Final Fantasy 2

[Ando85]

I'm not talking about the SNES Final Fantasy II which is actually IV, but the real FF2. It seems to be the oddball of the series. I've hardly ever seen anyone talk about it. It is also the only one of the main numbered series that I haven't played.

Has anyone played it? If so what do you think of it?

 

[roushutsu]

I played it a while ago, and it's OK. Not one of the best, despite how many times it's been re-ported.

s69-5 pretty much hit it on the nose with the battle system. The most unique in the entire series, but so easy to unfairly take advantage of. As for the story, I found it to be really dull in the beginning and it slowly picks up throughout. Then once we get towards the end, it becomes awesome. Since you haven't played it yet, I won't spoil it, but I will say that it's a shame that the FF2 villain is so underrated. Hell, I think most people forgot all about him until Dissidia came along.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Getting rid of traditional XP-based party growth (in 1987!) was very innovative, but the innovation was so poorly implemented its kinda scary.

-The amount of times you have to cast a spell or use a skill to level it up is ridiculous. Add to that that each spell has to be leveled up INDIVIDUALLY and the game is actually MORE grindy than FF1 or FF3, despite a system that abolishes XP.

-The best way to improve your skills is to have your party beat themselves up. That's just not good designed.

-Even with extremely high Agility/Evade stats (which are difficult to raise), running away from battle is nigh-impossible most of the time.

-Increasing magic related stats causes physical stats to drop, and vice-versa.

FF2's head designer was Akitoshi Kawazu, who worked on the SaGa games (released on Game Boy as the "Final Fantasy Legend" series), and his games are known for being obnoxiously difficult and subjecting the player to guesswork and unfriendly systems.

Here's a great article that will tell you everything you could ever need to know (and more) about Final Fantasy II: http://www.socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff02

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm not talking about the SNES Final Fantasy II which is actually IV, but the real FF2. It seems to be the oddball of the series. I've hardly ever seen anyone talk about it. It is also the only one of the main numbered series that I haven't played.

Has anyone played it? If so what do you think of it?

I have it. (Final Fantasy Origins, that is, with the first game as well.) Ummm...the problem is that it's rather hard as fuck. You have to spend acres of time training up experience with every weapon and magical power to unleash its full potential. It sometimes does so at a very slow rate. This makes the grind (which I normally have a good tolerance for) even more grindy than has ever been ground before. So...I didn't finish it. It looked good, but it also looked like more work than all of my Persona games combined.

 

[Louie Clark]

I played it on NES, years and years ago. It was all in Japanese, obviously, so my friend Hiro had to tell me what was going on and teach me the menus. I seem to remember it getting impossibly hard if you tried to play it like a normal RPG. Like was said above, you need to raise skills, not just grind monsters. If you don't, you can get destroyed fairly close to town if you walk too far into the forest or whatever.

I have no idea how different any of the later ports are from the original.

 

[madwarper]

I can't imagine anyone not having played FF2 by now, what with it being bundled with FF1 and having been released on every platform ever[footnote]Possible exception to the digital display on my microwave, though I haven't checked yet...[/footnote]

Basically, it was Elder Scrolls before Elder Scrolls was Elder Scrolls. Use an ability, get better at it.
Though, it was every bit as grindy, if not more so, than traditional FF1 style exp games. However, the HP/MP grind became ridiculously easy once you got Swap spell.

Player 1 Swap /w Enemy
Player 2 Swap /w Player 1
Player 3 Swap /w Player 2
Player 4 Swap /w Player 3
Player 1 Swap /w Player 4
etc.

 

[go-10]

it was the game from which Saga Frontier was created. SF sucked, it was REALLY bad and as such its roots were much worst, the level system could be exploited yes but I don't see why anyone would when not playing the game is a much better option

 

[krazykidd]

Unarmed is OP as fuck . Fuck weapons just use your fists . I can see why they didn't want to bring this game to NA back in the day . So many things wrong . But i like it because it's FF .

 

[burningdragoon]

The leveling system (as mentioned above a few times) was an interesting change. It's just that it's so tedious to actually level up that you practically need to exploit the system and even then it's only slightly less tedious. I've tried to play it a few times, but haven't finished it.

 

[Baralak]

I don't like it, but yeah. There's another part of the battle system other people failed to negelct: As skills go up, others go down. IF you use magic a lot, your strength and HP will go down as your INT and MP go up, and vice versa. That killed it for me, as I love playing the Red Mage or sorts.

 

[Jazoni89]

Possibly the worst in the series IMO.

It's pretty broken, I mean you can get experience by selecting a battle option, then cancelling out of it, as many times as you want. Final Fantasy VIII, admittenly was broken in places as well (despite being my favourite), but not to the degree of II.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Target-Cancel_Bug

It also hasn't aged well either, at least with the first game, it has the charm of being...well the first.

It was only until the fourth one, that Final Fantasy became an exceptional series. Three did have it's moments, but was bogged down by the insane difficulty.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I played the PSP version of it a few years ago and, beat it once. After that I didn't look back. I had fun with it while it lasted but it didn't leave a huge impact on me like 4, 8 or, 10. I did use Minwu in Theatrhytm though, as soon as I unlocked him.