This game was the most fun of the original three for the first 90%. The job system, summons, and improved version of the FF1 storyline - as well as goofy sense of humour - allowed it to be a great improvement over the simplicity of the first game, and a breath of fresh air after the mess of the second. But then… the final dungeon absolutely eviscerated my goodwill. It’s basically 3 long (loooong) dungeons back to back, full of bosses that all feel like they came from the same hellscape that churned out FF1’s Chaos. The game went from a fun adventure to having the worst aspects of 1 and 2’s final dungeons put together and taking away any of my memories of the first 90% of the game.

Having said all that, I did genuinely enjoy most of this. It sucks that the first three so far are 3/3 for messing up at the last second and so I’m glad that I’m now onto the games that are where the series apparently starts go take off.

There was actually a lot I liked about this over the first. The overworld, story, setting and characters were greatly improved; the boss music was fab; a lot of the series staples such as Cid, Chocobos, Marlboros and Bombs were also introduced. But then for every point added on, there’s a frustrating minus 2 points for the terrible dungeon design, the not well thought out levelling system, the horrendously ridiculous encounters in later dungeons and the very odd key word feature that the game never really utilised in a way that suggested it ever needed it. There were stretches of the game that I found myself having fun with overall, but then that would be suffocated by a slog of a dungeon. The story also felt like it should have ended a lot sooner than it did. The plot became pretty ridiculous towards the end and not in an endearing way like some of the others.

The game was… pandemonium.