Kinda. Except way, way less of a jerk. I'd recommend it. It's not the most popular by FF standards, but frankly, I think it's one of the best. It has a really good story and the characters have a depth that a lot of the Final Fantasies missed (VIII and XIII, I'm looking at you).

There wasn't a single main in IX who was there just to be there, even the gag character, Quina. And the story was complex without being the cluster fuck of Tactics or XII, and it was so much more subtle than XIII ever was.