Very ambitious, some great IDEAS, but these ideas in execution are incredibly boring or outright terrible.
They clearly wanted to focus more on the characters in this game, giving you specific characters rather than creating your own, and the story is much more serious, the game even begins with your party losing and being disbanded. The story is more engaging than Final Fantasy I and has more of an overarching narrative, to push that idea of the characters, you also get new party members swapping in and out, which helps you connect to them further. It also has a keyword system, which is a cool IDEA, but in reality its basically the equivalent of having a key, and everytime you talk to somebody you just have to try every word until something happens, and its not like they say anything interesting for any "wrong" words, they either give you the next objective or simply say nothing.
Despite the focus on character in this game compared to the previous entry, they all suck! I couldn't tell you one thing about really ANY character in this game despite its efforts for me to care about them.
The levelling system is entirely rewritten, as now you can gain exp for every single attribute your character does, based on how much they do specific things. Great IDEA, but in execution it is insanely annoying to actually level these things up, you tend to just have to attack yourself over and over rather than grinding enemies. You will either be totally defenseless and get sweeped by everything, or you will sweep everything, for the whole game, which makes the entire gameplay/combat portions of the game boring. The weapon proficiency system is also a waste of time as most weapons just arent worth using so youre better off sticking with whatever your character has to start with. The levelling system also makes armour a waste of time, as you WANT to take more damage so that you may increase your defence/hp stats, its counter-intuitive and stupid. Levelling spells is ALSO a nightmare as you have to cast spells about 100 times to level it up a single time, every single time! It's insanely tedious, and not fun. The previously mentioned swapping party member, is also completely useless, as they are almost ALWAYS wayyyy weaker than your party, just being fauder in every single fight.
But while youre not in combat, you get to explore the dungeons of Final Fantasy II, and they are absolute garbage too! Pick a path dungeon design galore, and for some backwards reason every single dungeon is filled with these "trap rooms" which have insane encounter rates and are just purely random, and you must check all of them as SOME are treasure rooms, its just bullshit and only exists to waste your time.
Theres no other way of putting it, this game, is bad. Much worse than Final Fantasy I, even the remakes don't save it. If you want to play the Final Fantasy series, feel free to skip this entry!
They clearly wanted to focus more on the characters in this game, giving you specific characters rather than creating your own, and the story is much more serious, the game even begins with your party losing and being disbanded. The story is more engaging than Final Fantasy I and has more of an overarching narrative, to push that idea of the characters, you also get new party members swapping in and out, which helps you connect to them further. It also has a keyword system, which is a cool IDEA, but in reality its basically the equivalent of having a key, and everytime you talk to somebody you just have to try every word until something happens, and its not like they say anything interesting for any "wrong" words, they either give you the next objective or simply say nothing.
Despite the focus on character in this game compared to the previous entry, they all suck! I couldn't tell you one thing about really ANY character in this game despite its efforts for me to care about them.
The levelling system is entirely rewritten, as now you can gain exp for every single attribute your character does, based on how much they do specific things. Great IDEA, but in execution it is insanely annoying to actually level these things up, you tend to just have to attack yourself over and over rather than grinding enemies. You will either be totally defenseless and get sweeped by everything, or you will sweep everything, for the whole game, which makes the entire gameplay/combat portions of the game boring. The weapon proficiency system is also a waste of time as most weapons just arent worth using so youre better off sticking with whatever your character has to start with. The levelling system also makes armour a waste of time, as you WANT to take more damage so that you may increase your defence/hp stats, its counter-intuitive and stupid. Levelling spells is ALSO a nightmare as you have to cast spells about 100 times to level it up a single time, every single time! It's insanely tedious, and not fun. The previously mentioned swapping party member, is also completely useless, as they are almost ALWAYS wayyyy weaker than your party, just being fauder in every single fight.
But while youre not in combat, you get to explore the dungeons of Final Fantasy II, and they are absolute garbage too! Pick a path dungeon design galore, and for some backwards reason every single dungeon is filled with these "trap rooms" which have insane encounter rates and are just purely random, and you must check all of them as SOME are treasure rooms, its just bullshit and only exists to waste your time.
Theres no other way of putting it, this game, is bad. Much worse than Final Fantasy I, even the remakes don't save it. If you want to play the Final Fantasy series, feel free to skip this entry!