Final Fantasy II

I've done the impossible.  I've beaten Final Fantasy II.

Okay, so beating Final Fantasy II isn't impossible, but some people believe it to be.  The hatred some people have for this game can be astounding.  The problem is that many people have in their mind what a Final Fantasy game should be, and Final Fantasy II doesn't fit that picture.  This doesn't make the game inherently bad, but shows that some people strongly resist change.

I view it as a similar situation as Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.  It's the black sheep of the Zelda series, and receives quite a bit of flack.  There are ways a Zelda game "should" be, and The Adventure of Link, just like Final Fantasy II, doesn't have those traits.  Granted, in this case I believe that there are similar tones and general qualities that every Zelda game should have, and Zelda II falls outside those bounds.  I'm not saying it's a bad game, but I'm also not saying it's a good game, either.  It just doesn't feel like a Zelda game, and it is obvious why many people don't like it.

However, with the Final Fantasy series, I believe people should have an open mind.  I've only played a few games in the series (refer to my previous Final Fantasy post) and know a bit about the others, and can tell you that, unlike Zelda, each game is a bit different and has their own unique redeeming qualities.  There isn't a set standard that each game typically follows (Zelda captured by Ganon, ~8 dungeons, hearts for health, adventure game, etc.), besides being a fantasy game with RPG aspects of sorts, and the player controls a party.  Oh, and there may be "dungeons", some bosses, and a bad guy.  Really, that seems to be what all 13 games (substitute X-2 for XI) in the Final Fantasy series have in common.  And guess what?  Final Fantasy II still fits those characteristics.

I have a hypothesis of why the game receives its hate.  Being different wasn't the only problem.  It was that Square decided to go back to an older style of leveling up, instead of continuing with Final Fantasy II's system.  Japan received Final Fantasy III, with much in the same as Final Fantasy (or so I've heard, I'll find out soon enough), ditching the Final Fantasy II system entirely.  In the Americas, we didn't receive Final Fantasy II until later, instead receiving Final Fantasy IV after the original, therefore completely skipping the unique level-up system.  After we had played a couple Final Fantasy games, returning to a different level-up system seemed quite difficult, and for some people, pointless.  But this is just a thought, and I could be wrong.  Regardless, I want to take the time to point out both the good and the bad parts of Final Fantasy II, and bring up some comparisons to the original Final Fantasy.  Now let's have some fun.

Since I'm already on the topic of the level-up system, I might as well delve deeper into that.  To be quite honest, I really enjoyed it.  The system is very robust, and allows the player for any sort of customization they desire.  And I need to get this out of the way: leveling up by intentionally hitting characters may sound dumb, but a) it makes sense (keep reading), b) I can think of another RPG series that uses it without gaining flack (hello every Elder Scrolls game), and c) the player does not have to do this for very long.  I spent about an hour at the beginning of the game and another hour near the end for grinding in this manner, and that was enough.  I also need to mention that I was playing the PSP 20th Anniversary UMD version of the game, which is significantly different from the original.  This will repeatedly become a point of discussion.  In this case, it is important because the game is much easier than the original (as I've been told), including the leveling up process.  For example, this is the only version that has a "defend" option during battles (not even the somewhat recent Dawn of Souls GBA version has this option).  This is a very nice feature, for two reasons.  First, when low on health during battles, being able to defend to reduce damage is crucial.  The second goes back to leveling up, in that it can be nice for a character to "do nothing" for a couple turns, while another character can go to town with attacks and magic.  In this way, the character aiming to level up a stat doesn't need to worry about another character either wasting mp by casting a spell, or possibly attacking and killing the enemy, therefore ending the battle.  The longer the battle, the more likely it is to level up a stat, especially HP.

And let me tell you, Square went crazy with the stats.  Every stat is separate, and therefore has its own way of leveling up.  This includes everything from HP, defense, magical defense, agility, each magic spell, and everything in between.  Take more damage in battle, increase max HP and possibly stamina (the amount of HP that will increase each time it does).  Use plenty of MP during a battle, and increase max MP and possibly magic (the amount of MP that will increase each time it does) spirit (white magic power) or intelligence (black magic power).  Want to become more proficient with a certain weapon or magic spell?  Keep using it.  Thankfully, while the progression of some stats is "hidden" (agility is still a pain to level-up, as I never figured out how), all weapons and magic spells have progression bars, to see how long until it levels up.  Square was also kind enough to change this version from its original, so that stats will not decrease when focusing on another, opposite stat.  That must have been a pain, and probably would have been a deal-breaker for me.  I could see why that would turn people away, or even make some people hate the game.

