Final Fantasy a Casual Retrospective Part II

With Final Fantasy having saved Square from financial ruin there was only one inevitable outcome, they needed a sequel. Because it’s not enough to have one successful game, you need to capitalise on that success. You don’t want to lose any of that forward momentum after all.

But rather than stick to what was already established, the team wanted to try something a little different with the gameplay and story. I’ll get into the gameplay stuff later, but for the story the team wanted to create an entirely new world and cast of characters. The idea was to make the game accessible to new players and having a new world meant they could jump straight in without needing prior knowledge of its predecessor.

This idea would be kept for every subsequent game in the series. Every Final Fantasy takes place in an entirely new setting with its own history and lore, but certain aspects of the mythology would be kept across the series. Mostly, some games do go more in their own direction. But the important thing is that each Final Fantasy would try to retain some elements of previous titles to create some cohesion between games.

Final Fantasy II would release in December of 1988. Only a year after the original. That’s right, they were releasing massive RPGs within a year of each other back then. We’re lucky if we get one every two to three years, but kids in the 80’s and 90’s were eating well every year. Lucky bastards. Mind you this was only if you lived in Japan. Final Fantasy II wouldn’t see a proper release in English until the Final Fantasy Origins collection on the PlayStation, and that was in 2003. If you think that’s bad, wait until the next game.

Although there were initially plans to bring the original Famicom game to the American NES. But this was around 1990, and by that point not only was the game pretty old, but the Super Nintendo was on the way. So the plans were scrapped in favour of bringing over the first SNES entry in the series, Final Fantasy IV. Which was renamed Final Fantasy II to avoid confusing western players. Which only led to more confusion later on.

It doesn’t really matter now. Final Fantasy II has been re-released multiple times over the years, and most of those releases did make it to the west. There was the Wonderswan remake that served as a basis for the PS1 and GBA ports, both of which were also collected together with the first Final Fantasy, and then there was the PSP remake and the more recent Pixel Remaster. So it isn’t like we filthy Gaijin have no means of playing this anymore.

Now the reception of Final Fantasy II is interesting. Sales wise it did very well. The original Famicom version sold 800,000 units. Still hasn’t quite broken the million mark yet, but it is getting close. Critically it was also very well received. It got a 35/40 in Famitsu which put it up there with Super Mario Bros 3. Retrospective reviews haven’t been as glowing. Views on FFII are mixed to say the least. There are people out there who love it, and just as many people who hate it. It’s a very divisive game in the series, and it is not hard to see why after playing it.

I’m just going to be blunt here; I did not like Final Fantasy II. In fact, I hated it. I very much hated it. Which is a shame because it has some creative and innovative ideas, and it would introduce many series staples, but this one of the most un-fun RPG’s I’ve played.

It started out promisingly. The opening makes it clear that this is going to be a very different kind of game. How different? You die as the game starts. The prologue explains that the kingdom of Palamecia is waging war with the rest of the world thanks to its emperor gaining the powers of hell and adding it to his armies.

The game begins with Palamecia attacking the four main characters hometown. Unlike the first game, Final Fantasy II has actual characters with established histories, names and personalities. You can name them if you want, but they do have default names, and I stuck with those for the review. Our heroes consist of Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon. But they’re not exactly heroes at the start. The first time we see the four on screen is in a battle with some of the empire’s forces. Where they are promptly wiped out in a single shot. Well, that was a short game.

Luckily our heroes survive and brought to the town of Altair thanks to the Wild Roses. A rebel group led by Princess Hilde who lost her kingdom, Fynn, to Palamecia’s forces. Actually, only Firion, Maria and Guy make it. Leon is MIA after the attack. With nothing else to do, our trio decide to enlist in the Wild Roses and take on the empire, find Leon, and avenge their parents.

Final Fantasy II is a much darker game than the original. While the first game was a light-hearted adventure, the sequel is a morose war story. There’s a feeling of oppressiveness that lingers throughout the entire game, and death is a very common occurrence. It’s a depressing game.

Which is very impressive for the time. Remember what I said last time, RPGs back then didn’t really have much of a story. Most were just simple little adventures. So for Final Fantasy II to actually have something of a narrative was very innovative. There’s actual context for why you do what you do, there’s a sense of cause and effect, characters have more established personalities, and there’s even themes of war and death that the game grapples with. It does have a story this time.

Or at least it attempts to have one. While Final Fantasy II does have more of a narrative than the first game it still isn’t much of one. The story is pretty thin. It all boils down to an evil empire trying to take over the world and you go kick their asses. It never goes beyond that. The themes it has are very basic, and while there are a few surprises that are pretty fun, it never really develops into anything all that deep.

The characters are also very lacking. While the four main leads do have established backstories there really isn’t much to them. I literally just finished the game as I’m writing this, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing about them. Firion is just the main guy, Marian is just the girl, and Guy is… special let’s just say. Honestly the side characters are far more interesting than the main cast. To the point where it makes me wonder why some of them weren’t main characters instead.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. While the characters attempt to join the rebels, the princess considers it too dangerous and denies the request, but she still allows us to head to the enemy occupied Fynn to look for Leon. And Fynn isn’t just occupied; it’s swarming with enemy troops that will kill you if you so much as talk to them. So it’s too dangerous to join the rebels, but sending our inexperienced heroes into the lion’s den? A ok apparently.

At this point you’ll do what you usually do in RPG’s and buy some starting equipment, items, and magic. Yeah, we’re still buying magic in this but thankfully it is handled better here. Nothing is as expensive as the first game, and you can even find magic in treasure chests and enemy drops. It’s not much, but I will give the game any point it can get over the first game. Trust me, it will not happen often.

As you do this though you’ll notice something, everyone can equip anything in this game. Unlike the first game where you had individual classes with their own set of weapons, armour and magic, here everyone is basically a blank slate that you can do anything with.

If there is one thing I will give Final Fantasy II, it’s that it does provide you with unprecedented freedom in how you build the characters. Unprecedented for the time I should say. You can make characters into whatever you want. For example, I made Firion into a cleric type character. Having strong attack and defence but also making him the healer. Guy started out as a monk healer, but I changed him to a strong bruiser by the end. And Marian, was the black mage with a bow and arrow.

Final Fantasy II has a lot more customisation than the first game. It even has a novel way of building your stats. Since you want to get more equipment, the first thing you’ll want to do is battle some enemies for some cash and maybe get some levels while you’re at it. It’s here where you’ll see the changes in the combat system.

Firstly, the game has ditched the magic charges for an MP system. Now every character has a pool of magic points that can be spent to cast spells, with stronger spells costing more. This was the game to introduce this to the series, but it wouldn’t become a standard feature just yet. Give it a game or two.

Second thing you’ll notice is that your characters aren’t perfectly in line like before. This is because Final Fantasy II introduces rows to combat. Characters in the front row act as normal, but characters in the back row will take less damage from enemies but they’re attacks are weaker and less accurate. They can cast magic just fine, but melee attacks are basically worthless.

Unless you use the new bow weapon, which lets characters in the back row use regular attacks just fine. Though primarily you want to use the back row for your magic users, keeping them safe in the back while your melee fighters take all the hits. There is an option to swap rows in combat, but I never found myself using this. Once you find a good set-up there’s little reason to swap.

But aside from these differences, the battle system is the same as it was before. Same turn-based system, largely the same pool of spells, it doesn’t break the mould here. No, that distinction goes to how you level up. Final Fantasy II doesn’t have traditional levels or experience points. Instead, you get stronger by improving individual attributes based on how often you use them. So if you use more physical attacks your strength will increase, and if you use more magic your intelligence increases which means spells get stronger.

