Final Fantasy II (1988)

I'm finding that aspects of how this game is structured would make it nearly unplayable for me without the ability to disable random encounters, namely in the back-and-forth of traveling between towns trying to find which NPC to talk to in order to advance the story, or accidentally wandering into a high level area. The leveling system is neat, but the enemy encounters are definitely feeling wonky after a certain point. Enemies are starting to dish out Stone and Confusion to my entire party frustratingly often.

But all of this is forgiven because of this game's atmosphere. The mournful tone of the music and the story... It HITS.

Very nearly locked myself by saving when I had 3 party members turned to stone and no Gold Needle or high enough level Esuna spell. Turns out it's probably a tactic at some points. Monsters targeted stoned characters and always missed, quickly growing my agility.

This is one of many quirks of the experimental leveling system.

I think there could be some comparisons with Zelda II, in that Square tried something new, it wasn't an outright failure, but it definitely wasn't the right way forward for the franchise.

My current take: The hate this entry gets is undeserved

Good to know this game still has enemy preemptive attacks with monsters that turn you to stone in a single hit, which is pretty much equivalent to death if your whole party ends up stoned. >.> Annihilated before I even got a turn. I think that's it for tonight with this game. Tomorrow's another day.

Edit: Turns out the game auto-saved right before I got into this battle since I had just entered a new area, so I didn't lose any progress. Another cool QoL feature, I guess. Wasn't mad about the death. It was kind of cool, given I hadn't wiped yet up until this point and I'm almost done with the game. Gonna rest and play again tomorrow. I'm really excited to start the Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster after I'm done with this.

Decided to start up Final Fantasy 2 Pixel Remaster, a game I'm not even very fond of to be honest. I just finished the FF3 Pixel Remaster still wanted more classic FF, I suppose. For some reason, I have a much greater appreciation for it this time around. The pacing is good, even though it's a little too easy for my liking, but leveling up stats and abilities is no longer a chore. You can cheese it and set up the spells you wanna level and auto-battle while AFK, but I don't recommend it. It ends up making you too strong. I actually recommend avoiding going out of your way to grind, as hard as it is to refrain from killing stuff since the pixel remasters make battling so addicting. That said, if you like grinding and don't care about giving all bosses/enemies the pushover status effect*, have at it!

I'm even liking the story this time around. Maybe it's because it's in the original Japanese script and takes itself very seriously which makes me want to, or maybe I just don't mind it as much since the improved pacing doesn't make me feel as underwhelmed by its steady trickle of mostly cliche plot developments by today's standards, that occur just often enough in this version to make me want to continue forward. I don't know, but I appreciate what it does and how it contributed to later installments in retrospect, namely Final Fantasy IV. Never really saw the parallels as much as I do now. Oh, yeah. I'm playing that FFIV Pixel Remaster next. :o

*Not an actual status effect.

Also, how can you not appreciate the visual spectacle of the spells in these remasters/remakes??

The character development system may have been ahead of its time, but now it just feels poorly balanced. I found I was drawing out a lot of random encounters to grind out levels for all of my characters' many spells. I also think it deprives the player of the satisfying and straightforward guaranteed progression of a more typical character level system.

The plot is Star Wars. That's not strictly a bad thing; the story is solid and much more grounded and coherent than the original Final Fantasy's. It's just not very original. Characters are generally kind of forgettable, which means a lot of dramatic moments fall flat.

It has a neat conversation system where you can learn important terms and ask people about them. It's probably the closest you could get to something like Ultima IV without a keyboard. There's even a library late in the game that has tidbits about every key term.

Some fun innovations but kind of a slog overall.