It’s been over a year since I played and journaled a Final Fantasy game, but I did finally get around to Final Fantasy II. This is, along with its follow-up, the only mainline single player Final Fantasy I had never played. It’s perhaps easy to see why this one feels like a bit of a black sheep of the series. It took a while before it was released in English (as part of Final Fantasy Origins (2003) on the Playstation, a collection I never got) and it never got a full remake like Final Fantasy III did on the DS. For an American fan like myself, this was always the the game that felt like it could just be left behind.
And yet, I am glad I finally got to it. My understanding is that the game’s progression system is what mostly divides fans of the series. Rather than gaining experience points toward levels, you gain them on the basis of the actions you take in battle (it reminded me of how Ultima Online used to work). This leads some grinding (just spamming cure to get that spell leveled, for instance), but also some balance issues. By the end of the game, each character was well situated for physical combat, with high HP and weapon skill-level. Another character had high MP and healing and offensive spells. But the final boss really required the use of supports that really were not needed for most of the game. I squeaked by with the help of a guide, but I always find it frustrating when a game requires you to completely change your style of play at the very end. The Legend of Heroes games sometimes have this issue today.
While none of the later games picked up this precise system, you can see hints of it in the way Final Fantasy VIII handled spell acquisition, with both the positives and negatives of being able to stock spells during battle. Anyone willing to grind could break both games with enough time, but it also gives some variety to the gameplay. I was able to focus each of the three main characters on particular skills rather than all-arounders.
Wikipedia implies that the game wasn’t localized due to technological limitations, but I can’t help but suspect that some of the plot elements played a role here. In one squence, a princess is possessed and tries to seduce one of the main characters by literally dragging him into bed with her. The big bad of the game is an “Emperor” who you kill, becomes the ruler of hell, and then returns. The final dungeon is literally “Pandaemonium.” I thought this was wild for an NES game. Indeed, as I was playing I was trying to think of what I could say about this experience and then we get the fact that the final boss is basically Satan and suddenly we have something interesting going on. Shame it took that long.
The game is ultimately an interesting curio. The gameplay innovations might have been left behind (at least in this series), while one can just start to discern the thematic elements that would eventually constitute a classic Final Fantasy tale — rebels against oppression, unexpected sacrifices for the greater good, complicated familial and social relationships, all told with a bit of whimsy and humor. The Pixel Remaster features like the minimap made this playthrough a fairly simple experience and I was ultimately left wanting a bit more; I don’t think it’ll take another year to get to Final Fantasy III.