Final Fantasy II (US)
This review is for Final Fantasy II (US) by Square for the SNES. I originally made this review around the time the remake was made for the Game Boy Advance. You may ask, “Why didn’t you review the remake then?” To that I say, “Because it’s thirty dollars and I’m a cheap prick.” Either way, the game was a landmark in that it introduced the Active Time Battle system and a coherent story to the Final Fantasy series. Yes, there are those that look back and see nothing but horrible translation and the inability to switch characters, but it was more than that. It had a good story, but it wasn’t its strongest point. This Final Fantasy was…an actual game… *sheds a tear as if garbage was thrown on my land*
Read on! I cast Interested 4 upon you!
Name: Final Fantasy II (US), Final Fantasy IV (JP)
Game Ownership: No
Game Status: Beat last boss. Highest level characters are 57. Got all special weapons and summons.
How it was Acquired: ZSNES
Condition when Bought: N/A
Game Type: Classic RPG
Preliminary Comments:
Fact: Contrary to popular belief, the American version of the game is not the Japanese “Easytype” version, but a modified Hardtype. The Easytype version was an easier version of the American version.
Rant: “You spoony bard!”
Rant: Rosa and Later Rydia = HOT
Rant: Screw the actual name of the item! It shall always be the “Spoon.”
Graphics - 7.5
Graphics for the most part are pretty nice for their time. Backgrounds and scenery are good. Even though I feel that backgrounds during battles showed too much land, they still looked decent. I would like to say that the last boss fighting place looks awesome. It’s the best last boss fighting scene I’ve seen from any FF game I’ve played. It even looks better than the remake’s version. The overworld map was kinda simple, but it was good enough. Something that would have been nice would be an actual world map so that I actually have some idea of where I am. I know that I can use that item to show the map, but they should have put something there. The entire overworld looks similar, and it is hard to figure out how far you have to go until you start looping through the map. I wasted a lot of time just flying around because I was trying to look for some small stupid town in the edge of the universe. You could be one screen below it and never know.
Character sprites themselves look very nice. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the overworld ones, but the ones in the fight look great. Enemies in battle looked decent most of the time. Something that upset me was the number of bad looking bosses there were. I mean, they’re the bosses! They’re supposed to look huge and intimidating, but a lot of them just come out as low-grade pixelated crap. Ok, ok, that’s a bit exaggerating, but I know they could have done better. I am at least glad that even though everything was blocky, the developers at least tried to put some details on the enemies.
Animation in the game sadly left much to be desired. Of course, I know how all FF games before VI had some pretty meh animation, but it has to be mentioned anyway. Something that really disappointed me was some of the magic spell animations. Of course, there were some good ones, such as “Nuke” (whihc used to be pictured above until I lost the picture). However, moves such as Meteo, which is supposed to be the strongest move in the game, is just a weak shower of stars. I wish they had put more effort into that one.
Sound - 7.5
Music in the game is very good, much better than I originally expected. Even though some would call some of the music cheesy, I still think this soundtrack is some of Uematsu’s best work. All four of its battle themes were great, especially when fighting the Four Fiends. The overworld theme was enjoyable and actually doesn’t become super annoying like in a lot of other FF games. However, a reccuring problem with all the songs was that they looped pretty quickly. Of course, that is a trademark of video game music, especially old video game music, but I always felt that any song that looped back before a minute was too fast. Sound effects were average RPG sound effects. Nothing really to say about them.
Story - 8.0
This was the first Final Fantasy to have characters that you actually cared something about. No longer were they some nameless pawns that you just used to kill things. Also, no longer was the story just a bunch of random, unnecessary happenings that string together somehow to let you kill the last boss. Each of it actually builds off each other.
You control Cecil, a Dark Knight in control of the air force of the kingdom of Baron. The king has recently started gathering the magical crystals of the other kiungdoms to gain more influence. For questioning the king, Cecil loses your position and is sent on a humiliating mission to carry a package to a certain village. That’s how it starts. The story for the game is actually a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be, but there are two things that should be discussed about it. The first thing was that the game constantly kills off or disables different people in your party so that you always have a party of five. Unlike other Final Fantasies, you don’t get to choose who you want to use but have to use whatever team the game gives you at the time. I’m not too fond of the lack of variety, but I do love how it adds to strategy. It helps keep the game from the ability to just attack everything instead of wasting time to use magic. Also, killing the characters off adds to the suspense of the story and does show a little more creativity than the lame “Four people can’t go walking across the plains! That’s dangerous!” excuses that they use now.
