As we should all know, the original Final Fantasy was pretty successful, selling around 1.3 million copies by 1994, and the game itself still holds up pretty well all the way to today. It may be incredibly basic for an RPG, but it was one that established plenty of elements found in not just the Final Fantasy franchise, but also for many other RPGs to follow, and it can still be fun to play…. that is, if you are playing one of its remakes. So, with this success fresh on the company’s minds, Square decided that they needed to make a follow-up, and they did make this follow up less then a year later. Unfortunately though, we would never end up getting this game over here in the west initially, and we wouldn’t see any kind of follow-up to Final Fantasy over here until Final Fantasy IV for the SNES, which was released as Final Fantasy II to try to avoid any confusion……. which ended up causing confusion for many ever since. Great job guys. But anyway, just a mere 15 years later, the west would then finally get an official release for the original Final Fantasy II.
If you are familiar with the mainline Final Fantasy games, you may be aware of the fact that this game is considered to be the black sheep of the franchise, or at least, one of the earlier ones. Granted, a lot of the game, on the surface level, is very similar to the first game, so a lot of it is faithful to the original, but as you play the game, you will notice several changes made to the game that almost no other Final Fantasy game would use after this. Sure, some of these changes didn’t really impact how most of the game is played, but then there are some that change up the experience completely, making for what is a somewhat sloppy followup. Personally, I did end up liking Final Fantasy II back when I initially played through it, but yeah, I can definitely say that I would prefer the original game over this. Yes, there is still a lot to love about this sequel, but the changes made are just enough to make it hard for me to ever come back to it after all this time.
The story is bigger and more in depth then the previous game, this time focusing on four specific characters rather then four blank slates like in the previous game, and having a much darker tone, with multiple tragedies occurring throughout the game, such as towns being destroyed and people dying all the time, which is pretty impressive to see for an NES game, and some aspects of it are appealing, but there are some certain elements that do drag it down and make it more… stupid, the graphics are about on the same level as the original game, but there is still that same amount of detail and love put into it, with some aspects being changed around, so it is an improvement all around, the music is definitely not as memorable as the original game, but there are still quite a few songs in here that I genuinely loved, like the main overworld theme and the main battle theme, the control is the exact same as the first game, so no need to talk about it anymore, and the gameplay is very similar to that of the original game, but with quite a few changes and additions, for better or worse.
The game is still your traditional turn-based RPG, where you take control of Firian, Maria, Guy, and a bunch of other random fourth party members until ultimately ending with Leon, travel across an overworld to visit many different towns, caves, and dungeons, talk to plenty of NPCs to either learn useful information to aid you in your quest, or to buy numerous items like weapons, armor, spells, and regular healing stuffs, and of course, get into random battles, where you will take turns in trading attacks with plenty of different monsters, using either regular melee attacks or spells, and level up at points when you have defeated enough enemies. For the most part, it stays true to the main gameplay of the original Final Fantasy, and to its credit, it does introduce plenty of elements that are either unique to this entry, or would become staples of the series from here on out.
The first change made was the inclusion of the Word Memory system, where whenever you talk to certain NPCs, sometimes you will see highlighted words in their dialogue, which you can then record down and save for later. From here, you can then use these key words with other NPCs, and depending on what word you use with a specific person, it will result in them aiding you in your quest. This is actually a pretty cool idea, and one that would definitely be useful if fleshed out more, but here in this game, it is really not anything too exciting. Really, at the end of the day, it is just a means to get you from Point A to Point B with extra steps involved, which could be neat for some players, but for me, it just seems unnecessary when in most other RPGs, you just have all the information stored in your character’s brain, and you can tell it to others without needing to scroll through a list. Aside from that though, we also get Chocobos in this game, which are basically the Yoshis of the Final Fantasy series, and while they don’t really do that much here, I still love to see them and ride around on them when I can, and then there is also Cid, who would become a recurring character throughout the series from this point on, with multiple different variations of him being included in many other games.
However, there is one main change to this game that was implemented that will either make or break your experience with Final Fantasy II: the leveling up system. Like I mentioned before, the battles in this game work basically the exact same way as the original game, but the way you gain levels is completely changed over from the original game. Instead of regularly gaining experience and leveling up while increasing your stats every time like in most RPGs, here in Final Fantasy II, you gain levels primarily based on what you do in battles. For example, if you have someone who uses a sword a lot in battles, they will have their Sword Level increased if used enough times, if you have someone that primarily uses a Bow, then their Bow Level will increase, and so on and so forth. In addition to that, you can only gain boosts to your health, defense, and other stats if the player takes a lot of damage or flees from fights, and you can pretty much see where the issue lies with this.
