It’s hard for me to comment on Final Fantasy II without comparing it to Final Fantasy I. I’m actually looking forward to this aspect of this whole adventure, as I get to see the evolution of the series from game to game.

First off, Final Fantasy II is a much better game than Final Fantasy I. Final Fantasy II’s story—which holds up fairly well when compared to modern games—is light years beyond that of Final Fantasy I, which is basically a “go collect the crystals” game. This element of Final Fantasy II surprised me the most, and kept me interested in the game. It’s an amazing accomplishment that the story of Final Fantasy II is as complex as it is, considering that the game was released 19 years ago.

Combat in Final Fantasy II is better as well. The combat in the GBA version of Final Fantasy I is insanely easy compared to that of Final Fantasy II. Final Fantasy II actually had a number of spots that were challenging and rewarding, although to be fair, the difficulty may have been more due to my incompetence rather than any difficulty inherent in the game. The Jade/Pandemonium combination dungeon was a particularly satisfying final dungeon.

For the most part, I found the combat/skill/leveling system a lot of fun to play in Final Fantasy II. I enjoy RPGs like Morrowind and Oblivion that have a direct correlation between skill use and skill advancement, and Final Fantasy II does a great job in this regard. The luster started to wear off, though, in the back half of the game. The Drain and Aspiru spells were so powerful that they allowed my party to live off the energy of my enemies, and they reduced much of the complexity of combat to a narrow range of simple attacks and strategies. It would have been nice to have a greater need for a variety of tactics in order to be successful.

I have a couple of other quibbles as well. Unless I missed it, there is no way to skip over combat animations (watch, someone will post a comment that tells me the super secret button-press I never knew), and by the back half of the game combat was getting tedious because it took so long for all the animations to play out. For the most part, the animations are ok, but once you’ve seen them a hundred times, any animation gets pretty stale. And some of the animations are quite long, as well! The worst offender in this regard was the Ultima spell, which in the middle levels (5-10) felt like it took about 20 minutes to run through its dazzling effects. I swear I could have finished the game in half the time if that one spell had a reasonably short animation.

I suppose I should mention Soul of Rebirth as well, but I’m not sure what to make of that add-on game. It was kind of neat to get some extra content, it was fun to play with the dead characters from the main game, and the new range of monsters was semi-interesting. However, outside of a beginning and an end, there is zero story in Soul of Rebirth. Also, the combat is identical to the main game. If you like grinding, it’s kind of fun, but for me, I was just going through the motions with this add-on.

On the whole though, the gaming experience in Final Fantasy II was very satisfying. I don’t think I’d want to play it again, but I’m glad I played it through to the end. Overall, I’ll give the game an 82% rating.

As with Final Fantasy I, we stepped up to the final boss and she started to babble and babble in Japanese. Yikes, could she talk. At least I assume it was a she, as she had long hair, had these flowing robes on, and well, she liked to talk a lot.

I tried to follow everything she said, but I think I ended up getting about half of it. To be honest, I was only half paying attention to this verbal foreplay, as we all knew what was going to happen after she finished talking.

She did say something about her being the good half of the Emperor, that when the real emperor died the first time, her spirit broke into two halves: one half was the bad one that went to hell and created Pandemonium; the other half was the good one, now standing in front of us. She then offered us eternal life, to live in the current place, but we turned that down perfunctorily. She said other stuff, too, and our nearest friends and relatives popped in to say hello, so by the time we got around to fighting I was getting pretty tired of all the yapping.

But finally we did get around to butting heads. To be honest, I was expecting a bit more from her. The fight took about ten minutes, but we were never in trouble. She killed Minwu once, but compared to our Ultima Weapon fight, this was cake. We methodically wore her down and finally she blew up into zillions of digital pieces.

We were then given our second ending, which was much like the first, except now it was really over! The world would start to rebuild, and all is wonderful!

Done! We did it! Two down, and many more to go.

Status: Finished with Final Fantasy II!

Picture Credit: Final Fantasy Compendium

We are here. Level 10, the top floor of this alternate Pandemonium. Yet another emperor sits on a throne in front of us, ready for what is certainly the last battle in Final Fantasy II.

We are as ready as we’re going to get. We’ve had good success on the run up the previous nine floors. Our party is fully charged and fully rested, with 8 all healing/all magic restoration potions and over 70 magic potions in our bags. We can last a looooong time if this battle gets drawn out. We picked up more weapons and armor on the last couple of floors up, and our skills are better as well. We’re now all over 2,000 hit points. We’ll be using the following spells for damage: Drain-11, Ultima-10, Flay-5, Flay-4.

Time to start the final dance!

Last night I finished one more training run into this alternate Pandemonium. We cleared all the four areas on the fourth level, which helped us gather up some awesome weapons, useful armor, and a pile of cash. We probably could have continued on to make the final assault from there, but it might have been cutting it close, and it doesn’t take long to get out of the place once you know the shortcuts. We jogged back to town for one final night’s rest.

We also picked up two “Flay” spell books, which appears to be a great offensive spell. Gordon and Joseph are using those spells on every occasion. This should give us four solid offensive spells for the final battle.

This is it. The final push for victory in Final Fantasy II. We are stacked with potions, armed to the teeth, and well trained in our solid offensive spells. Onward, into the breach!

Status: Ready

I spent a couple of hours last night battling enemies in Pandemonium. Our party is getting stronger, but needs more strength before we can make a final push to the top. I’d like to have the spells we can potentially use in a final battle all up to level 10, and right now they range from five to seven.

We really miss the “Aspiru” spells that we knew in the regular portion of Final Fantasy II. We go through magic potions at a frightful rate now. We used over half of our 99 magic potions in reaching level four in Pandemonium. Part of this is because we’re casting a lot of magic spells in combat to build up skill in the spells, but still, it was incredibly handy to be able to regenerate magic points on the fly. All we can do now is drink.

I’m hoping to make one more training run through Pandemonium, then make a final assault on the Emperor. With luck, I hope to finish Final Fantasy II this week.

Status: Getting Stronger