The second problem, and you will see this talked about in almost EVERY review for the American FF2, is the sub-par translation. Now, I won’t lie to you, this translation is pretty bad. Sometimes, you’re gonna have to sit there and really try to piece together what everyone is saying. However, it doesn’t totally destroy the gaming experience for you like what others say. I mean, you still know what is going on and what you have to do, but I think the main problem of the bad translation is that it makes the characters seem shallow. Any flare or distinction in the way they act is lost or greatly impaired. Important phrases become meaningless jibberish and hurt the message. Unless the character is a type to be very physical in the way they talk, you can’t really get a good grasp of who they are.
Fun - 8.0
I remember a long time ago when story was not the complete point of Final Fantasy but when gameplay and strategy was. I remember a time when you were put into a position in which you either figure out how to pull it together with all availible resources or become doomed to either train or go back for supplies. I remember a time when every character in your parth had a designated purpose. I remember…1991, the greatest year of all time.
But back to subject! This Final Fantasy is my favorite game in the series, even surpassing Final Fantasy VI. For a long time, this game was the closest you could get to the older Final Fantasies. It had distinct differences in characters, side-quests, and many other variable things. This game is probably the best mix of story and gameplay throughout all the other games in the series. Let’s start from the top with the one thing you’ll be doing most of all, battle.
When I first played the game a few years ago, I was thinking, “You get to have five people in your group? This is gonna be a snap!” Oh, how limited my thinking was! In this game, each character has their own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, Rydia can summon monsters and use magic, but her attacking is poor and she gets injured easily. You can’t just make everyone attack mindlessly and completely kill everything like in other Final Fantasies, which is something I really like. There have been a lot of complaints that this limits your characters and decreases variety. However, I never liked how everyone could learn every single spell in FF6 and how you could make any character anything in FF7. It takes away that individuality that the characters served in battle and totally destroys any strategy that was necessary. Why should people put in the effort to use that Blitz or Tool when they could just cast Ultima a billion times? Here, you actually had to pay attention to what you were doing with each character, and you also had to do it quickly or die.
As a bit of history for you, this was the first Final Fantasy to use active time battle, meaning you don’t have unlimited time to choose an attack. It in itself is an innovation, but there were many criticisms of it. First off, you never knew who’s turn it would be next since there wasn’t any bar that filled up to tell you. Many people didn’t like how you actually had to keep track, but I did because it all works into that strategy that I told you about. It makes it feel like more of a battle since it adds the element of surprise and unpredictability. Others have complained that the enemies seem to get higher priority than you, and would hit you several times before one whole round of turns happens. This I would agree somewhat since it does get frustrating when its a normal enemy, but other special enemies should have some edge over you, such as bosses. The boss should be able to hit you a lot because its a freakin boss! If the boss isn’t hard, the game becomes lame.
Aside from fighting, there was something great that is disappearing from the RPGs of today, sidequests. This game has a nice amount of extra weapons and summons and such that are pretty fun to go though. It may take more time, and it may not be necessary to do it, but the rewards are great. The best part about it is that if you don’t care, you don’t have to get it! If you just don’t want your experience to end, you can get as many of them as you can.
With all that being said, there are two main flaws that have always plagued the Final Fantasy series. The first problem is that anyone could level up to an insane degree and crush everything. This is a very big problem in later Final Fantasies since it just makes the game too easy. However, that is because the ton of random battles you fight, and the incredible easiness of enemies made them easy to kill and get exp from. The reason that it isn’t that much of a problem in this one is because not only does it take a lot of battles to level up later on, but the enemies aren’t that easy to kill. As I said, you can’t just keep attacking mindlessly. You have to know what everyone is doing, or else even the underpowered plain enemies are gonna kill you. You think I’m kidding, but I guess it isn’t something you could understand until you have experienced it firsthand. Enemies can do a sizeabile amount of damage and take out your party in several turns. I have to admit that I ran away from quite a few battles in the game just because I could not kill them without taking heavy losses. The second problem is the entire concept of random battles. Every Final Fantasy makes people fight enemies a little too often. It rapidly makes the game tedious since you have to fight battle after battle so often. Of course, it is prevalent in this game as much as the others. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a way that would make the game better while still keeping random battles other than completely removing them. I guess that’s just something we’ll all have to live with.
Difficulty - 7.0
The version of the game released in America was actually made easier than the original Japanese game in several ways. For instance, a lot more random treasure boxes with money and helpful items were put in the game. Also, each status effect originally had to be cured by a specific item. In the American version, all of them could be cured with just the “Heal” item. Also, damage dealt by enemies was lowered. Even with all this, the game was still pretty hard! Enemies still can kill certain members easily, and since they’re all needed for some reason, it makes playing a challenge.
Replayable - 6.0
I’m kind of at a crossroads for this one. I’m not really sure if people would want to play the game again after they play it once. I know that it is an enjoyable experience, and I’m sure that you would have a fun time playing it, but it doesn’t really do a good job at appealing to people to make them play it again. I think its more of a matter of personal taste and love for the challenge. For me, I love this game, so I love playing it through again and again.
