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Final Fantasy II review

Game: Final Fantasy II
Platform: SNES
Genre: Turn-Based RPG (Fantasy)
Developer: Square
AKA: Final Fantasy IV: Easy Type (JP)

Featured reader review by joseph_valencia

March 24, 2010

It’s difficult to trash a game like “Final Fantasy II”, because you part with it on such a high note. The last dungeon is an awesome archive of treasures, guarded by some of the fiercest monsters you’ll ever find. These beasts can be very tricky, inflicting a magical death sentence on your whole team or countering your strongest magic with something even more devastating. One enemy even invites you to exploit its weakness, a trick I refused to fall for. On top of that, you’re in control of a highly balanced and versatile team of five characters, each with at least one cool ability or weapon. And yet, what comes before is much less inspiring.

To start, before you end up with the balanced team, you have to endure a series of episodes in which you recruit and lose “guest star” party members. Since these characters are intended to be in your control for a very short period of time, they aren’t designed to be interesting. Most of them are boring melee specialists whose talent doesn’t extend beyond the “Fight” command, and their arsenal beyond three or four weapons. A couple are magic users that have a static spell list and a seemingly static magic point value. The most interesting of these “guest stars” happen to be in your control for the shortest period of time--you can see that this game goes to great lengths to undermine itself.

This needless character swapping is mandated to service a plot that--outside ‘video game’ standards--isn’t very outstanding or well written. The adventure is punctuated by many events: an airship fleet raids a helpless town, another hamlet is torched to the ground, a giant sea creature wrecks a ship, trap walls are stopped by a noble sacrifice, two characters blow themselves up, etc. etc. This is certainly sensational, but I could feel the writers straining in their effort to juggle and develop one-note characters. And I wouldn’t have cared, if these shenanigans didn’t handicap the gameplay by withholding all the fun team members.

“Final Fantasy II” does exhibit some clever ideas, such as its three maps: overworld, underworld, and a third that would be a crime to reveal. Each are a means to expand the world’s selection of dungeons, cultures, and vehicles; but most all, they exist to surprise. Just when you thought you’ve seen everything, a hole opens up and your airship plunges into a land of magma where dwarves reside. ("Lali-ho!") Such moments betray what little need there is for the mechanical plot and constant character swapping. Flying my ship over a subterranean sea of lava was more inspiring than learning that so-and-so was a traitor or that so-and-so has a long lost sibling. Who cares!? There’s a world beneath the ground! Why isn’t there more of it!?

This sense of adventure occasionally allows the game to transcend its sluggish combat engine. The menu-based battle sequences are conducted in real time, but the interface offers no indication of whose turn is coming next or if anyone is even getting a turn. During an ambush, the first few seconds are spent looking at a motionless screen as your characters stare at their ambushers. Some enemies are designed to mercilessly waste your time--there’s one monster formation that could never possibly kill you, but it will nevertheless incur your wrath by turning everyone into toads and back. I wouldn’t begrudge someone for giving up at that point.

When the One True Team is assembled, you do have interesting combat options. There’s a lance-wielding dragon knight who can leap into the air and land on enemies for double the usual attack power. The dual-wielding ninja can steal items and throw weapons, the latter attack ignoring the enemy’s defense attribute. Your healer can “Berserk” your melee fighters, allowing them to act efficiently and inflict higher damage. Then there’s little Rydia, who can summon creatures from another dimension or attack with conventional black magic like “Quake” and “Nuke”. How great it would've been to have these characters for the whole game, instead of commanding interchangeable heavies to “Fight!”.

Most of “Final Fantasy II” is easy. The most interesting bosses and dungeons are saved for the final lap of the adventure; the rest is spent pounding one wimpy enemy formation, taking a step or two, and then being launched into another random battle screen for an easy win. I used to think the lack of challenge was a quirk of the simplified American version, but then I played the Japanese version (“Final Fantasy IV”) and found it to be kind of easy for the most part, too. The previous game in the line, “Final Fantasy III” on the NES, was engaging from start to finish.

If I am to recommend “Final Fantasy II”, it will mostly have to be on the basis of that one dungeon I mentioned at the beginning. The entire adventure builds up to that moment, when the developers finally shrug off their silly restrictions and go for broke. The rest of the game is simply uneven.

Rating: 5/10

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