Fun Fact: The only dungeon in this game without a door leading to an empty room is literal Hell

100% - All Steam Achievements

NES series often went in very different and divisive directions with their sequels, and Final Fantasy is no different. This is probably almost everyone's least favorite of the (classic) FF games and even in this remake I can see why.

It really is mostly the leveling system. Throughout my playthrough I really tried to find the good in it because I believe it is such a strong concept for how character development can be done in an RPG, but it just really is at odds with the rest of the game design.
My issues are almost entirely with how weapon and spell levels work, and not really with stat levels as other than a long stretch of time where Maria simply refused to gain Magic or Intellect even though she was constantly using black magic, I found the stat progression pretty consistent.

However, with weapons and spells I was simply baffled by the decision to have them level depending on how many times you use them in a single battle. In my playthrough I found almost every random encounter to be able to be ended in only 1-3 turns if I simply attacked with every character. However doing this won't level up your attacks beyond a certain point, and you'll have to either wait for enemies to get stronger or start playing sub optimally and not acting with 3/4 of your party. Admittedly, this is not something that will ever prevent you from progressing in the game's story, and only is an issue if you try to max something, or even worse EVERYTHING, out (and you will have to do this for at least one weapon and spell for all achievements). The system just doesn't work with how easy and repetitive encounters are.

Speaking of encounters, I'd like to touch on the dungeons in this game, which are kinda miserable to play through. I won't harp on this since I'm sure it's been mentioned in other reviews, but the "trap doors" to empty rooms are just frustrating and nothing else. This frustration is only compounded by what I think is a substantially higher random encounter rate than the first game had AND the lack of effective multi-target spells (they will only tickle your enemies in this game since they do 1/8 the already meager damage of a single target spell). Additionally, I found the dungeons to just be very boring mazelike hallways that are both difficult and uninteresting to navigate.

To end this review on a good note, I'll touch on the story. Final Fantasy II actually attempts to tell a story with characters and events, unlike most games on the NES which at best create a decent world for you to explore. While the story is likely something you've seen before (it is very much the plot of Star Wars with small deviations) it is one of the most complex of the NES/famicom games.

I really like a lot of the ideas in this game, but I feel that they are ahead of their time and held back by some of the artifacts of being a JRPG from 1988. I am positive that these ideas will be elaborated on in games I play from the coming decades (SaGa, The Elder Scrolls, etc.) and eagerly await seeing them used in a game that frustrates me less.

Part 1: Introduction

About a month ago, I finished the first Final Fantasy for Famicom and kept my hopes up for FFII to see if it would improve on things that I didn’t care for in the first game. Despite my limited knowledge on the series, I was hiding something about it and that was the fact I have tried this game before. While there have been entries I have at least played a small bit before finishing FF1, this game was a special one.

Part 2: Hatefulness won’t leave me…

It all started a couple of years ago when I was struggling to get fan translations working. I told one of my oomfs at the time that as a joke I’d play FFII if I could get it patched correctly. It actually worked. If anyone is wondering how I was screwing up patching games into English, I was using the wrong emulator. So, I kept to my word and played through the game, realizing immediately why this game was hated off the bat. Even with my words, I barely got through the game, in fact I only played up to when you get Minwu which is like still almost the beginning of the game. This was all because I knew people in the US hated it and thought I should immediately join the hate, not even giving it a shot from a positive perspective. Now that I’ve played the first game, I have a better mindset and I like to think I improve with each year to come when looking at games. It was time to return.

Part 3: Returning with positives and failure

It was now time to start FFII on the Famicom for real. I went into it with a good first impression this time. The plot was more interesting this time and the party even have canon names and actual dialogue. There’s some stuff here like phoenix downs to revive the party and Chocobos that were introduced in this entry. The combat was actually interesting once I understood it, you level up like it’s a training arc in an anime. Or you know just real life training, god this shows how much of my life is gaming and anime. The music, oh god the music! It’s even better than before like even the way it begins it’s even better than how it sounded before! How did they do it?! The music in general captures the setting and tone so well. Best of all, there’s MP! Yes! No more spell charges!! This game is for sure better than the first game! How can it not? Well around a little over halfway, I kept dying and dying and got frustrated. Why was this happening? Why is it so hard I asked. It took me time to think about it but it was because my magic variety was so small, but I didn’t want to grind again just to stand a chance, it’s so tedious at times to raise your magic and eventually I gave up and quit the game. I felt sad about it but that’s just how life can be. I was going to write a review about my failures but before bed, I had a great idea. What about the Pixel Remaster?

