII Final Fantasy games, and they both existed solely to reduce all creation to nothingness before disappearing themselves.
I know people get on Necron's case for quoting Star Wars but, it doesn't mean that it isn't true. Both Final Fantasy and Star Wars literally draw from Eastern philosophies most specifically Buddhism with IX borrowing from Western philosophies like Existentialism and Nihilism. Also, out of all the abstract bosses in the series, えいえんのやみ or Eternal Darkness or Necron is the objectively speaking the best due to it being present from the start just without a physical presence. With Memoria's rules about memories being made manifest, it made sense for it to show up after Kuja's defeat. Haters just looked at it on a surface level, barely put any thought into the nuance of this game and wrote it off as a generic JRPG cosmic horror. Anyway, my point is the entire set up and encounter with Necron is 99% perfect! Even its design with its face reminiscent of the Rorshach test, to its entire body being in the shape of the OG Crystal that spawned life and the universe as a whole and of course this track! Omg, this track! The sense of despair at the intro to the struggles for life reaching that awesome crescendo makes this fight one of the very best in the game if not the genre. ❤❤
You make me think of how the physical manifestations of eidolons is dependent o people thinking of them. And that perhaps Necron is simply an eidolon manifested from their fear of death and nothingness.
Garland also literally tells you that you only killed the physical form of the Iifa Tree and that there is a spiritual side that filters the souls from Gaia to Terra... People claiming Necron "came out of nowhere" were not paying attention to the story.
I think my favorite thing about the Necron fight wasn't that he came out of nowhere, but that it was the first time I actually had to try since getting Auto Regen on all characters
Finished the game recently. I knew about this boss but not what it did. Grand cross sucked, but what I DIDN'T KNOW is that neutron ring cancels Phoenix down revives. Zidane, Garnet, and Vivi are all down, all that's left is Freya. I have no idea how much hp is left and mp is down. He spams blue crosslash (the down to 1 hp move) and after 1 more swing, the fight was over. Most tense moment in an FF game for me
He probably applied zombie with his neutron ring. You got some horrendous rng. Although, I got grand crossed, which ko'd 2 of my members, then he used neutron ring on the other 2, which applied stop to one and berserk to the remaining one.
I remember the first time i fought this guy...I had to restart mid-fight because i told Garnet to use Ark while she was in trance, she used Ark like 15 times with slowly diminishing damage numbers down to like 300 for the most powerful summon in the game...And then for the 16th cast the game just got stuck, showing me her casting animation until i reset the game.
@@TShadowStalker I casted it once, and she decided to keep casting it after that, with no other character getting a chance to attack in between. 100% chance it was a bug, and I had to start the fight over. Wonder what kind of spaghetti code made that happened...
Owner of the mandatory "I mess with the planets" super move. Except it's mostly nullified by equiping all of the skills that protect you against status ailments.
I’m starting to notice every game that has a character with a skill called grand cross is a masterpiece. First Persona 2 now FF9, both absolutely peak games.
funny that Necron, the character that uses grand cross, is arguably the worst part of ff9 lol. dude just came out of nowhere without any foreshadowing. to be fair this is not the first ff games to use the "final boss comes out of nowhere" trope. Cloud of Darkness in ff3, Zeromus from ff4, and Neo-exdeath in ff5 (kinda, still same character technically).
@@imaresifreak Yeah it had beena few years since I had properly played through FF9 so I forgot lol. Totally worth it just to cry at the ending cutscenes again though lmao
Necron: "Hey i saw that crazy dude trying to wipe out everyone, so that must mean all life yearns for obilivion! Zidane: "Uh...that's not.." Necron: No need to thank me!
I find it funny how anyone that has ever played ff9 bitch about necron being the final boss but with a little common sense they could see why hes the final boss of 9
I have used similar methods in my games to give bosses the feeling of having speed so high you cannot compete, when in actuality, he’s just normal speed but can attack 3 times straight because he charges 3 gauges at once. You could theoretically slow individual atbs down to reduce their number of attacks. In MY game anyway. You can’t do that in this one
@@KitsuneYojimbo You could say that, but in most games it's 4v1, so every turn you get to attack four times while the enemy would only have one. I think it balances out. It was pretty annoying in FFIII though...
I always thought that he had various counter-abilities on top of maybe having double-cast. That would definitely make it seem like he has multiple ATB's.
Y'know, I kind of wonder if he is a reference to Exdeath. There's already a precedence set for referencing classic FF antagonists with Garland being in the game. Necron has a similar enough color scheme to Exdeath, and both represent an ambiguous force, an incarnation of the void, with the goal of returning all of existence to nothingness. They both also resemble the figure of a man growing out of an abstract form, fused with an amalgam of other beings. Neo Exdeath has some similar themes in his music as well. Even just the names are both themed around death. Seems like a lot of coincidences.
This boss is so hard and painful.Whenever this boss casts grand cross its annoying then he spams that 1 spell that lowers your hp to 1 repeatedly he also has a attack that does like 2000 dmg to whole team. even the first time i played this boss kicked my ass.
We kind did though. The final Endwalker fight is basically Necron but with actual motivations. With that said, I do hope we -really- get Necron, because hearing Sokens take on this song would be... damn.
Say what you want about how this boss comes about, but it is the only final boss entering the battle I know I won't 100 percent win in the whole series, probably one of my favourite final fantasy boss fights
@@jewii3824It's had a lot of smaller references, but never a full raid series or anything like that. But some things off the top of my head would be Gigi the little black mage automaton, two really good Ozma fights (and a mount), music used in some subtle ways (go listen to the Weeping City theme, it's the FF9 battle theme remixed), a Zidane outfit, the list goes on but it's all small things. I would love for it to get the kind of love 3-6 and 12 got in XIV.
Yeah, because it's quite easy to beat him with a handgun, instead of a monkey guy with dual blades, a princess summoner, a specialist mage, and a lancer.
I understand why he is the final boss, but they really should have alluded to some sort of embodiment of death throughout the game. Or just made him an "it" that looks more like an artistic representation of death than some robot guy.
Kinda need to go into the side story for that. There's a side story where you find out daggers real name, and in that side story, it is stated that the summoners of madain sari believed that eidolons are given life based on legends
Most definitely. It makes a lot of thematic sense for the embodiment of death and nothingness to serve as the ultimate adversary for our party (and Kuja, for that matter) but giving it a voice and very humanoid design feels...off. It really feels like it needs to be more unfathomable and nebulous to sell the dire situation the characters are in; essentially facing complete entropy. How exactly is that to be accomplished while still being visually appealing? I couldn't tell you.
He's always seemed like that artistic representation of death to me. Blue skin like an oxygen-deprived corpse Bizarre face full of holes Giant halo- and wing-like structures implying he's some kind of angel of death
While I like this boss and the lore behind it gameplay-wise. I hated it story-wise. Just came out of nowhere. Like, Square couldn't come up with final form for Kuja, so they just decided to throw in some random god that was never mentioned before (at least, I don't recall it ever being mentioned or even hinted. Am about to play the game again for the first time since it first came out lol)
I mean, the whole game is about death and dealing with it, and they were in a place were memories and emotions become real, so I think it fits pretty well
I take IX over VI and VII. By far my most beloved experience. People overlooking IX mainly because of the chubby chars, or because they don't want to face zidane's depression.
I hate when the final boss is pulled out of the ass like that, no matter what it represents. That's one of the many reason i prefer FFVI and ffVII way better than this game.
@@valentds It's not a reference. Just a reusing of the same trope. They thought it was cool apparently. Actually it's stupid. If they want to convey a message or express a narrative theme there are plenty of ways to do it without resorting to such bullshit.