But this system gave the player the freedom of choice, and for every character.  While Final Fantasy was neat that there were six classes to choose four from, and each had their particular use and proficiencies, it became a bit boring.  There was never any chance to do something different.  Spell selection was limited to choosing three spells out of every four available for each of the eight levels.  Characters could not equip weapons which they could not use.  Yet in Final Fantasy II, I could play the game however I wanted.  The game presents each character as what they "should" be, but the player can change them whenever they would like.  I could have created a team composed of four black mages, who are each well-versed in the use of swords.  Or four team-members with no magic spells, focusing entirely on bare-fisted combat (I wouldn't recommend it, since weapons, when leveled up, are much more powerful than even a level 16 bare-fisted character, or so I've read).  But Square didn't stop there.

Not only can each character choose what weapons or spells to use, but the player can choose how to equip the characters.  Each hand could hold something, besides the typical slots for a helmet, armor, and fingers.  I love the fact that I could actually choose what I wanted each character to hold.  I began the game with my characters holding a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other (besides Maria, my bow user, the only weapon requiring both hands).  Yet later I realized that if I were to sacrifice my shield and defense, I could double my attack by equipping two weapons, one in each hand.  Not only that, but after a couple hours, I noticed that Guy, who was using two weapons (two different weapons, Axes and Staves, to level up both classes), had a much higher HP than Firion.  It dawned on me that since Firion was still using a shield, he had lower HP, but a higher defense with the shield.  I enjoyed having the choice between what items I have equipped, and how it directly affected my stats over time.  In the original Final Fantasy, my characters would level-up according to how the game says they should, not to how I want.  But in the sequel my decisions directly affected the future of my characters.  I had fun as Firion became a bad ass double-wielding swordsman.  But I digress.  I have much more to talk about, so let's move on.

Since I'm talking about the characters, let's go in that direction.  Honestly, Final Fantasy II outdoes Final Fantasy in almost every way in this category.  Seriously, while the story in Final Fantasy is nice for how simple it was, Final Fantasy II blows it out of the water.  Gone is the party composed of four random individuals out to save the world.  This time the main party consists of a couple of friends who set out to overthrow the Emperor, who has gone about taking over and destroying towns, including their own, having almost killed them.  Each party character has a name, and they each speak, including the main character, Firion.  What's great is that it doesn't feel like one guy with a bunch of friends, but instead that all three characters - Firion, Maria and Guy - are one team, with no one character taking importance over another.  Guy's importance is lacking however, seeing as how he barely talks, and typically only with animals.  And when he does, his English is awful, almost caveman-like.  It reminds me of another Square RPG cave-dweller character at times...

Of course, not everything is perfect with this game, which trust me, I'll point out soon enough.  In this case, it's with the fourth party member.  Over the course of the game, the fourth party member slot is filled with five (I think?) different characters.  Personally, while this was neat and fit in story-wise, was a detriment to the overall gameplay experience.  I found it frustrating to have to level-up and start anew each time another character joined the party.  Worse, was losing a character unexpectedly (typical), and losing every item equipped on that character, forever.  Seriously Square, that's a poor design choice.  At least each character in the game has character, and a role in the story as the game progresses.

Square did a great job tying the world in with the story.  The graphics are fantastic on the PSP version, and really bring out the best in each town and area.  The graphics are similar to Final Fantasy for the PSP, but still different in some unique way.  But it was nice having diversity throughout the game, such as grassy, woodlands, deserts, snow, dusk, ports and other lands, with appropriate monsters to tie along.  This was not the case with the original.  The same can be said about the dungeons, with none looking the same, also not the case with the original.  Bringing everything together was the music, which was also fantastic.  The music in Final Fantasy was not bad by any means, but I got more enjoyment out of Final Fantasy II's.

And once again, Square went further than what the player would expect, and took the graphics and sounds to another level.  As with Final Fantasy (on the PSP), each weapon and shield has their own unique art, and can be seen when used by characters during battle.  Yet unlike the original, Final Fantasy II has unique sounds for every weapon.  Yes, that's right, every weapon makes a unique sound when used, and that's within each category.  A Fire Bow sounds different from a Dark Bow.  A Wing Sword sounds different from a Mythril Blade, which sound different from the Masamune.  It's a small detail, but really neat.  It makes every weapon feel truly unique, and not "just another sword with +4 attack over what is currently equipped".  My one qualm with the art though, is why in the world does the bow face backwards after being shot?  And this goes for both my team and the enemies when using one.  I've seen people "drop" bows after firing an arrow in the real world, but never backwards (which by the way is completely different and larger art, so the artists/programmers weren't just reusing assets).  Whatever, small detail.