Part 4: The actual version I finished

Now it was time to try this one out and I was blown away from the start. There’s more to the opening this time though you still have to lose that beginning fight which might be the first of its kind? Does anyone know of others? This remaster looks really nice and outside of a complaint I’ll talk about later, there really aren't any issues with them. You’ll start with three characters. The three are Firion, Maria, and Guy. There was a fourth one named Leon but more on him later. You can oddly still name them whatever you want despite not being silent like the warriors of light from FF1. It is cool that the three talk but sadly they don’t have much to say here. This is still 1988 so it’s fine with me. You’ll also realize the title is a lot more depressing as you’ll experience many deaths from minor NPCs to major characters, many calamities will occur like a race almost being extinct and even worse you won’t always be successful in your efforts showing that you’re not always the one ahead of the curve like in FF1. I don’t think it’s some amazing tearful tale but I felt it was more interesting than the first game. I also found it interesting how you can learn specific terms to ask certain characters to progress through the story or get hints but it's a very basic feeling. I do appreciate the remaster for at least now telling you what words work for a character at the current time.

The combat is rather odd in this one as you’ll have to manually up every weapon, magic, and stat for each of your characters. There is no EXP in this game and it’s a little crazy they made such a risky change for a sequel. Though this was more of the norm at the time to do something like this so it’s not too unusual. The nice thing about this remaster is the grind was toned down a ton. I’m not sure if this was a thing in previous remakes of the game but compared to the Famicom one, you’ll be saving hours. This also means you can experiment more. Your party has things they can be set up with from the start but they can be anything you want. Guy may look like the power character of the group but he can be your white mage if you so choose. You can even get wacky and do stuff you could never do in the original. You also still have to buy magic and this time there’s no stronger variants or magic due to this new leveling up system. It’s very manageable here meaning I got to use a lot of magic and have fun. It’s a very fun system depending on the version and patience you have to do it.

When it comes to progression, the difficulty is quite easy especially when you can up your stats better in this version. It also helps you have actual MP this time. No more spell charges here thank god and now you have way more opportunities to use magic here. There’s even MP restoring items but sadly the amount they give you is small and they’re kind of pricey in the early game to ever be helpful. The difficulty is really all on you for how you want to go through the game. If you really wanted, you can just do something silly like hit yourself and eventually have thousands of HP just for the fun of it. Knowing where to go is also not too bad and you shouldn’t get lost from my experience.

Then we got to the dungeons and oh boy, what happened here? Look I wasn’t the biggest fan of them in the first but they are worse here. Some are more interesting than others but because this game’s encounter rate can be a bit annoying it makes these places drag out. The worst part about them is the fact they love to have doors where they lead you into a rectangular room that has nothing and has a high encounter rate for tough enemies. It’s spammed throughout the game and rarely they can have items so you might wanna look through them all anyway. Easily the worst part about the game right there. They also got rid of enemy spawns on tiles so enemies you fight for treasures now activate as you open one, kind of like a Mimic from DQ. I also notice when you’re on those tiles that hurt you, you can’t spawn enemies but it always spawns a battle right after you get off one. It gave me this hilarious vision of you suffering on these tiles while you see an enemy with a wooden plank casually waiting for your painful arrival. Unknowing to him though I’m stronger than him anyway so I’m having the last laugh anyway OHOHOHOHO!!!

Some smaller stuff I could talk about like the music, omg I already liked how it sounded on Famicom, the orchestra is heavenly! Like I don’t know how you make stuff like the overworld map already sound better than it already did. Even by the very end with Pandaemonium it just wows me with the OST presented. Running away in this remaster feels a lot easier than in the original. I swear it feels impossible at times to run away in that game. I read it's suppose to work better if you have higher agility but it still feels very inconsistent in the Famicom version. I wish this game had more of the airship or a way you can use the Chocobo more. The Chocobo is in a forest south of the place you find Gordon and it can help you avoid encounters but it leaves the moment you dismount it. Would have liked a command or item to summon it anytime like in Final Fantasy Adventure. Though you can just turn encounters off in this remaster anyway which kind of makes him a little pointless. I also love the maps for the world and dungeons though you could see it as cheating to avoid dead ends. Really there’s just a lot in this remaster to enjoy and that wasn’t even all of it. Though I don't know if it was just me but there was constant stutters if I kept the game running after a little bit. I don't know why this happens.

Part 5: An end to the journey and review

I could probably say more but I don’t wanna drag out this review going over every bit and detail about the playthrough. I used to know this as the bad Final Fantasy but at the end of this playthrough, I thought it was very good. It’s not perfect and I can understand why some hate it but I don’t know, I just find stuff to appreciate in this one. This would be the only entry to really play like this though the eventual birth of the SaGa series would bring some of these mechanics back into there so I’ll probably check some of those someday. Now despite my experience with the Famicom version, I still think in a way it’s worth checking out just as an interesting history piece of something America almost got. Just remember that you’ll be grinding lots and I mean lots in that version. Otherwise the remaster is the way to go and plus it’s only $12 which is nice. Next time I’ll be ending the 8-bit trilogy with FFIII. I’m not sure yet if I’ll play the Famicom version of that one or not but odds are that I’ll try to play it. That’s the one that’s usually seen as the best of the three so I’m excited to try it sometime this year. Another adventure awaits for me, hopefully next time not as depressing as this one because god I don’t wanna see so many characters dying…