Final Fantasy IX (PSX) - Final Bosses and Ending

Time to defeat the giant space flea out of nowhere.

First, let's mop up the trash.

Deathguise

Drops a nasty Meteor on the first turn, which can RNG wipe out your party before you can do anything. Have everyone with Auto-Life equipped just in case. Just pummel it into submission, but you can steal some unique stuff from it if you have Zidane.

You can save after defeating Deathguise, but I decided to keep going to not break the flow.

Trance Kuja

He can cast Reflect on himself, and will counter attacks with Flare Star (deals 35x your party's level average to everyone) or Curaga to heal himself. Can cast some spells too, and Flare Star without any warning, AND if any of your characters have Reflect. Auto-Regen makes his damage pretty much ineffective. Have your mages with Null-Reflect just in case.

Necron

The big cheese here isn't as hard as the super boss, but it can be pretty nasty if you aren't prepared, and even if you are depending on how the coin flips. This fight is kind of a RNG salad, and arguably the hardest final boss in FF up to this point.
It sports only 54k HP, is immune to Earth, weak to Holy and Wind; and can act up to 4 times in a single turn, which if the coin flips enough times could spell doom to any sort of party you cook up.

It can buff itself with Protect and Shell, and counter attacks with Curaga when low on HP. For attacks, it can cast the elemental -Ga spells single target or on the whole party, Meteor that's always fun in this game in how random the damage is, the unique skill Blue Shockwave that leaves one party member with 1 HP, Neutron Ring that can deal upwards of 4k damage to everyone, and the ultimate bastard move, Grand Cross, which causes pretty much all the negative statuses in the game, including and most importantly: Berserk, Mini, Zombie, Instant Death, or just reduce HP to 1, which you can't block in this game. Sometimes it inflicts all of them at once, other times it misses everything, it's truly random. Most of its attacks come at random, but usually Neutron Ring always comes after Grand Cross.

Strategy

FF9 doesn't have the equivalent of Ribbon to prevent status ailments, just the status protection abilities that will hog most of your precious ability stones. You'll want to cover up all of them that you can, and there's still a very high chance to get screwed by the ones you can't block.

I tried many strategies and honestly, unless you're grossly overleveled, it's best to just go ham in damage and pray GC doesn't just destroy you - it's a real show stopper. You'll want characters that can bypass the boss' defenses with fixed damage, so Zidane with Thievery (if you stole a lot), Quina with Frog Drop (if you got lots of frogs) and Freya with Dragon Crest (if you killed lots of dragons) should be your main damage dealers; failing that, Steiner with Shock! should do decent, Amarant throwing weapons at the boss or using No Mercy is also ok, and Eiko can do high damage with Holy or Madeen, though if the boss has Shell it's going to be bad. Eiko is the best healer with Full Life, Phoenix and Curaga, so she can be useful if things go REALLY south. Quina has Angel's Snack which can help you survive the status hell, and Auto-Life spell that can be useful. Amarant also has this, and during Trance he can cast it on the entire party. Have everyone with Auto-Haste to avoid Slow, and Auto-Life if you can. It's not advisable to have Auto-Regen because if a character is inflicted with Zombie, they'll simply die from the auto healing before you can even move at very fast ATB speed, although it makes surviving Blue Shockwave easier. If someone is Zombie-fied, use a Magic Tag on them even if they are dead, or else they won't be revived. If someone is Berserked, use Gysahl Greens. Mini can be recovered with Remedy, though it's probably the least dangerous status if it's a fixed damage user. Good luck!

By the way, you can play Blackjack in the The End screen if you input R2, L1, R2, R2, Up, X, Right, Circle, Down, Triangle, L2, R1, R2, L1, Square, Square, Start.

Final Fantasy IX
2000, Squaresoft
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