For me, personally, I like this idea when it comes to leveling up your character, but unfortunately, this is implemented into the game very poorly. It is very easy to either be completely screwed by this system to where you will be constantly underleveled whenever you venture forth with the main quest, or you can be completely overpowered and make every single boss fight and encounter in this game a complete joke. Not to mention, some of the ways that you have to manage getting these levels are completely absurd and take way more time than necessary. For example, like I mentioned earlier, in order to increase your health stat, you have to take a lot of damage, so the only real way to have that happen on a regular basis is by having your party members beat the everloving fuck out of each other just enough to where they won’t die, but they will get more health. When it came to my first playthrough of this game, I didn’t use this strategy because I am a normal human being with common sense, which meant that I thought “low health = bad things for me”, so because of this, I was constantly underpowered and getting fucked over by a lot of strong enemies, making the entire experience much more stressful then it needs to be.
And it sucks too, because honestly, there is a lot to love about Final Fantasy II. The story, while certainly more dark and depressing then the previous game, is one that I really liked, and was rare to see for games on the NES, the inclusion of Chocobos and Cid was pretty great to see, and the main gameplay is fun and engaging enough like the previous game. However, this one mechanic completely drags the entire game’s quality down, making it so that you can’t ever have a normal playthrough of this game. You can either take advantage of the system to overpower everything, or get bum rushed by everything else, which is not the kind of system you want for your RPG. This, coupled with the lackluster Word Memory system and even with other things I didn’t mention like the trap rooms in dungeons, make this a pretty rough follow-up to what was a basic, but still good first entry.
Overall, despite still keeping the core gameplay intact and implementing new features and additions that are pretty good and would continue to be seen in the series, the poor leveling up system drags the entire thing down to where I wouldn’t necessarily call it bad, but instead, overly frustrating to play, and thus, makes it inferior to its previous installment. I would recommend it for those who are fans of the Final Fantasy franchise, as well as those who are fans of RPGs in general, but just be aware of what you are getting into whenever you hit that start button. And just like with the original game, don’t go out of your way to play the original version. Play through any one of the remakes or the Pixel Remaster, because they will make the experience much better for you as a whole. But hey, I guess we have to be thankful that this type of game exists, because since it does, Square Enix knows now how to properly use this system, and hasn’t reused it for Final Fantasy all that much. It’s nice to see them learn from their mistakes. I just wish they could do that more often nowadays.
Game #407
If you are familiar with the mainline Final Fantasy games, you may be aware of the fact that this game is considered to be the black sheep of the franchise, or at least, one of the earlier ones. Granted, a lot of the game, on the surface level, is very similar to the first game, so a lot of it is faithful to the original, but as you play the game, you will notice several changes made to the game that almost no other Final Fantasy game would use after this. Sure, some of these changes didn’t really impact how most of the game is played, but then there are some that change up the experience completely, making for what is a somewhat sloppy followup. Personally, I did end up liking Final Fantasy II back when I initially played through it, but yeah, I can definitely say that I would prefer the original game over this. Yes, there is still a lot to love about this sequel, but the changes made are just enough to make it hard for me to ever come back to it after all this time.
The story is bigger and more in depth then the previous game, this time focusing on four specific characters rather then four blank slates like in the previous game, and having a much darker tone, with multiple tragedies occurring throughout the game, such as towns being destroyed and people dying all the time, which is pretty impressive to see for an NES game, and some aspects of it are appealing, but there are some certain elements that do drag it down and make it more… stupid, the graphics are about on the same level as the original game, but there is still that same amount of detail and love put into it, with some aspects being changed around, so it is an improvement all around, the music is definitely not as memorable as the original game, but there are still quite a few songs in here that I genuinely loved, like the main overworld theme and the main battle theme, the control is the exact same as the first game, so no need to talk about it anymore, and the gameplay is very similar to that of the original game, but with quite a few changes and additions, for better or worse.
