A look back at: Final Fantasy II

 

Surprised that I would play this again? Even I am. Words cannot express how confused I was at this game initially. You'd think it'd be just another Final Fantasy game, but then it throws you for a loop as there's no regular level gaining, and it's all about stat growth. In a way, the second Final Fantasy game predated the SaGa series. Neato. In any case though, good lord, there's gonna be lots of grinding, and in some ways it's all counterintuitive. Yes that's right. Attack a lot to gain strength. Get hit a lot to gain HP and endurace. Use magic to up MP and Intelligence or Spirit. And since you can hit your own characters, this all paves way to some ludicrous stat growth for the most persevering of grinders. But never bite off more than you can chew, because the super strongest enemies won't even be scratched at low levels. There's also weapon and spell mastery so you're basically talking LOTS of usage of particular things to get things up to snuff. Impatient players will just use the PAR codes.

I'll also gladly admit, the enemy encounters are annoying. I mean the actual encounters, not the enemies themselves. Combine the high encounter rate with twisting dungeons with lots of enemies and one dungeon can take more than an hour. Plus, seeing as this is an old FF game, there's an item limit. It's still tough, even if I played on the PSX remake of the game.

At least Final Fantasy games are good enough in storyline. This isn't the best as far as story goes, but it's still engaging, you get these neat characters in your fourth slot to help often (well except Gordon who sucks all around) but also see story scenes that will drive the narrative of "stop the evil empire". Deaths of Josef, Minwu, and Ricard/Gareth are definitely sad, while getting Leon back in the party is a great way to get the game back on the feet for the endgame. The experimental nature of this game is its main downside, and the main reason I came back to it is of course, there've been much more complex stuff than this, so it's time to revisit and actually get through it now that I know what to really do.