So... does magic stink in Final Fantasy 2?

[Katie]

I'm about 8 hours into the game, and I'm feeling like Final Fantasy 2 certainly requires the most grinding out of probably all of 6 of the pixel remasters. I'm pretty happy with the way weapons level up in this version, but magic is another matter.

Now, I'm sure everything I'm about to say was probably even worse in the original NES game, but I kind of feel like more re-designing might have been a good thing to do on this one. If I've said something that is wrong, please correct me and explain what I'm doing wrong because everything I'm about to say is just based on 8 hours of observations.

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Firstly, I think leveling spells in general is painful in FF2. You have to cast them for what seems like hundreds of times to get them to a high enough power level where they feel like it was actually worthwhile to cast them. Status effect spells seem to miss over and over unless you grind them to at least level 5 (which I'm assuming was the level comparable to the enemies I was facing), and even then they are not very reliable. Damage spells are very underwhelming (just like the level 1 damage spells in FF1). However, unlike FF1, at least the 2nd tier spells like Fira had much better damage and they were multi-targeted at the same time. The damage of spells in FF2 seems to drop off a cliff when you multi-target anything in this game - it's never been worth multi-targeting anything in this game for me.

I actually found a rare Flare Tome, and I was really excited to use it. However, when I first cast the spell, I did like 28 damage and my heart sank. I've been casting it over and over from a pool of over 300+ mana and it still doesn't out-compete my bow's basic attack. It doesn't come close. This is not a feel-good mechanic. I'm actually thinking that even if I were to grind this thing to level 16, it may still fall short of my basic attacks at level 16 anyway.

Secondly, I'm not thrilled that unless an enemy has a weakness to a particular element, casting an elemental spell does very poor damage against it (doing 60 damage vs 350 if it were weak against it). Even if the enemy does not have any resistance to that element, the spell seems to be doing much, much less damage than any basic attack from any weapon in the game. I really don't think this is a good design, because these spells end up being very niche as a result.

This made me quickly discover that casting Curse is a pretty reliable way of doubling your entire party's damage, and the damage increase from a successful Curse cast is many, many, many magnitudes greater than messing around with these damage spells....

Thirdly, the separation of Basuna and Esuna is really strange. I'm okay with it being separated, but the design of Basuna is awful. There are many enemies in this game that cause paralysis 100% of the time on hit, like the Antlions and Land Rays in the desert. Unfortunately, Basuna needs to be a whopping level 6 to cure this paralysis status (which is insane). Even if you cast Basuna at every opportunity, against every inconsequential poison status and everything else you could have used it on, you wouldn't have naturally got Basuna to level 2 or 3 if you really tried.

Because of this stupid design, I had to waste an hour casting Basuna over and over in random battles, even though I didn't actually need to cure anything, just to be able to deal with the paralysis status in the dessert. This is completely asinine. Why is it like this???

Lastly, the Black Magic spells seem really oddly designed to me. Spells like Stun, Sleep and Stop all appear to do the same thing. I checked further, and apparently there's different status resistances, such as Matter, Mind, Body, etc., so these status spells target different resistances. Without looking at a website, how is a person supposed to know any of that?

And of course, if you want to actually have Stun, Sleep or Stop actually stick onto an enemy, you need to level the spell up to improve its chances of success, so you need to spend time grinding each one up individually in random battles, casting it when you really don't need to just to get the level up in order for it to be a useful one day in the future which may or may not exist.

The very idea that each one of these spells is ultra niche and may actually still fail to succeed when you cast it seems crazy to me. I just don't know why anyone would go through the trouble of leveling these up when you can just use basic attacks and kill the thing. There's so many spells in this game, and yet most of them feel absolutely worthless.

I miss the days of FF1 where you can just buy Flare in the shop or gain due to level-up or from a materia and it was one of the best spells in your arsenal :( This spell system sucks. Please explain where I'm in error so that I can maybe enjoy this game more, because everything else about it is... fine lol.

[Wolfherz]

I felt like the grinding required to master weapon skills and spells was done to intentionally make the game feel longer. Grinding stats is just as painful. It's a terrible system, and I'll likely never play FF II ever again. The only spell I felt was worth anything end game was Ultima, and that was after getting max rank in 16 spells and all weapon skills on that character just so that it would be OP and I could laugh my way through the game. With that it always did 9999 on single targets and would destroy any enemy encounter even when used as an aoe. I found the story fun but damn...I really hate the stat, weapon, and magic progression system. It's just cancer. Physical attacks when using two weapons or going unarmed will out damage spells most of the time anyway.