This system was the brainchild of Akitoshi Kawazu. He wanted to create something more tangible and unpredictable for players, while also feeling like the experience points system was too esoteric. He does have a point. Realistically it would make more sense to improve attributes through continuous practice. It’s not like if all I do is swing a sword I’m automatically going to be good with a bow. Doesn’t make any sense. Obviously, this is a fantasy game. There is some suspension of disbelief in how everything works, but removing the esoteric systems of old RPGs and replacing it with something more tangible does make the world they created feel a lot more believable.

This system is very creative and ahead of its time. A lot of RPGs these days use something similar to this. Kawazu himself would even use this system for his own Saga series. It really allows the player to craft characters in any way they see fit and is a lot less rigid than the class system in the first game. On paper this is a great system. In practice, it is one of the most broken, poorly balanced and tedious systems I have ever played in an RPG.

Yes, the game offers a ton of freedom in how you build your characters, but that just leads you to doing the one thing everyone hates in these games. Grinding! Lots and lots of tedious grinding. Because everything has to be levelled up individually, that means you have to keep swinging those weapons and casting those spells for every character. If a character does nothing in combat they won’t improve. Because of that, it’s actually preferable, if not outright necessary, to drag fights out as long as you can. You need to make sure each character does something, otherwise they’ll fall behind.

It’s not too hard to increase your stats early on. I was improving attributes quickly in the early game, but you’ll barely see any increases as the game progresses. Because, as you get stronger. the more you need to do to get attributes to improve, leading you needing to do a lot more grinding. This also leads to an issue where the late game becomes tedious since you aren’t gaining anything. I would say this makes battles pointless, but that’s objectively wrong.

Every battle in the game is important. Since stat increases are determined by use, it means any battle you partake in is important. This has a bit of a knock-on effect where battles against weaker enemies end up being just as important as battles against stronger enemies. While this does address an issue I had with the last game where fights against weaker enemies wound up not being worth it after a certain point, I can’t say this is a great solution.

One of the reasons to go after stronger enemies in most RPGs is that they give more experience points. It’s a way to level up faster, and eventually it’ll be the only way to level up at a reasonable pace. But in Final Fantasy II there’s no reason to go after the stronger enemies. Since growth is determined by usage, you might as well just wail away on the weaklings.

Square is aware of this. In the PSP remake, and the Pixel Remaster, enemies have a skill cap to them. Once characters hit a certain point they’ll stop gaining levels from weaker enemies. While this helps to balance the system a bit more, and incentivises you to go after stronger enemies, it doesn’t actually help that much since it only affects weapon ranks. Everything else works as it did before, so it’s still better to bully weaker enemies.

But yes, it isn’t just stats that are affected by this system. Weapons and magic also have their own levels that go up as you use them. This is where the system really starts to fall apart though. While having weapon ranks is fine, and honestly it isn’t that hard to level these up, it’s undermined by the weapons themselves being horrendously unbalanced.

While you have multiple weapon types to choose from, only three are actually useful. The swords, the axes and the bows. Daggers are just worse versions of swords, and staffs are only really useful for spell casters. Except spell casters will be in the back row, so you won’t do any damage if you actually try to hit anyone with them. So you might as well not bother physically attacking with staffs. But if you don’t do that, guess what, the staff skill never increases. So you either put the squishy mage in the front, or you just give them a bow since they can actually hurt people with it.

Now there is another stat affected by weapons, and armour too, called Magic Interference. This negatively affects your magic. The higher it is, the less effective the magic becomes. Damaging magic does less damage and healing magic won’t heal as much, you get the idea. Lighter weapons like staffs and daggers will lower it, while heavier weapons and especially shields will increase it. So there is an incentive given to using staffs and daggers for magic focused builds. Or at least there would be if it did anything.

Honestly, I barely noticed any difference with this. Unless you get that number way up, which is only possible with less magic focused builds anyway, it does nothing. So fuck the daggers and staffs, just give mages a bow. At least then they’ll be able to hurt something. Mind you this is assuming you want a mage class at all. I did have Maria as the Black Mage, but she wound up being the least affective party member by the end, at least of the main three. Magic is not great in this game outside of healing or buffing magic.

You will still need the elemental magic for certain enemy types. Some of these guys are resistant to physical damage and you’ll need to exploit their elemental weaknesses to deal with them. But those are the only times you’ll actually need it. Unlike in the first game where magic was useful as crowd control, here it’s not quite as potent.

Final Fantasy II introduced the ability to multicast any spell you want. Unlike the first game where it was locked behind certain spells. So instead of Cure for single healing and Heal for multi healing, you can just use regular Cure on the whole party. This is a change I like. It’s a logical improvement to the magic system and helps simplify the list of spells. The downside to using spells this way is that they become significantly weaker.

Which makes sense, but the damage that multicast spells deal is so low, it isn’t really worth using them that way. Unless you take advantage of elemental weaknesses it’s not worth it. Healing magic is still decent even when multicast, and you can even use buffing magic on the entire party at once this time. Which is kind of broken, but I think this is the only game that let you do that.

But the big issue with magic is how long it takes to level up spells. Every spell has an individual level that goes up as you use them. Which doesn’t sound too bad, but it takes dozens, near hundreds of uses for these spells to reach the higher levels. Spells and weapons cap out at sixteen, but unless you grind like an absolute madman, you will never reach those levels. Not that you need to. Most of my spells were around level five to nine and I got through the game just fine.

The only spell I did get past level ten was Cure because I used that the most, and I have a feeling most players will. But unless you want to use magic like a crackhead uses a pipe you will never level up these spells. There’s just way too many of them. It’s honestly best to just pick four or five spells per character and focus entirely on them.

That’s not the only issue with this. Unless you level up these spells, a lot of them are completely useless. I found out after I beat the game that spells like Toad and Teleport can break the game because they work on 90% of the enemies. They’re spells that one shot and insta-kill a large chunk of the game. That’s stupidly busted, but I never used them. By the time I got them I was pretty late in the game and I just could not be bothered to level these spells up, and you need to level them up. Because these spells suck major dick at level one.

Take Esuna and Basuna for instance. These two spells cure status ailments, but unless you level them up, they won’t cure any ailments other than poison. Which means casting these spells over and over again just to get the levels up. It doesn’t even matter if they cure anything, just wasting the spell counts as a cast.

Quick aside, I find it stupid there’s two spells that cure status ailments. Esuna is meant for permanent ailments while Basuna is for ailments that get cured after battle. I really don’t know why they had it like this. Just have the one spell that cures everything.

So, you need to level up these spells for them to be remotely usable, but it takes so many casts to level them up that it just becomes tedious. The whole game is like this. The level up system may allow for a ton of freedom, but the grind required to take full advantage of it is simply too much. It takes way too long to level up your stats in this game.

Mind you, that’s assuming you’re playing this normally. Because the biggest issue with Final Fantasy II’s stat progression isn’t actually the grinding, it’s how absolutely bucking fusted it is. Final Fantasy II is broken beyond belief. To the point that there’s a very easy method to make yourself overpowered early on.

Step 1: Find a group of weak enemies.

Step 2: Whittle them down until there’s one left.

Step 3: Proceed to attack yourselves until you’re at low health.

Step 4: Kill the enemy.

Step 5: PROFIT!

Step 6: Heal and repeat the process.

You may be wondering how the fuck that even works. Well remember when I said you’re attributes go up when you use them. Well, the same thing applies for HP and MP. The more MP you use the more it goes up. In fact, spells will cost more as they level up. Which would be bad, except using more MP means your max MP increases. Creating a cascading effect where you can get a metric ton of magic points just from spamming the same spell and making it stronger, making it cost more, meaning you use more MP, thus making your max MP increase faster. Who thought this was balanced.

