Hey Duders,

Here is the latest Deep Look! Deep Looks are largely gameplay and commentary like a Giantbomb quicklook; however, I try to cover games that have been out for a while and I intend to use the videos to highlight moments and mechanics that I found particularly worthy of highlighting and exploring. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes.

In this Baby Deep Look I continue my preparations for my Final Fantasy IX speed run in the Giantbomb Community Endurance Run. The GB Community Endurance Run is going to be raising money for Pencils of Promise, a charity that builds schools, trains teachers, and puts kids through school in developing nations, from April 10th through 12th.

In this video I show off how to whip through the three early encounters with Steiner. I explain what items you want to steal and how to speed up some of the fights. I even find time to muse about some of the finer points of FFIX's set design and costuming.

Man, watching this Deep Look just makes me want to play FFIX again. VII will always be my favourite, because of that unquantifiable emotional tie we call 'nostalgia', but I genuinely think IX is the best Final Fantasy game, because it epitomises everything the series had been up to that point (and a lot of the things it's been since, I guess) in a single game. Not to mention the fact its world and characters are so damn good. If I didn't feel so obligated to play more of the games on my Pile of Shame, I'd probably boot up the PSN version right now and get lost in Gaia all over again.

On topic - I knew about the Mage Masher and Silk Shirt (the game has so many great steals in its early stages that can set you up for a lot of the first disc), but I had no idea you could 'win' the last two battles by KO-ing your party save for Garnet. That's a pretty interesting little time-saver right there. I wish you all the best for your speed run, duder - will you be aiming for the Excalibur II, out of interest?

@dankempster: Who knows if the games in your Pile of Shame are any good though? FFIX is definitely a great game and worthy of a replay. It gets better with age!

I am going to be going for Excalibur II because I have personally never gotten it before and it is essential to beating the game in under 12 hours. You need the ludicrous damage it deals to be able to kill Necron using the super-secret tech that the AGDQ peoples and other FFIX speed runners use. I am going to make a video out of the last three battles at some point so I don't want to spoil it (though you can watch the AGDQ speed run from AGDQ 2013 if you want that info now). If I don't get Excalibur II, then I'm really going to need to pivot my strategy at the very end.

@dankempster: Also the stealing component of the game holds true for basically the whole game as long as Zidane is in your party. If you steal the rarest item from every boss, then you will be well ahead of the curve at all times. The problem with stealing from bosses is that it takes so much time and it ties up one of your hardest hitting characters.