[Katie]

So, it seems like my observations from the first 8+ hours seem to agree with your observations after beating the game. Wonderful :(

I want to beat the game just because it's the only Final Fantasy I haven't beaten outside of the modern ones (PS4/PS5, which really didn't interest me).

I really hoping they'd take the opportunity to just rework the game's mechanics and balance with these pixel remasters for FF2. I can't see very many people resisting to changes on this one, and if there are some, they can play the other versions that already exist and have existed for some time lol. This was a great opportunity to fix the game. A real shame.

I will beat it, and then I will never replay this one again. I'm at the point in the game where I'm just constantly fighting Black Flans. I have one character with Fire VII, and she just barely kills 1 Black Flan. I can combo kill another Black Flan with Holy VI and Fire V. But there are so many flans, and all they do is poison you and other stuff, that these battles just feel extremely tedious to me. I just want to level these spells to higher levels faster and the game will not allow it.

[HexGramarye]

Okay, so right off the bat, is your caster wearing armor and/or a shield? Because that results in a hefty magic penalty. Also be sure your caster is practicing magic every battle so their stats get high enough to be useful. Sorry if I'm asking questions you already know -- just want to be sure since the game gives no indication whatsoever.

Unfortunately, flare is just not a great spell. It's nonelemental, so it won't punch through enemy weaknesses, and at that point, you might as well just physically attack, which is better because of dual-wielding and stat buffs, or use a different spell. Spells can be really good, but they serve a different function than physical attacks.
Magic in FF2 isn't about doing tons of damage against a single enemy, unless you want to invest in Ultima, which I don't recommend. Instead, it's useful for exploiting weaknesses to take out large groups of enemies (e.g. Life on 9 undead monsters, Thunder on 8 fish, etc.). With a good enough spell, you can do in one turn what physical attacks would need 2-4 turns to do.
It's also great to set up stat buffs for survivability, like Protect and Blink. You mentioned Curse, but Berserk and Haste are also fantastic spells that make physical attacks skyrocket, and makes it so they can actually punch into enemies with perfect defense.

Like you mentioned, many debuffs and buffs suck because of their accuracy. I've never seen a more archaic dice-rolling system in any game. Each "level" of the spell gives you one "dice roll" that can hit or miss, so if you have say, Barrier, at level 7, that's the minimum level where you can block Stun, but you'd have to get all seven perfect dice rolls for it to happen. So it's a mostly fruitless endeavor unless you want to get your spells to at least level 14, and who has time for that? It's downright awful.

Yeah, Esuna and Basuna are weird, and it's frustrating that you have to cast Esuna over and over on healthy allies to make it at all usable. In the NES version, it was a necessity because you only had 32 inventory slots, and like half of them would get taken up by undroppable key items. Now that's a non-issue because you can just get lots of items. Basuna was always useless in previous versions, but now I might actually consider it since enemies are now guaranteed to inflict status ailments on hits.

Fortunately, since there's a lot of niche spells you don't need, you can get by on just a few staples. It's not good game design, I agree, but consolidating makes the game a lot more fun, at least for me.
1. At least one elemental spell. If these stop packing a punch for whatever reason, either unequip armor, build stats, or get Teleport, which is an overpowered instant death spell.
2. Blink
3. Berserk
4. Cure
5. Life
6. Maybe Basuna

[SC_Nikki]

The magic penalty is the most insidious deviation ever designed in a video game.

[Katie]

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Okay, so right off the bat, is your caster wearing armor and/or a shield? Because that results in a hefty magic penalty. Also be sure your caster is practicing magic every battle so their stats get high enough to be useful. Sorry if I'm asking questions you already know -- just want to be sure since the game gives no indication whatsoever.

I actually didn't know that lol. I wasn't even aware that I should look at something like that. That's pulling a trick out of the D&D or Pillars of Eternity rules.

While I am at the Jade Passage now, I got your advice just after I got the Ultima Tome. I have noticed my damage increase. I still think the multi-target damage on spells is abysmal - other than those 40 hp flans, I don't even try to multi-target anything in this game. I think the damage could be buffed in general too... I just don't see any reason to actually expend actual resources and time grinding when normal attacks do the same or better damage.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Unfortunately, flare is just not a great spell. It's nonelemental, so it won't punch through enemy weaknesses, and at that point, you might as well just physically attack, which is better because of dual-wielding and stat buffs, or use a different spell. Spells can be really good, but they serve a different function than physical attacks.