I'm going to try another smooth transition, and move from the weapons to the actual battles (I'm trying here).  Pros: battles can be quick, and are fun.  Cons: a handful of things.  I appear to be ambushed more often than not, and it's frustrating.  To make matters worse, there are load times while I'm eagerly waiting to see if I'm ambushed in battle, or receiving an advance attack.  That's right, load times!  The original on the PSP did not have any load times at all, yet this game has load times quite often.  If it's long enough, it will actually say "loading..." in the bottom right-hand corner.  Not just while waiting for battles to start either.  It can also happen in battle after choosing actions for all four of my characters, waiting up to six or seven seconds for anything to happen.

Another complaint?  After the battle is finished, all upgrades flash across the screen automatically.  If the player is looking away, they'll have no idea if anything leveled up.  All I know is that the later Final Fantasy games corrected this, so that the player could see what went up without having to be paying close attention every time, after every insignificant battle (where HP can actually randomly increase in Final Fantasy II).

Let's take a break from big complaints for a second, and look at two spells I think are...interesting.  The first is Teleport.  Cast it to teleport out of a dungeon, pretty straightforward.  However, doing so will almost kill the caster.  WTF kind of logic is that Square?  Luckily I only used it twice.  The other is Osmose.  Unless the player is very lucky to receive one after a very rare random battle, there is only one of this spell in the game (as I found out later).  For good reason too, because I felt like an absolute badass at the end of the game, basically breaking the game with it.  It steals MP from enemies, and it works on all bosses.  And I learned all this on my own.  So I could spend 5 MP casting it, and receive over 150 MP back.  I only had 147 max MP by the end of the game, making the extra moot.  Using this was awesome on bosses, such as the Emperor's true form, because as far as I know, I was able to steal all of his MP, rendering him unable to cast any spells (I could be wrong).  Either way, I enjoyed breaking the game, and being able to retrieve MP whenever I was running low and needed to heal my party, without using items such as Ethers or Elixers.  But let's go back to complaints.

So how about those dungeons?  Those monster closets were just awesome.  I mean, what a brilliant idea Square.  I imagine the conversation between programmers went like this:
A: How can we lengthen the dungeons?
B: What if we add a ton of small rooms to each, with nothing in most of them, and a couple battles to escape.
A: We're idiots and want the players to hate us, so let's do it.
B: Right on!

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how the conversation went.  But really, besides the monster closets, the random battles weren't even random enough.  Out in the field, random battles didn't come too often, which was nice.  In the dungeon, it was basically every 10-15 steps.  And if the player saves and resets the game (or turns it off and on again), they will run into a random battle in the exact same spot as the last time they tried the same path.  That's not very random.  One could argue that completely random battles would be too heavy on such an old game's programming, but I would counter with the fact that the battles themselves still have random enemies.  Granted, I give a HUGE thank you to Square for, just like in Final Fantasy on the PSP, allowing me to save anywhere, and start again from that exact spot.  I abused that feature to hell.  They must have known I was going to, since they added a reset feature to the game, which was not in the previous game on the PSP.  That saved quite a bit of time, instead of having to quite the entire game to the PSP menu, and start back up.

I'm getting off-track again.  Back to the dungeons.  I feel as though the original Final Fantasy did a much better job with programming appropriate enemies to the dungeons, than Final Fantasy II.  In the sequel, the battle difficulty swayed wildly.  Enemies that appeared could range from a joke to frighteningly difficult (I'm looking at you, Adamantoise).  I mean really, those tough enemies would have destroyed the puny ones before I had even gotten there.  To make matters worse, the later dungeons get to be really long.  I'll be honest, I used a guide for the last quarter of the game, for basically the last 2-3 dungeons (the last is basically two dungeons in one).  I used it to find the items right away, and have the correct path laid out, avoiding all unnecessary dead-ends or monster closets.  And even with a guide, these dungeons took a few hours each.  Those dungeons, the length, the monster closets, the awful enemies...were just not fun.  They looked cool and the music was great (Jade and Pandemonium were awesome), but besides those two factors (which do play in a bit), the dungeons in Final Fantasy were better.

