I went into Final Fantasy II with trepidation. This is the Final Fantasy game everyone seems to hate. Lot of words out there on the Internet about having to whack your own party members in the back of their plush, malleable skulls until they learn to have better HP. Literal tomes about memorizing complex sequences of key words to further the story, like a child learning to navigate the English language. "Final Fantasy II sucks!" all my friends shout, "Play Alan Wake 2, god damnit!"
"No, no, it's not on disc! I have to play a 2001 remake of a 1988 NES JRPG!" I cry out, seeing no other option.
This game is nearly as old as I am, and like me, it has some good ideas, and a whole lot of poorly aged ones that repulse the youth. For example, every stat from strength and endurance to weapon and spell proficiency is increased based on use, which is where a lot of the advice about hitting your own party members comes from as it seems like an efficient way to simultaneously build your offense, defense, and curative abilities. This system and the criticisms of it have largely informed my perception of the game, but now that I have FFII's 20+ hour campaign under my belt, I can safely say it's all a little overblown.
I was able to get by just fine playing the game like normal, and never once did I feel like I needed to grind. It wouldn't surprise me if the WonderSwan remake - and by extension, the PlayStation port that I played - smooths over and expedites stat progression, but outside of faster gains to weapon proficiency, I couldn't find what exactly was changed and what remained the same.
It's not a flawless system, though. I did find that prioritizing weapons over magic was the best COA (course of action), as you're always building stats into your preferred weapon type whereas each individual spell needs to grow on its own. This makes late game spells like Flare and Holy remarkably weak starting out, incentivizing you to hold the X button and essentially auto-attack through every battle. Swords are also ridiculously good and have a far more varied pool to choose from, including those imbued with elements to bypass physically resistant enemies, and the health syphoning blood sword that initially appears to have meager stats, but which everything in the end game (including the final boss) is severely weak to. About halfway through the game you can safely ditch shields and start dual-wielding, and once you're flailing two blood swords around, there's really no going back. I'm surprised anyone has any trouble with this game's difficulty as I mostly found it to devolves into utter banality, and that's probably where I'd fault Final Fantasy II the most.
One other part of FFII's dated design that gave me trouble was the key word system. You have to "memorize" highlighted words in a conversation and then present them to other NPCs to gain new key words or open up events that progress the story, but god help you if you forgot one key word somewhere in the world. Imagine getting in your car and driving all the way to the grocery store to pick up a refreshing beverage only to find that you hadn't internalized the term "NOS Energy Drink" and are unable to proceed unless you turn around and go find the one random schmuck who can tell you what you want. This has happened to me a lot throughout my life, I think it's a memory problem (probably from drinking too much NOS!), and I don't like it when it's in my video games!
This key word system is at least interesting on paper. Final Fantasy II is far more narrative driven than the last game, so needing to bank highlighted words and present key items to NPCs makes you a more active participant in the story. I get why it's here, it just never materializes into anything valuable.
For all its faults, I don't think Final Fantasy II lives up to its negative reputation, or least this version doesn't. I had fun with it overall, even if I might prefer the original game a little bit more. Should you play it? No! I gave Lies of P a 2/5 and Castlevania: The Adventure a 4/5, I am disconnected from reality. I drench my brain in CMPLX6 and high quantities of disodium EDTA daily, you cannot hope to process video games the way I do.
"No, no, it's not on disc! I have to play a 2001 remake of a 1988 NES JRPG!" I cry out, seeing no other option.
This game is nearly as old as I am, and like me, it has some good ideas, and a whole lot of poorly aged ones that repulse the youth. For example, every stat from strength and endurance to weapon and spell proficiency is increased based on use, which is where a lot of the advice about hitting your own party members comes from as it seems like an efficient way to simultaneously build your offense, defense, and curative abilities. This system and the criticisms of it have largely informed my perception of the game, but now that I have FFII's 20+ hour campaign under my belt, I can safely say it's all a little overblown.
I was able to get by just fine playing the game like normal, and never once did I feel like I needed to grind. It wouldn't surprise me if the WonderSwan remake - and by extension, the PlayStation port that I played - smooths over and expedites stat progression, but outside of faster gains to weapon proficiency, I couldn't find what exactly was changed and what remained the same.
It's not a flawless system, though. I did find that prioritizing weapons over magic was the best COA (course of action), as you're always building stats into your preferred weapon type whereas each individual spell needs to grow on its own. This makes late game spells like Flare and Holy remarkably weak starting out, incentivizing you to hold the X button and essentially auto-attack through every battle. Swords are also ridiculously good and have a far more varied pool to choose from, including those imbued with elements to bypass physically resistant enemies, and the health syphoning blood sword that initially appears to have meager stats, but which everything in the end game (including the final boss) is severely weak to. About halfway through the game you can safely ditch shields and start dual-wielding, and once you're flailing two blood swords around, there's really no going back. I'm surprised anyone has any trouble with this game's difficulty as I mostly found it to devolves into utter banality, and that's probably where I'd fault Final Fantasy II the most.
One other part of FFII's dated design that gave me trouble was the key word system. You have to "memorize" highlighted words in a conversation and then present them to other NPCs to gain new key words or open up events that progress the story, but god help you if you forgot one key word somewhere in the world. Imagine getting in your car and driving all the way to the grocery store to pick up a refreshing beverage only to find that you hadn't internalized the term "NOS Energy Drink" and are unable to proceed unless you turn around and go find the one random schmuck who can tell you what you want. This has happened to me a lot throughout my life, I think it's a memory problem (probably from drinking too much NOS!), and I don't like it when it's in my video games!
This key word system is at least interesting on paper. Final Fantasy II is far more narrative driven than the last game, so needing to bank highlighted words and present key items to NPCs makes you a more active participant in the story. I get why it's here, it just never materializes into anything valuable.
For all its faults, I don't think Final Fantasy II lives up to its negative reputation, or least this version doesn't. I had fun with it overall, even if I might prefer the original game a little bit more. Should you play it? No! I gave Lies of P a 2/5 and Castlevania: The Adventure a 4/5, I am disconnected from reality. I drench my brain in CMPLX6 and high quantities of disodium EDTA daily, you cannot hope to process video games the way I do.