HP works the same way. The more damage you take in a battle, the more your maximum health will increase. And the easiest way to do that, is just by wailing on yourself. So long as you don’t heal before finishing a fight, you’re guaranteed to get a health increase. Plus, you’ll also level up any weapons and magic you used while doing it.

Because of this, you can completely break the game in the first hour just by hitting your characters over and over again. You’ll become so powerful doing this that you can snowball through the rest of the game. For as grindy as this system is, if you use this method, you’ll become so powerful early on you won’t need to grind for the rest of the game. The only thing you will need to grind for is money, which again isn’t something you need to do later on, or for spell levels.

But here’s the thing, that whole thing about how grindy levelling up the spells is? You don’t need to do any of that shit. Because spellcasting in this game is less effective than just attacking them with your basic weapons. The damage you get from spells is pitiful compared to what you get out of melee attacks.

As I said, the only times you will need elemental magic is for enemies resistant to physical attacks. Of which there aren’t that many to begin with. There’s not really a point in having a dedicated mage. Just give someone the elemental spells, get those to level five and you should be able to deal with anything.

The only magic you do need are the healing and buff magic. In fact, the strategy I used for the bosses in the first game, buff the physical attackers and go on the offensive, is the only strategy you’ll need for the entire game. Magic isn’t good for crowd control anymore, and with how buff you can make the characters you can easily beat these guys with just melee attacks.

Sure you might take a hit or two, but that just increases your HP further and lets you use Cure which improves that and your MP. See what I mean about cascading effects. If you so much as attempt to play around with this, you’ve already busted the game wide open. It’s so fragile a drop of water could shatter it.

On top of that, if you duel wield weapons of the same type you’ll level those up faster too. In fact, dual wielding is the best thing you can do in this game. Because unlike in later games where dual wielding weapons halves their attack power, here it remains the same. And since dual wielding weapons means you attack twice, that means you can do a load of damage in only one attack. So fuck having shields equipped. Give them an extra weapon and you’ll obliterate anything.

Hell, you don’t even need to do that. if you want to break the game and save on money, just take the weapons off and have the characters throw hands. Your bare fists will become more powerful than any other weapon in the game. You can break the game by turning the cast into Bruce Lee.

This is remarkably broken. And keep in mind I’m playing the fixed version of this game. The Pixel Remaster incorporated a lot of quality-of-life improvements that does make grinding a tad easier and make the system more balanced. But even with the improvements, the system is so fundamentally broken that they do little to actually fix it. It’s still grindy, it’s still way too easy to make yourself overpowered. Honestly I don’t think you can fix this. the implementation of how levelling works is so poor that you can’t fix it with mere quality of life improvements. It needed a complete overhaul; a ground up reworking to properly balance everything.

Do you need to break it like I did? Well if you’re playing the original NES version then abso-fucking-lutely. That version is far rougher around the edges, and you will need to grind constantly to keep up with everything. You need to break that version if you want to get any kind of enjoyment out of it. In fact, there’s a glitch in the NES and Origins releases that would increase attributes from selecting an action in a menu and then de-confirming it that makes grinding way easier. You can literally level up by doing nothing.

But in the Pixel Remaster? Not really. You can beat the game just fine without needing to game the system like this, but it’s still the best way to play it. Even though the Pixel Remaster does make grinding far easier, without using the Boost function it still takes forever to get anything since attributes will only go up one level at a time. So you’ll still need to grind a lot if you want to get anywhere in this game.

And really, what would you rather do? Play through the game normally and slowly get better while struggling against the enemies, or grind out in the first hour and become so powerful you can steamroll through the rest of the game. Your either completely overpowered in this game or weaker than a politician’s spine. There’s no middle ground.

I can see why some people would like this system. The freedom it offers is very impressive for its time, and the innovations it brought to the RPG genre cannot be understated. I’ll even say I can see how it being broken as all hell can be appealing. There is something weirdly satisfying about completely bending the game over a barrel like this. I would actually make the argument that RPGs are at their most fun when they’re broken. That’s what I loved about Bravely Default. Coming up with absolutely busted job combinations was one of the best things about those games.

But here’s the thing, it was fun to break Bravely Default because it took effort to break it. It required experimentation and a good party composition for the broken stuff to really shine. The fun part of breaking an RPG isn’t just breaking it, it’s how you go about it. To break an RPG, you need to engage with the systems more, which gives you a better appreciation for how those systems work.

Final Fantasy II is far too easy to break. As I went over, you can completely obliterate it just from hitting yourself. It takes no effort. No deeper engagement with the systems, no experimentation, just go bare handed, get some basic healing magic, pound yourself for an hour and the game is your bitch.

The big issue with Final Fantasy II isn’t that it’s broken. That’s an issue but it’s not what makes it awful. The problem is that it’s boring. The game is either a tedious grind fest or an effortless cakewalk you sleepwalk through. No matter how you play it, it’s a boring ass game. This game is so boring, I nearly fell asleep. I’m not kidding. I was so bored while playing this that I was physically yawning and nearly passed out. This happened twice by the way. It’s one thing entirely to be broken, it’s another to be boring.

Now, all of these are issues that become more apparent as the game goes on. You don’t realise just how bad things are until way, way into the game. But even in this early portion I could still tell something was wrong. I already knew about the whole hitting yourself thing, but I was shocked at how much I was improving from this. I wasn’t even doing it properly. I didn’t know to not heal before the fight ended, and yet even without that step I was still getting stronger at an abnormally fast rate. The game is so busted you can break it by accident.

But that’s enough about the levelling up. This is by far the make-or-break aspect of the game. You either love this system or you hate it, and sadly I am in the latter camp. I didn’t even cover all of my issues with it, but those are connected with other issues this game has. Because while the levelling system is the worst part of the game, or at least the most divisive, it’s not the only problem. There are a lot of other issues that compound on top of it. But I will get to those in time. For now, let’s continue with the adventure.

After you’ve grinded and likely broken your limiter, you’ll want to pick up some items. Potions, antidotes, your basic healing stuff, but one new item you’ll want to get are Ethers. These were a new addition to Final Fantasy II and are used to recover MP. I should mention that Ethers were in the Pixel Remaster of the first Final Fantasy, but they weren’t originally in that game. Which is easy to tell since they were very awkwardly implemented. It was II where they were properly introduced. Along with Elixirs which fully recover everything.

Ethers are very helpful, but they’re pretty damned expensive. You probably won’t be able to afford them early on, but you don’t need them at this point. You won’t need them until much later where you have actual magic you need to keep stocked. Assuming you bother with magic to begin with.

After you get what you need and level up a bit, which if you’re doing it right means the game is already won, it’s time to head to Fynn. You don’t find Leon, but you do find Scott. A prince of the land of Kashuan and fiancé to Princess Hilde. But the guy is gravely wounded and dies not long after you get there. Get used to that by the way, this is going to happen a lot. He does give you his ring before he dies though and gives you a message for his brother Gordon to man up and join the rebels.

Returning the ring is enough to get Hilde to let you into the Wild Roses. Well that was easy. Pointless even. Makes you wonder why she was so adamant on not letting us in when a simple fetch quest was enough to change her mind, but who cares! We’re in the rebellion now, let’s kick some ass.

Hilde gives you you’re first mission to look for some Mithril. They already sent a guy named Josef out to find some, but they lost contact with him. So you’re sent to check on him and get the Mithril so the Roses can make more powerful weapons. I’m not sure why they need them. Just teach your forces martial arts and have them beat each other up for a few hours and you’ll have a force strong enough to take down the empire in a weekend.

