Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy II is a pretty innovative and experimental RPG for its time.

The turn based combat remained the same, but the progression system is fresh and fascinating, allowing characters to excel in things they tend to practice most. So, sword wielders get better with swords and magic users learn to deal more damage with their spells. This allows you to shape any character into any role you envision for them.

As for the story, its tone is dark and hopeless, reflected in both dialogue and music, with slightly more narrative depth than the previous title. The game also features a unique dialogue system, which allows the player to retain certain specific keywords and then repeat them back to other people. The characters learn the secrets of the story alongside with the player.

Unfortunately, as impressive as it is for the NES era, this game's many ideas are only good on paper. As the initial flame of fascination fades, you quickly realize how boring and annoying this game is to play.

The progression system was designed to reduce mindless grinding and make the game seem more natural, but it just ends up being unintuitive, punishing and hilariously exploitable. For example, if your mage dares to use physical attacks, they will get dumber, which will negatively affect their magical output. Each magical spell also levels up individually, so if you want your resurrection spell to not miss during a difficult fight (and that can happen!), you need to use it around a few hundred times. Of course you will never die that often, so a lot of spells are levelled up by meaningless casts just for the sake of getting those points. Also, can you guess the most efficient way to get more health? Beating each other to death of course! While some weak goblin enemies probably stand around confused at the resulting spectacle.

The same disappointing feeling comes with the story. At its best moments, it's a Star Wars rehash. Becoming a part of the rebellion, saving a princess, destroying the evil empire's flying mechanical monstrosity... At its worst, it is a boring slog through several dungeons to get a spell that is not even required at any point in the game. I believe said spell was a joke by the programmer, a great joke that wastes several hours of your playtime.

Oh yes, let's talk about dungeons. They're awful. The most notable thing about them is the abundance of empty rooms overfilled with enemies with nasty attacks. A total mood killer for anyone with a sense of exploration.

Finally, the music is great. You know, it's Final Fantasy.

And there you have it. Final Fantasy II remains an impressive achievement in certain areas, but it got so caught up in being quirky and innovative that it forgot to just be fun. Hardcore RPG fans may still find it interesting, but be aware that this game requires heavy guide usage to counter its unintuitive design.

Final Fantasy II was a game I arrived upon during a mad rush to play every Final Fantasy game that ever was. I had played 1, 6, 7 and most of 5 when I found it for the NES emulator, completely translated, and it blew me away. The music is downright haunting, and the plotline, although odd, is totally gripping. It moves fairly fast, and a few characters die, but it is certainly one of the best games I've ever played.

This review is for Final Fantasy II, the original version. This is not a review for the American Super Nintendo release, which truly is Final Fantasy IV.

For the longest time you could only find Final Fantasy II on the internet through emulators. The few Americans who got a chance to play it were in for a real treat. This game was the beginning of the Chocobos and the beginning of the Cid era. This game is where Final Fantasy began to have some swagger to it.

Unlike the first Final Fantasy, or any Final Fantasy game for that matter, this game rid itself of the standard leveling system. Players don't level up from experience, their skills level up instead. So if you have a character who you constantly use for physical attacks, that character's physical attacks will level up. If you constantly use a character for magic attacks, that character's individual spells will level up. All of your characters can also use magic. While it is basically impossible to make a good hybrid character, the option is definitely appreciated. This type of leveling really opens up your strategy options.

The story is less rigid than the first Final Fantasy. There are also more twists and dramatic points. The characters are much less watered down than the first Final Fantasy installment. The game also isn't as vague as the first Final Fantasy. Unlike it's predecessor, Final Fantasy II does a decent job leading you to your next mission or item. Instead of having to travel the globe speaking to every single character or guessing where you have to go next, this sequel does a nice job guiding you around the game.

Final Fantasy II is not without shortcomings. The game still had the average graphics of its predecessor. The music was forgettable, but still decent. The game was also stretched out longer than it probably needed to be. You still weren't allowed to save in the dungeons, which would have been a nice improvement.

This game is definitely an improvement over the first Final Fantasy game. It's not for everybody, but definitely worth playing if you want to see origins of many Final Fantasy influences. It might also be beneficial to play the Final Fantasy Origins version of Final Fantasy II. This Playstation version upgraded the music, graphics, game play, and added a game saving feature to help out in the dungeons.

Final Fantasy is one of the game series started in the 80's that suffers from so called Curse of the Second Installment where the second game of the series is weaker than others (other examples from these game series are Super Mario and Legend of Zelda). It's usually because developers try something new after their best-seller.

Story in Final Fantasy II is anything but new. Rebellion's fight against evil empire of Paramekia (or Palamecia, who knows) feels too much taken from Star Wars. There is Luke Skywalker-clone, Darth Vader-clone, Emperor-clone, even Deathstar-clone. Characters are not personalities, bad guys has no clear motives. It's also annoys that too many characters are so eager to sacrifice themselves.

The new part in the game is an unique system where is no experience points or levels. All skills are developed how often they are used, for example magics become more powerful. There is a good reason why this system has stayed unique. Developing any other than attack power is very slow so most of the magics won't receive their fullest potential before the game is over unless players develop their characters day and night. It's not a problem because dungeons are once again too large and of course, without save points.

Game's atmosphere is the reason why there are more than two Final Fantasies. Nobuo Uematsu's music is good, specially world map music is beautiful and makes forget for short time that's it's only 8-bit voice. Also monsters are mostly own design and they are mostly not ripped from Greek mythology or AD&D universe. Only die-hard fans and nostalgics should try this, for others it's not worth of it because of it's clumsiness.

Yes, this plot line is a blatant Star Wars spin off (I'd say rip off... but it only captures the essence of the world and doesn't use copies of the characters seen in the movie) but the game is solid. It was fun to play and it was interesting to watch somewhat... (I loved having one of my main characters as a villain at one part) but great this game is not. Unless you have an extreme amount of patience or a lot of free time you will spend a long, long, gruelingly long time just leveling up your characters to adequacy. The idea of a more realistic battle system for use in turn based combat was an excellently cool and fun idea in appearance... but actual application left me board after the first few battles. Look, if I wanted to train my hands to be able to hit something harder I'll do it in a gym and not in a video game I play for fun and relaxation. Yes, this game rocked... but it wasn't infallibly rocking.