The game is still your traditional turn-based RPG, where you take control of Firian, Maria, Guy, and a bunch of other random fourth party members until ultimately ending with Leon, travel across an overworld to visit many different towns, caves, and dungeons, talk to plenty of NPCs to either learn useful information to aid you in your quest, or to buy numerous items like weapons, armor, spells, and regular healing stuffs, and of course, get into random battles, where you will take turns in trading attacks with plenty of different monsters, using either regular melee attacks or spells, and level up at points when you have defeated enough enemies. For the most part, it stays true to the main gameplay of the original Final Fantasy, and to its credit, it does introduce plenty of elements that are either unique to this entry, or would become staples of the series from here on out.
The first change made was the inclusion of the Word Memory system, where whenever you talk to certain NPCs, sometimes you will see highlighted words in their dialogue, which you can then record down and save for later. From here, you can then use these key words with other NPCs, and depending on what word you use with a specific person, it will result in them aiding you in your quest. This is actually a pretty cool idea, and one that would definitely be useful if fleshed out more, but here in this game, it is really not anything too exciting. Really, at the end of the day, it is just a means to get you from Point A to Point B with extra steps involved, which could be neat for some players, but for me, it just seems unnecessary when in most other RPGs, you just have all the information stored in your character’s brain, and you can tell it to others without needing to scroll through a list. Aside from that though, we also get Chocobos in this game, which are basically the Yoshis of the Final Fantasy series, and while they don’t really do that much here, I still love to see them and ride around on them when I can, and then there is also Cid, who would become a recurring character throughout the series from this point on, with multiple different variations of him being included in many other games.
However, there is one main change to this game that was implemented that will either make or break your experience with Final Fantasy II: the leveling up system. Like I mentioned before, the battles in this game work basically the exact same way as the original game, but the way you gain levels is completely changed over from the original game. Instead of regularly gaining experience and leveling up while increasing your stats every time like in most RPGs, here in Final Fantasy II, you gain levels primarily based on what you do in battles. For example, if you have someone who uses a sword a lot in battles, they will have their Sword Level increased if used enough times, if you have someone that primarily uses a Bow, then their Bow Level will increase, and so on and so forth. In addition to that, you can only gain boosts to your health, defense, and other stats if the player takes a lot of damage or flees from fights, and you can pretty much see where the issue lies with this.
For me, personally, I like this idea when it comes to leveling up your character, but unfortunately, this is implemented into the game very poorly. It is very easy to either be completely screwed by this system to where you will be constantly underleveled whenever you venture forth with the main quest, or you can be completely overpowered and make every single boss fight and encounter in this game a complete joke. Not to mention, some of the ways that you have to manage getting these levels are completely absurd and take way more time than necessary. For example, like I mentioned earlier, in order to increase your health stat, you have to take a lot of damage, so the only real way to have that happen on a regular basis is by having your party members beat the everloving fuck out of each other just enough to where they won’t die, but they will get more health. When it came to my first playthrough of this game, I didn’t use this strategy because I am a normal human being with common sense, which meant that I thought “low health = bad things for me”, so because of this, I was constantly underpowered and getting fucked over by a lot of strong enemies, making the entire experience much more stressful then it needs to be.
And it sucks too, because honestly, there is a lot to love about Final Fantasy II. The story, while certainly more dark and depressing then the previous game, is one that I really liked, and was rare to see for games on the NES, the inclusion of Chocobos and Cid was pretty great to see, and the main gameplay is fun and engaging enough like the previous game. However, this one mechanic completely drags the entire game’s quality down, making it so that you can’t ever have a normal playthrough of this game. You can either take advantage of the system to overpower everything, or get bum rushed by everything else, which is not the kind of system you want for your RPG. This, coupled with the lackluster Word Memory system and even with other things I didn’t mention like the trap rooms in dungeons, make this a pretty rough follow-up to what was a basic, but still good first entry.
Overall, despite still keeping the core gameplay intact and implementing new features and additions that are pretty good and would continue to be seen in the series, the poor leveling up system drags the entire thing down to where I wouldn’t necessarily call it bad, but instead, overly frustrating to play, and thus, makes it inferior to its previous installment. I would recommend it for those who are fans of the Final Fantasy franchise, as well as those who are fans of RPGs in general, but just be aware of what you are getting into whenever you hit that start button. And just like with the original game, don’t go out of your way to play the original version. Play through any one of the remakes or the Pixel Remaster, because they will make the experience much better for you as a whole. But hey, I guess we have to be thankful that this type of game exists, because since it does, Square Enix knows now how to properly use this system, and hasn’t reused it for Final Fantasy all that much. It’s nice to see them learn from their mistakes. I just wish they could do that more often nowadays.
Game #407
SlasherMcGirk
4 months ago