You aren’t sent there alone. The princess’ right-hand man Minwu is sent along with you, and he gives you a canoe so you can reach the nearby port town of Poft where you can hire a ship to take you to Paloom, another port town closer to Salamand, the town Josef is in. A lot of travel in the game is like this. Traveling to towns just to reach other towns. It isn’t so bad though. it’s easy to remember where most places are so you shouldn’t get lost. Even if you do the Pixel Remaster has a map to help you in case you get lost. It can come in handy at times.

Minwu joining also starts a recurring trend across the game. You don’t have a permanent fourth party member, you swap between a few different party members throughout the game. This doesn’t sound too bad. It at least gives the party some variety. Then you realise that the games level up system, yes I’m still bitching about that, means you’ll have to grind up these new party members every time they show up. Because they will always be far weaker than your main three members. It gets to a point where it’s better to just ignore the fourth character. Since they won’t be in the party enough to matter.

So throughout the game the party consists of three overpowered badasses and one tagalong that only barely helps out. Minwu is the best of them since he has most of the White Magic spells. Which is very handy at this point in the game. But the rest don’t have much going for them. I think the game wants you to build them up like the others, but there’s no way I’m doing that if they aren’t permanent. Why not just have a permanent fourth member. That would make far more sense.

The game opens up at this point, but it’s here where you run into another problem. Final Fantasy II is a lot more open than the first game. It is still linear, and there are still some roadblocks, but it’s possible to explore most of the map very early on. Which is great for those that want to die. Because if you go in the wrong direction you’ll run into enemies that are way stronger than you and you’re dead.

This is going to happen to you. It’s not actually hard to find where to go. So long as you pay attention to what NPCs say you’ll find your way with little issue. But there will be times where you will accidentally go in the wrong direction and run smack into an enemy that one-shots you. This game is unkind to the curious.

Suffice to say, I prefer the map in the first game. That did a much better job of guiding the player while also gating away sections they weren’t ready for. Final Fantasy II is more open, but that openness is an illusion. You have to go in the direction the game tells you to go in, lest you face death. Which is fine. The game is more story driven, and it makes sense for it to be linear in design. But why then make the map so open. Why not gatekeep areas like the first game did. This just feels too punishing for those who want to actually explore and doesn’t work for what the game is going for. It’s a weird choice.

Anyway, you head to Poft to hire a ship. You don’t actually get to control it yourself, not yet anyway, but you are able to take it to Paloom and it doesn’t take too long to reach Salamand. Unfortunately, most of the town has been forced into slavery in the Mithril mines, including Josef’s daughter. Meaning he can’t help you.

So you head there to the mines in Semitt Falls to rescue them and get the Mithril while you’re at it. You also rescue a thief named Paul in the process who will be important a little later. You get the Mithril and return to Altair to get your next assignment. This is mostly how the game works. You get sent on a mission, do the mission, then have to return to base to get the next one. For the kind of story this is, I can’t say it’s a bad structure. This is a war story where you play the role of a soldier, it makes sense a bulk of story progression would be you completing missions for the rebel army.

While I understand this decision, that doesn’t mean I like it. It gets annoying having to constantly go back to the home base. It’s way too much backtracking. I know the first game had a lot of running back and forth to progress, but at least there the backtracking let you access treasures you couldn’t get on a first visit. This is just tedious.

I also miss the sense of adventure the first game had. There it always felt like there was forward momentum. You were visiting new areas and there was always a great sense of discovery. Here there aren’t as many locations to visit, and you’ll revisit a lot of them so much it gets repetitive. Add on the fact that there aren’t any major side-quests, and I don’t find the adventure nearly as engaging.

Even the world is less interesting. The first game was way more fantastical and imaginative. It had underwater ruins inhabited by Mermaids, an ancient civilisation with advanced technology, elves, dwarves and dragons, oh my. Final Fantasy II’s world isn’t nearly as much fun. But, to be fair, it is meant to be a darker game. It’s a war story so there’s less focus on building a fantastical world and more focus on showing the horrors of war. So the world works for the kind of story it is.

The next mission is the most important so far. Palamecia is currently building a massive airship called the Dreadnought that has the power to destroy entire villages. The Dreadnought was being built by a person in the empire known as the Dark Knight, but he was replaced by a general named Borghen due to the recent loss of the Mithril.

With the lull in construction due to the restructuring, the Wild Roses see this as a perfect opportunity to stop it. Now, is it just me or does a lot of this story sound very familiar. Let’s see, an evil empire led by a megalomaniac wielding an otherworldly power backed by an evil dark knight build a giant floating world destroying station as a tool of conquest that is opposed by a rag tag rebel group led by a princess. We went from them ripping off D&D to them ripping off Spaceballs. Have you no shame Square.

In all seriousness, a lot of Final Fantasy II is heavily inspired by Star Wars. This isn’t even speculation either. The writer, Kenji Terada, admitted that one of the inspirations behind it was Empire Strikes Back. Even though most of this is more akin to A New Hope but eh it’s the same movie right. I can’t exactly blame them for this. Star Wars was incredibly popular back then, this was well before the prequels and sequels ruined everything, and everyone was trying to rip it off. But Final Fantasy II is often so blatant in ripping it off that it gets distracting. It takes me out of the story a bit.

You’re sadly unable to stop the Dreadnought. You do make it there, but the Dark Knight is able to block your progress and takes off with it.  Alright so we failed to stop the launch of the enemy super weapon. I mean it can’t be that bad right. It’s not like it wiped out several population centres or anything.

Yeah, about that. The Dreadnought attacks several towns and wipes out a large chunk of their population. If you visit Gatrea, the first town you visited earlier, you learn the entire town has been wiped out save for the shop keeps and a random old man. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, I knew the game got dark but this is intense. For all the games faults, it is good at building a sense of oppressive dread. While the Dreadnought is bad enough, the King of Fynn also takes a turn for the worst, he was gravely wounded when the kingdom fell which is why the princess is in charge, and this forces Minwu to leave the party.

If the rebellion wants to get anything done, they’re going to need to take the floating death ship down. Fortunately, you happened to run into a guy earlier on who is an expert on airships named Cid. Get used to that name by the way. Because Cid would become a reoccurring character throughout the series. It isn’t the same character obviously, since every game is a different world, but every Final Fantasy game going forward would have a Cid and they would be connected to airships to some degree. They even retroactively added a Cid to the backstory of the first Final Fantasy in future revisions, simply for how synonymous the character is to the series.

Cid isn’t the only reoccurring element of the series that got their start here. A lot of iconic elements of Final Fantasy got their start in the second entry. Including several monsters. It was the first appearance of the self-destructing Bombs, the Marlboro’s with their annoying as hell status affecting breath, and the Behemoth boss. Although the Behemoth was originally a concept for the first game that never made it in.

There’s a few other elements that I’ll get to as we reach them, but the important thing to take away from this is, while Final Fantasy II is the red headed stepchild of the series in terms of gameplay, it was the game where Final Fantasy started to gain more of its identity. Many of the things’ people associate with the series got their start here, and it deserves credit for that.

Cid tells you the only way to destroy the Dreadnought is by finding the Sunfire from Kushuan Keep and throwing it into the Dreadnoughts engine. I think this is a good time to bring up the keyword system. Like the first game a lot of how you progress is by talking to NPC’s and getting information out of them. However, even when talking to some of these guys they might not tell you everything. This is where the keyword system comes in.

