how good is FF9 compared to the others?
well it's like ff5/ff6, where you can equip things on yourself that teach you various skills [this depends on a character], but you can't change character's class.
you can have 4 characters at the same time in a battle. it's pretty much like not-ff8 fantasies, where you have to amass tons of XP to get high levels. oh, and there are no attacks stronger than 9999 :/
how is the gameplay - is it like FF8?
no it's entirely different - no more arcade like combos [like in zell's limits]. no more 16x9999 combos [yup.i really love lionheart
]. only two characters have summons now, and their animation can be short or long. character design is similar to ff7, and looks fairy-tale-ish :/. but there is still a card game :] [it's way different now, however]. oh bother, read some reviews for more!
i might try this emu to give it a shot, it would be like a dream come true playing this game.
ff9 looks awesome on openGL plugin in epsxe, but it might get sometimes sluggish on older video cards, that don't support framebuffer 'acrobatics' too well [like GF2 cards]