Enough griping about the dungeons, let's leave them and walk around the world a bit.  What have I noticed?  The game is just one giant fetch-quest.  The story in Final Fantasy II is much better than Final Fantasy, but how they played it out, for over two-thirds of the game, was really boring and repetitive.  Talk to people in Altair.  Get item in dungeon.  Return to Altair.  Go to next town.  Go to dungeon.  Return to town.  Return to Altair.  Continue process.  This is literally how it went for 10-15 hours.  At least in Final Fantasy the party only returned to towns to heal up or find particular items in shops.  And that's another part that made this so painful in the sequel: each town sold the exact same items, besides spells if I was lucky.  So having to continually return to towns such as Altair and Fynn was very annoying and pointless.  I'd waste time checking to see if shops got anything new in stock, but they didn't until around hour 20.  Here's something that changed every time I came across a town: the cost to use the inn.  Unlike in the original, the cost to use an inn was based on need, not a set price.  This was frustrating at the beginning of the game, since the player is low on gil, and the inn cost is usually pretty steep.  There was no way around this.  Using items to heal cost more than the inn.  Using MP to heal just means a decrease in MP and a rise in HP, reversing the need  and keeping the cost of the inn the same.  I'm crossing my fingers that this feature is not passed on to many other Final Fantasy games.

Okay, just three more random things.  Two complaints and one positive change.  First, I'm still stumped on why Square decided that to access the map, the player needs to simultaneously press the O and Select buttons.  Unless I'm holding the PSP incorrectly, this takes two hands, which is cumbersome.  I don't understand why not just set it to the Select button, which is an unused button in the game?  It's not like I would accidentally press it, since my fingers or hand is nowhere near the Select button on the PSP.  Ever.

After I finished the game, Souls of Rebirth opened up.  My friend had told me that since I am planning on playing through both The Interlude and The After Years in Final Fantasy IV, that I should also "require" myself to play through Crisis Core.  If those two "sidequests" are part of Final Fantasy IV, then Crisis Core is just as important to Final Fantasy VII.  I may agree, but also felt that if that's true, I should also "require" myself to play through Souls of Rebirth, an add-on story to Final Fantasy II, explaining some other events and tying up some loose ends.  I really tried playing it, but unfortunately Square made a poor design choice and made it virtually impossible for me to beat it.  Spoilers ahead!  Okay, so Souls of Rebirth is the story of four characters who died in Final Fantasy II, three of them being former party members (by the way, what's with all the important deaths in the game, seven total?!).  This means that whatever stats and equipment they had on them when they died, now appear with them in this sidequest.  Great for people who leveled up these characters and were unfortunate to unwillingly leave them to die with great equipment.  Bad for people like me who knew they were going to die, via a guide, and unequipped them of everything.  So I'm screwed, and the sidequest is virtually impossible.  Anyways, I read what happens, and it's a pretty neat and touching story, about how four dead characters help defeat the last boss (it does make sense), and watch while the final scene plays out, as ghosts, and then happily finally pass on (their deaths were unfortunate, but all related to the main party).
End spoilers

I'll end on a positive change though, which of course refers to the end of the game.  Final Fantasy had an ending much too long for the message it needed to convey.  The developers were smart enough to shorten the ending in Final Fantasy II, so that the last cutscene (after the endgame scene, but before the credits) which wraps up the story with text was only 1/3 the amount of text (for a much more involved story), and took only roughly 1/6 the amount of time (no joke).  As a bonus, Square included moving scenes in the background, for added effect.

I really enjoyed Final Fantasy II.  Yes, there were still some major problems with the game, as apparent in this very long post.  But they weren't even about the level-up system, which is what most people rag on the game for.  I honestly enjoyed Final Fantasy II more than Final Fantasy.  I hope other people take the time to give this version of the game a chance, and maybe they'll form their own opinions, whether they be positive or negative.

2012 Game Completion Highlights

I completed puzzles to reveal pictures of iconic figures.
I took to the skies to collect...ballons.
I have singlehandedly brought down two dragons at the same time.
I had heated conversations as items favored certain racers.
I defeated Jafar for the 4th time.
I defeated Jafar for the 5th time.
I brought my team together one more time, to finally bring down our foe and reveal the mysteries of the undergound world.
I almost drowned multiple times from draining my ocean into a quarter of my world - just to see if it was possible.
I defeated my enemies to the wonderful sounds of history.
I put many heels into the heads of zombies.
I began to understand the reasons for war, and why one person controls the destinies of many.
I inadvertently sequence broke while infiltrating the complex once again.
I would have had to make much more difficult choices for my people as king, had I not spent the time becoming rich.
I easily defeated the asylum inmates, thanks to my superior strength and cunning.
I was killed by Mom much more often than I killed her.
I became conflicted in my role in the evolution of humanity.
I wanted to kill my AI teammates, thanks to them continually spooking the witches.
I killed the Pope.
I traveled through time to defeat Chaos.