Some NPCs have keywords you can learn and add to a repository, and you can then ask other NPCs about those words to get more information out of them. It’s an interesting concept, but it’s pretty clunky in execution. It just boils down to picking the right word with the right NPC to get the right information. You can only do this with a handful of NPCs, and only a few of the words actually work with them. So it isn’t like there’s some cool hidden lore you can uncover with this, it’s just a way to progress.

Thankfully the Pixel Remaster will actually highlight the words most relevant to the NPC you’re talking too. No need to go through the entire list to find the right one, just pick the red word and your golden. So it’s not as cumbersome as it was, but the system itself just feels unnecessary. There’s a reason no future Square game brought this back.

So now you head to Kashuan right? wrong. Because the only way to get into Kashuan is either with the voice of a person from the region or with an item called the Goddess Bell. Now, they could ask Gordon to help, given he’s a prince of Kashuan, but he’s not helping us. So bell hunting it is. The bell is hidden in a snow cave near Salamand. See what I mean, we’re not even halfway through the game and we’re already revisiting previous locations. Fortunately, Cid offers you fast travel via his airship, so it doesn’t take long to get there.

The path to the Snow Cave is only traversable via a snowmobile, but luckily for our heroes Josef just so happens to have one. And since he owes us one for saving his daughter, he loans us it and decides to help us out for a bit. Josef is also the smartest of the temporary party members since he fights bare handed. See this guy gets it; he knows how busted this game is.

Sadly he lasts the least of all the temporary party members. Because not long after you get the bell, you run into Borghen who was sent to retrieve the Sunfire, I’m guessing as a preventative measure. Well the villains might be basic, moustache twirling generic evil bastards, but at least their intelligent. You kick Borghen’s ass, which isn’t surprising since you’re by this point your party is a team of absolute units that can kill yeti with their bare hands and Borghen looks like a rejected character from Captain Pugwash. It’s like Omni-man vs Homelander, it’s too obvious who wins.

But Borghen does not go down easy. Activating a trap upon his death that sends a giant boulder at our heroes. Josef, being the giga chad that he is, blocks the boulder and allows the main trio to escape, but he is crushed and killed in the process. Told you he wouldn’t last long.

With the bell in tow, it’s time to head to Kashuan Keep and get that Sunfire. So you head back to Cid to book an airship, since it’s the only way to reach it, and head inside only to run into Gordon. He’s finally decided to grow a pair and came here to retrieve the Sunfire for the rebellion. Sure would have been nice if he did this sooner, Josef might not have died then. He couldn’t even make it past the monsters either, so why didn’t he just come to us first. Whatever, you go with Gordon, retrieve the Sunfire and head out. When they do though they see Cid’s airship being captured by the Dreadnought. Well shit, there goes our air travel.

It’s at this point you realise, “oh shit I’m miles away from base”. The world of Final Fantasy II isn’t actually that big, but the random encounter rate is just as, if not more obnoxious than the first game. So any kind of travel is hampered by constantly being pulled into a battle. Walking back to base from here is utter hell.

In a rare bit of good design for this game though, south of where you are is a forest containing Chocobo. Yup, this was the game that introduced these lovable yellow chicken ostrich things into the series. The Chocobo has become such an icon for Final Fantasy that it even got its own line of spin-off games. People really love these little guys.

It’s not hard to see why either. Not only are they adorable, but riding one prevents any random encounters from happening, and you get a fun little jingle while doing so. Mind you the song in Final Fantasy II is only four seconds long since the full version hadn’t been composed yet, but it’s still catchy in an annoying earworm kind of way.

I haven’t mentioned the graphics or music yet, and that’s because there isn’t much to talk about. The game at least looks nice with some good monster designs, even if the Bombs look a little off, and the music is decent. Not great, it’s a little too repetitive for my liking, but it has a more sombre tone which fits the darker mood of the game perfectly. So at least the presentation is done well. Say what you want about Final Fantasy but at least it always makes sure to look and sound nice.

So you get your Chocobo and you can effortlessly get back to base without having to worry about those pesky enemies. I mean, you could just use the Pixel Remaster feature that lets you turn random encounters off, but that’s cheating. Don’t be a cheater, you big cheating cheater. I do find it funny that some of the quality-of-life improvements undermine the games design. This is why I try not to use them; you can better understand a game without them. The Chocobo are placed where they are for a reason, and using these features can make you lose sight of that.

After you arrive back at base you find out the princess has been abducted. Turns out she was on the airship coming to pick you up, and now she’s in the enemies’ clutches. Brilliant plan there princess. No seriously, why did she need to come out here? She has no field experience and she’s a highly important member of the only major resistance against the empire’s forces. She might has well have just painted a massive target on her back.

At least they know where she is. She’s in a flying death machine that we can’t reach because it also abducted the only other airship in the game. Shit, now what do we do. Well after poking around, you find out the Dreadnought has parked in a southern corner of the map for refuelling. Like it’s just sitting there out in the open. One would think Palamecia would want to refuel their massive flying death fortress in a more secure location. It’s not like it’s a highly important part of their war effort or anything. I’m just saying that their main castle is nestled in the mountains, you could have found some way to refuel it there.

You won’t be able to enter the Dreadnought without a pass, but fortunately you should have one already. It was in Bafsk Cave when you first tried to stop the Dreadnought taking off. Hope you picked it up, otherwise you got to go all the way back there and get it. This is why it helps to be thorough when exploring in RPGs.

The guard lets you on no issue if you give him the pass. Never mind that none of the heroes are dressed in any kind of Palamecian armour, he just lets them on like they’re not paying him enough for this. I could believe that. This is another obvious cue from Star Wars. It’s literally the part where Luke and Han rescue Leia from the Death Star. Only there the infiltration made sense since, you know, they had disguises that let them blend in. This just has our heroes wander around a secure enemy base with nothing to make them fit in with anyone else.

The funny thing is I can’t tell if the security in here is really lax or really tight. Because you can just walk around the ship and no one bothers you, but as soon as you try to talk to any of them, they pounce on you like fat guys going after the last bagel at the buffet. Maybe they just have really bad eyesight or something and don’t recognise you unless you’re right in their face.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a stealth mission. Those hadn’t been invented yet. Even if you get caught, you just enter a brief fight and when it’s done you continue as normal. Ok this security does indeed suck. Call for some back up guys or at least make a fuss to call attention. See this is what happens when you cut staff funding folks, they stop giving a shit.

At least you don’t have to worry about the guards. You still have to deal with random encounters, but nothing sends you back like in a typical stealth section. Nothing actively gets in your way, so it’s easy to rescue the princess and blow the Dreadnought. For the love of God though, make sure you do them in that order. If you try to blow up the ship first, the game won’t let you. You have to do it in the order the game wants. I didn’t know that and accidentally wandered into the engine room first. Meaning I had to walk all the way back through the ship to get to the princess.

You do not want that to happen, because the level design in this is ass. These dungeons are some of the absolute worst I’ve ever experienced. Not because of some annoying puzzles or because the enemies are particularly difficult, but because they’re so longwinded, windy and do everything in their power to waste your fucking time.

These dungeons are obnoxiously long. There are so many dead ends that you can easily wander down by accident. There might be some treasure down them if you’re lucky, but more often than not there’s nothing there and you just wasted your time. Now this is annoying on its own, but when you add on the high random encounter rate this becomes infuriating.

Then there are the trap rooms. Oh how I hate these trap rooms. Every dungeon is filled with these things. They aren’t rooms with traps in them; they’re just rooms that have absolutely nothing in them except an even higher enemy encounter rate. And you don’t just enter them like any other room. No, you spawn in the dead centre of them and have to walk a few feet to get out.

Ok, this is ridiculous. Are these guys really just walking into the centre of these empty rooms just to have a look inside them. Who does that? It’s not like these are large rooms or anything; they’re small empty wastes of space. If you want to look inside just open the door and peak your head in like a normal person. What weirdo walks into the centre of a room before realising that it’s empty. Were the lights turned off or something? This is just fucking stupid.

Final Fantasy II loves to spam these things, and you will need to check them because you won’t know if a door leads to a trap room, a room with treasure in it, or the way forward. So you’re going to fall into them constantly. Oh, and there will be many times where it’ll line up several doors in a row with only one door leading anywhere, and the rest being traps. This isn’t level design; it’s a fucking guessing game.

What is the point in these things?! The only thing you get out of them is maybe two or three battles depending on the RNG, but you’re already doing that constantly in the rest of the dungeons. The enemies aren’t different in the trap rooms; it’s the same shit you normally fight. So I repeat, what is the point in these things? There isn’t one. They exist purely to waste your time. You go in them, you maybe fight something, and you walk out. That’s it. Just a complete waste of valuable seconds.

Final Fantasy II is filled with this kind of thing. Not just the trap rooms either, there are multiple moments of complete dead air. Take that Chocobo section I mentioned earlier. It is fun to be able to ride that thing for a bit to avoid random encounters, but if you think about it, if you aren’t battling enemies then what exactly are you accomplishing.

You aren’t growing your skills or stats; you’re just walking to the next location. The reason the Chocobo is there is because you’re so far away from the next town and they don’t want battles to get too tedious. But if that’s the case then why not just design the map so you wouldn’t have to walk as far, or have the airship pick you up after the princess is taken from it.

Instead you have a section where you’re just walking around as a chicken. It isn’t a very long section I’ll grant you, but it’s still a part of the game that has nothing going on. It’s not like the Chocobo is a major mechanic or anything either, it only appears in this one part. It’s there to make the trip easier, and it certainly does, but by doing so it just makes this whole part feel hollow and pointless.

Final Fantasy II is a much longer game than its predecessor. It took me about 27 hours to finish, as opposed to the 13 it took to beat the first game. Keep in mind that I’m pretty slow when it comes to beating games. I like to take my time with them. The game itself shouldn’t take you 27 hours to beat, but it is still at least over 20 hours long. So regardless it is much longer than the first game. But that length doesn’t feel natural.

I’d say if you took out all the grinding and needless time wasting, the game would be roughly the same length as the original. I said the game is boring earlier, but you know what makes a boring game worse? Being too goddamn long, and this game is way too goddamn long. Not because it has too much content, but because it’s padded with time wasting bullshit.

But assuming you don’t go the wrong way, you should find the princess no problem. Gordon then agrees to get her out of there. Probably for the best, he kind of sucks in combat. but now that the princess is safe you can now blow this joint, literally. But in the process, you run into the Dark Knight, and Maria notices his voice sounds strangely familiar. Gee, I wonder if this mysterious Dark Knight is at all connected to Maria’s brother Leon. He is by the way. There’s really no point in keeping it secret. This twist is so obvious a bat could see it coming.

Well, the good news is the Dreadnought is destroyed. The bad news is the king is dead. Even with Minwu’s magic the king’s injuries were simply too much and he passes away, but not before he appoints Gordon as his successor. Really? You’re letting that guy take over. I mean ok that’s fine, it’s not like I’ve been doing most of the work for the rebellion or anything. Sure glad I don’t feel snubbed.

Actually, let’s talk about Gordon for a bit. Because he highlights an issue I mentioned way earlier in the review. Gordon has a pretty interesting story. He’s born the second prince of a kingdom and is constantly living in the shadows of his cooler, braver older brother. Then his kingdom is destroyed and his brother is killed, forcing him to man up and be the leader he always wanted to be. Going from a coward who did nothing but sit on the sidelines to the leader of an entire rebellion.

Why wasn’t he the main protagonist. I like Gordon, I can actually tell you things about him. He has an understandable motivation, he has a definable character arc, and he even has a love interest in the princess. He’s an actual character. He’s way more interesting than any of the leads. If you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t been talking about them have I. Because there isn’t anything to them. I could not tell you a single thing about any of the main party members. The only one with any recognisable personality trait is Guy, and that’s only because he’s the dumb one who speaks beaver.

No, I didn’t make that up. There was a point earlier in the story where you run into a group of beavers and Guy can speak their language like he’s Kronk from Emperor’s New Groove. It’s weird, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but at least it’s a thing I can tell you about him. Which is more than I can say for the rest.

The only thing I know about the others is that Maria and Leon are related. But that’s not a character trait, that’s just a familial connection. I don’t know what their actual relationship is like. Are they close? Do they fight all the time? I don’t know. The only thing the game gives you is they’re brother and sister, and that isn’t enough to form an emotional connection with them.

I don’t know what the relationship between the main characters is like. I know they’re friends, but that’s literally it. There is a novelisation of Final Fantasy II that did expand on the characterisation. Like revealing that Maria has a crush on Firion, who in the novel is her adopted brother. Ok, no, fuck that. I want a bit more from these guys but I ain’t dealing with incest.

Maybe they didn’t want to have too much characterization so the player could fill in the blanks themselves. You know let them roleplay as the characters a little bit. That’s what the first game did and I didn’t mind it there. But it worked in the first game because the characters were complete blank slates. They didn’t have any defined backstory or personality traits, so it was easy to make them up yourself. The characters in II are supposed to be more defined. You can’t have the player fill in the blanks themselves. Otherwise it just makes the characters feel underdeveloped.

If you want to have a game where the characters are made up by the player that can work. Having a game with more defined characters also works. But you can’t have it both ways. You need to pick which style to go for and commit to that idea. Final Fantasy II doesn’t, and the result is a pack of boring losers I’m already forgetting about.

But now that the guy who should be the protagonist is in charge, and the Empire is reeling from losing their super-weapon, it’s time to mount a counterattack and retake Fynn. To do this they’re going to need to get some extra fire and manpower. They come up with a plan to send two groups to help gather what they need to bolster their forces.

Minwu heads to the land of Mysidia to find the Ultima spell. The most powerful magic in the world, and another thing that would become a staple of the series.  Same with Mysidia. This land of mages would go on to become a reoccurring location in the series. It’s not as ubiquitous as some of the other things introduced, but we will be seeing it a few times as this retrospective continues.

While Minwu is off doing that, our mission is to head to Deist and get the help of the Dragoons. A group of dragon knights that would also become a series staple. Although in later games they would be knights that kill dragons. In Final Fantasy II they’re knights that ride dragons, which is honestly a lot cooler. I’m surprised they never continued that, but I guess it would be hard to implement in a game like this. It works a lot better in tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem where they can be integrated into the gameplay more.

Deist was the first place the empire attacked though, so no ships will go there. The only person you meet that will take you there is this shady looking lady named Leila who talks like a pirate. Mainly because she is a pirate. She tries to mug you as soon as you’re on her ship, but you easily dispatch her gang of Captain Pugwash rejects. How have I been able to make two Captain Pugwash references in this review? That is not something that should be associated with Final Fantasy.

After wiping out the crew she immediately kowtows to you and gives you her ship. I feel like I’ve been here before, have I been here before. She also decides to come with you and help out since, well what else is she going to do now. I do like Leila though. She’s not deep or complex, I just like that she’s such a stereotypical pirate. This series needs more pirate bitches.

Well now you have a ship that can take you around the map. You’re supposed to go to Deist at this point, but I actually did a little exploring and visited some of the other places first. By this point you should be able to deal with most enemies, assuming you’ve been playing the game right anyway, so you’re given some freedom in what you can do.

I visited Mysidia to get some more powerful equipment and magic early, and I visited a small tropical island I saw during an airship ride. Not much to say about it. It’s a typical dungeon, meaning it blows, but you do meet a bunch of islanders that sell some weapons you can’t get anywhere else, and a Black Mask that will be important later.

I do like the freedom offered in this second half of the game. It’s still a very linear adventure, but I like that you can do somethings a little earlier than you’re supposed to. It’s nice being able to stretch your wings a bit here.

But the adventure needs to continue, so it’s off to Deist to get us some Dragoons. One problem though, everyone is dead. Like they’re just gone, wiped out, pushing up the daisies, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Even the wyverns they ride are all wiped out save for one. You learn from the two sole survivors that there might be a way to communicate with it. The Dragoons had amulets that let them speak to their mounts and there might be one in a nearby cavern.

So you go there, get the amulet from a Dragoon corpse, which the music is awfully pleased about strangely, and then head back to talk to the Wyvern who tells you there’s one last remaining Wyvern egg, and the only way to save it and the species is to take it to a healing spring. Which is in the cavern you were just in a moment ago. Do you see people, do you see how much the game wastes your time.

The Wyvern dies, and I will admit this is a very good part of the game. It’s the first time the game feels fantastical while also keeping the darker tone the story is going for. You really feel the sadness of watching the last of this majestic race perish in ignominious fashion. Of all the deaths in this game, this is the only one that felt effective. Don’t get me wrong, the other deaths worked fine enough, but outside of maybe Josef I didn’t like the characters enough to care when they snuffed it.

In most instances you only just meet them before they croak. For a game where death is a major theme, having the deaths leave little impact takes a lot of wind out of its sails. I think the issue is there’s too much death. I realise this is a war story, and those need death in order for the audience to understand the gravity and cost of war.

I’m not saying it shouldn’t have death at all, that would be silly. But I do think having too much death can be detrimental to a story. It’s a balancing act. If you have no deaths then the story has no stakes, see Stranger Things for an example of that. But if you have too much of it, then the individual deaths feel unimportant because they’re just one of many. The less there is of something the more impactful it is. That’s why I think death in stories works best when used sparingly. At least for important characters. Background extras are all fair game.

After dropping the egg in the spring, you head back to Altair with nothing to show for your efforts. It’s there you find out the princess has been acting weird. Sitting in her room and giggling like an idiot. Probably just her hormones acting up. Or she could be an evil Lamia in disguise. It’s easy to get the two mixed up.

So not only did you not get the Dragoons, but the princess is still kidnapped. Jesus game, just rub the salt in the wound why don’t you. So where is the princess? Being offered up as a prize in the Palamecian Coliseum. Now this is a trap so obvious even the wet bandits wouldn’t fall for it, but it’s not like you have many other options. So into the trap we go.  Gordon also decides to go with you. He’s really matured hasn’t he. First he was too cowardly to fight, now he’s diving headfirst into enemy territory. Again, why wasn’t he the protagonist?

So you head over to the Coliseum. Like you just walk in there despite being known wanted terrorists. That’s not suspicious at all. The Emperor is there too overseeing things, so it’s pretty obvious this will not go smoothly. He sicks his Behemoth at you, which he just has on him. I like to think it’s his pet because that seems like something this guy would do. This should be a challenging fight, but you’re so buff by this point it goes down in two minutes.

Then the Emperor has you arrested and thrown in the dungeon. Why he didn’t do this as soon as we walked in, I have no earthly clue. I guess he wanted to have some entertainment first. Things are looking bleak, but then the party is rescued by Paul. Remember the guy you rescued in the mithril mines. He’s back to repay you by busting you out.

After making a daring escape, the rebels decide to go through with the attack. Despite not having the Dragoons and Minwu still not having gotten back yet. It goes well though, mainly thanks to the party, and Fynn is retaken. The Princess is worried about Minwu though. Not only has he not returned yet but they’ve also lost contact with him. So guess what, you now have to go look for him.

It’s here where I begin to realise that the Wild Roses fucking suck. The accomplishments that can be attributed to them were done by the main party. I’m doing all the work here. Why do we even need these chucklefucks? Let’s just break off and take the emperor down ourselves. VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

But we should still check on Minwu. He is going after the strongest magic in the world, and that could be very helpful. Heading to Mysidia, you find that the Ultima spell is located in Mysidia Tower, but the only way to get it is with a Crystal Rod held in the Cave of Mysidia, and the only way to get deeper in there is with the White and Black Masks.

We already have the Black Mask, and the White Mask is in the basement of Fynn. Luckily you don’t need to go to Mysidia to learn that. The princess tells you about it while you’re in Fynn, so you can just go down and get it. See game, you can do things in a way that don’t waste my time. So you head into the basement which is filled with monsters? Princess Hilde, you have fucking monsters swarming in your basement. Get an exterminator.

Anyway, you get the White Mask and then you can get into the cave with the Crystal Rod and get it. By this point I’m numb to all the running around. The game is still bad but I’m not even angry at it by this point. I’m just apathetic to the whole thing.

After getting the Crystal Rod it’s time to head to Mysidia Tower. You sail over there when suddenly the ocean opens up in a swirling vortex of death, and you wind up inside of a giant Leviathan. Ok, I did not see that coming. Did not think the first appearance of Leviathan would be his insides, but it’s a really cool moment. I have to give bonus points to any game that has a level inside a giant creature.

Now we need to find our way out of here. I can think of one way, but I don’t think this game would go that far. You aren’t the only people there either. There’s a whole bunch of people trapped in there that have made their own little shanty town. How long have they been there? It’s got to have been a while since one of the people in there is Ricard Highwind, a Dragoon. Yup, there’s still one Dragoon who still draws breath, and he agrees to help you out to avenge his people. He’s going to die isn’t he.

The only way out of Leviathan is to find a ship lodged way down inside of it and somehow sail out of him. That seems physically impossible, but the only other way out is… yeah, better just find the ship. You find the ship, which is guarded by a giant worm that Leviathan should really get checked out, and you sail out of there. This ship is somehow a lot faster than your old ship, which makes ocean traversal a lot easier.

Now you can finally tackle that tower. This part is especially annoying. Aside from the typical BS you have to deal with in these dungeons, they bring back the stupid floors that hurt you. That’s one part of the first game I wish didn’t come back. You also need to fight three elemental giant enemies that aren’t too hard, but there isn’t much difference between them other than their elemental affinity. It’s repetitive.

After going through all that nonsense, you find Minwu at the top of the tower. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense. The reason Leviathan ate us was because of the Crystal Rod. He’s apparently drawn to that, which is why no one has been able to reach the tower in a long time. So did Minwu not have one? but then how did he get into the tower. You need the rod to get in here. So why did Leviathan not eat him? Whatever, at least he’s safe.

Minwu has actually been waiting for the party the whole time. Because the only way to break the seal to Ultima is to sacrifice his life energy. Oh dear. Yeah, Minwu dies so we can get the magic. Magic that we don’t really need now since we already took back Fynn, but hey, at least we have the most powerful magic in the game now. I think. I mean that’s what the game says but it isn’t actually all that powerful compared to the other spells. Other spells you’ve likely already levelled up by this point.

One of the issues with the magic system is that every attack spell feels exactly the same. They all share the same cost at every level and have roughly the same damage. The only difference is their elemental properties. So Ultima, this supposed ultimate magic that could turn the tide of this war, is just like every other spell. Conglaturation Minwu, you died for nothing.

If that wasn’t bad enough, as you start heading back to Fynn you discover that Altair, Poft, Gatrea and Paloom have been completely wiped off the map. Like they’re just fucking gone. You can’t even visit them anymore. What the hell happened? Returning to Fynn you find out The Emperor has a giant death tornado base known as the Cyclone. Creative name. Well shit, now the stakes have definitely been raised. I mean the Dreadnought could damage towns, but the Cyclone can completely obliterate them.

There’s a real sense of tension in this scene. You can feel the oppressive power the empire wields at their HEY WAIT A MINUTE! If Palamecia had access to this Cyclone thing, why did they bother with the Dreadnought? I mean the Cyclone is way more powerful, and I think The Emperor could have just summoned it whenever he wanted. You mean to tell me we busted our balls to destroy the Dreadnought, but The Emperor had this thing in his back pocket the whole time.

Ok, I can’t ignore it any further. This story is fucking dumb. I know it was the first in the series to try and have more of a plot, and for the time it was very innovative, but it is dumb. It’s filled with plot holes and completely pointless subplots.

It’s funny, one argument I hear in defence of Final Fantasy II is the fact that it has a story. Because the other NES Final Fantasy’s didn’t really have one. Sorry to spoil III but it’s true. A lot of NES RPGs didn’t have a story. This does make Final Fantasy II more in line with modern RPGs, and for some new players that means it has aged the best of the NES games.

I would argue the opposite. Because Final Fantasy II is more story focused like modern RPGs, that means there’s a more direct comparison that can be made to those. A comparison that is not in the games favour. Modern RPGs, the good ones anyway, have much tighter plots, better developed characters, and more deeply explored themes. In short, far richer narratives than what FFII offers.

The other NES Final Fantasy’s don’t have that kind of comparison. Those are simpler games that are more focused on the adventure than the story. Does that make them lacking compared to modern RPGs? To a point, but it also makes them unique. There’s a refreshing simplicity to them that makes them still fun to play. Final Fantasy II just winds up feeling lacking. It may try to tell a story, but it lacks a lot of the elements that make a story compelling. It may have been ahead of its time, but that just makes it feel behind the times now.

So, we now have a giant fuck off death tornado knocking on our back door. That’s bad, but we have a ray of hope. Remember that Wyvern egg we helped earlier? Well it should be hatched now, and we can fly that thing into the Cyclone to take it down. Problem is, he’s all the way back in Deist. But the princess explains that Castle Fynn has a mirror that can summon wyverns when used with a magic pendant. A pendant that Paul just so happens to have. Man that’s convenient.

So after summoning the baby wyvern, you fly the little guy into the eye of the tornado and prepare to take it down. What’s cool is that you can use the wyvern as an item that inflicts fire damage on the enemies. Final Fantasy II has quite a few items that also act as makeshift magic spells. The first game let you use certain equipment like that, but II introduces more one-use items with magical effects. I didn’t use these because I already had magic that was more than powerful enough, but it is nice to have these for non-magic users.

So you fight through the Cyclone and confront The Emperor. But he doesn’t fight you right away. Like any good villain he sends his best minions at you first. Which are the same enemies you’ve been fighting for the last ten minutes. I’m just saying he could have shook things up. But you eventually fight him and finally kill the bastard and… is that it? I mean we just killed the main villain. Not sure what else there is to do, oh yeah the Dark Knight. I completely forgot about him. He just vanished from the story didn’t he.

Well he’s still around, and in charge of Palamecia now that the Emperor is in the ground. But Palamecia is high up in the mountains. You can only get there via Airship. Fortunately you know someone who has one. Unfortunately he’s dying. Cid was in Paloom during the attack and was mortally wounded, but in his dying breath he bequeaths his airship to you.

Now this should be a cool moment. I mean getting the airship in the first game was awesome. You got to reach new areas, you got to see the dragons, it let you move around without having to worry about random battles. It was great. Here, I mean it’s kind of cool, but you’ve already seen everything. There’s nowhere else to go other than Palamecia so you can’t really enjoy it for very long. I don’t understand this game. it’s like it’s averse to fun.

But you take the airship to the empires capital and confront the Dark Knight. And get ready for the twist, because it turns out the Dark Knight was Leon the whole time. No, really? Who could have seen that coming besides everyone.

But just before you fight him, The Emperor comes back. Yup, he’s back, in demon form. Turns out killing him only made him more powerful than we could possibly imagine. While he was down in Hell, he just decided to take it over and now he’s planning to merge Hell and Earth together. Ok, that is awesome. It’s dumb, but it’s a cool kind of dumb.

The Emperor attacks, but Ricard is able to hold him back. Sacrificing himself to let our heroes escape. Called it. Leon also escapes and decides to join you and kill The Emperor. That was fast. I mean he was all for taking over the empire one moment and now he’s just back to normal. But whatever, Leon is finally on the team, at the very end. I mean that’s fine. He’s only been an established main character since the beginning of the fucking game.

Could he not have joined us sooner. By this point the other three are jacked, and it’s right near the end of the game. I’m not going to grind him up now. I don’t get it. Why not just have him in the party from the beginning. The whole game is built around building your team the way you want, and they don’t give you the full team until the end. They didn’t even do much with the Dark Knight persona. You don’t fight him at all, and he vanishes for a good chunk of the plot. What was the point in all that?!

Alright, the game is almost over, and this review is long enough. Let’s just wrap this up. The Emperor raises Castle Pandemonium from the underworld to merge the two worlds together, and you decide to infiltrate it from below through the Jade Passage. Which is a pool in the world that’s connected to the underworld. This is just a thing that exists apparently and nobody seems to mind. You’d think there would be more interest in a gateway to literal Hell, but what do I know.

You can also get the Excalibur here, but I didn’t know that was a thing and didn’t do it. By this point though I was more than done and just wanted the game to be over. Plus, you don’t really need it. You’re more than strong enough at this point.

You go through the Jade Passage, enter the demonic castle, fight through a bunch of bullshit including boss rematches and a few extra bosses for some equipment, and you finally face The Emperor in his demonic form. You use the same tactic you did against every other boss, and eventually he goes down. The day is saved, our heroes are praised, the dead are mourned, and Leon fucks off to deal with the guilt of being an evil lackey. Roll credits.

Final Fantasy II is not a good game. I think I’ve made that pretty clear. Even if I could get over the lacklustre story, the ridiculously broken level up system and the horrendous level design, the game itself is just a bore. The world isn’t that interesting, and the battle system is so easy to break you’ll be on autopilot for most of it.

It has moments where it can be entertaining. Some of the story beats are fun, if a little goofy, and its ideas are not bad. The level-up system is very novel, and it would even be used as a basis for the Saga series, and I’ve heard that’s pretty decent. it certainly executed them a lot better from what I can gather.

But Final Fantasy II is just a joyless chore. The few moments of fun I had were undermined by the amount of time the game wasted. I never want to play it again, and I will never understand the praise it got back then or the praise it gets now. This game sucked.

If you must play this, for completionism or curiosity or whatever reason, get the Pixel Remaster. It comes with features that make the game a lot less tedious, but even those only help so much. Don’t get it on its own though. Get it in the bundle because at least then you get five other games that are more worth your time.

Final Fantasy II is at least an important game in the series. It established a lot of mainstays, and it showed the series was more willing to experiment. Even if this experiment didn’t work out, that experimental nature will be a defining aspect of the series for better or worse. The next game would be a return to form however. Square took the criticisms they got from the second entry and would go back to the ideas of the first game. Only this time it would be a bigger, bolder, more ambitious adventure. So ambitious it took sixteen years to release in the west.