Yes, that's exactly right. There's a lot of advice in various places - reviews on Steam, Reddit, etc. that say these are spells worth investing in, but I really don't see how. Dual-wielding 2 Sun Blades or whatever is just going to have a much higher action economy, on top of better damage. Because multi-targeting spells ruins your damage to such a great degree, getting 2 attacks feels broken by comparison.

The irony is that I've probably enjoyed spells like Fire, Blizzard and Scourge more than many damage spells in this game as they are routinely useful (wood golems, flans, turtles, dragons, etc.). I don't see any reason to spend any time on Holy, Flare, Ultima on this save file - I just want to be done with the game :/ I'm really close I think.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Magic in FF2 isn't about doing tons of damage against a single enemy, unless you want to invest in Ultima, which I don't recommend.

Yeah, there's no way I'm doing any more grinding. If I knew what I know now, I would have spent a lot less time investing in spells. I would have focused on Cure, Esuna, Basuna, Blink, Fire/Blizzard/Thunder/Scourge and that's about it I think. I don't actually think I use any other spells in this game (other than the odd Life or Teleport), and you don't really need to use any of the other spells even if there are some niche uses.

I'm sure Protect and Shell and stuff like that could be useful, I just don't feel like spamming them to level them up. I looked at the formulas, and low levels of these skills don't make a difference - you gotta grind or just pass.

It really sucks that Spells in FF2 are basically traps.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Instead, it's useful for exploiting weaknesses to take out large groups of enemies (e.g. Life on 9 undead monsters, Thunder on 8 fish, etc.). With a good enough spell, you can do in one turn what physical attacks would need 2-4 turns to do.

Yeah, after I took off the gloves and shield that gave -40 each (or something like that), the damage did increase. Now when I exploit a weakness, I'm doing about 1500 damage, which is a lot better than I was doing before.

I wish I knew all of this going in, like I wrote above.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

It's also great to set up stat buffs for survivability, like Protect and Blink. You mentioned Curse, but Berserk and Haste are also fantastic spells that make physical attacks skyrocket, and makes it so they can actually punch into enemies with perfect defense.

I haven't played with many buffs other than Blink. Outside of the 100% status effect crap, the game has been pretty easy. I haven't used Curse in awhile actually. I tried using it again just now, and it doesn't even work because I stopped leveling past V. Forget it. Time to move on lol.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Like you mentioned, many debuffs and buffs suck because of their accuracy. I've never seen a more archaic dice-rolling system in any game. Each "level" of the spell gives you one "dice roll" that can hit or miss, so if you have say, Barrier, at level 7, that's the minimum level where you can block Stun, but you'd have to get all seven perfect dice rolls for it to happen. So it's a mostly fruitless endeavor unless you want to get your spells to at least level 14, and who has time for that? It's downright awful.

Wow... I had no idea is was that awful. Based on observations, it seemed like it was poor, but I had no idea. I don't know why the pixel master couldn't just fix the spell system in the game entirely. Make the spells all static like the other games, and just scale everything off Int/Spirit.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Yeah, Esuna and Basuna are weird, and it's frustrating that you have to cast Esuna over and over on healthy allies to make it at all usable. In the NES version, it was a necessity because you only had 32 inventory slots, and like half of them would get taken up by undroppable key items. Now that's a non-issue because you can just get lots of items. Basuna was always useless in previous versions, but now I might actually consider it since enemies are now guaranteed to inflict status ailments on hits.

I still use Basuna all the time - I don't have a choice. There was a trapped chest with a bunch of panthers that can instant-KO your party members if they hit, and confused/stunned them otherwise. Without Life/Phoenix Downs and Basuna, I would not have been able to beat that chest encounter.

Originally posted by Sir Gramarye:

Fortunately, since there's a lot of niche spells you don't need, you can get by on just a few staples. It's not good game design, I agree, but consolidating makes the game a lot more fun, at least for me.
1. At least one elemental spell. If these stop packing a punch for whatever reason, either unequip armor, build stats, or get Teleport, which is an overpowered instant death spell.
2. Blink
3. Berserk
4. Cure
5. Life
6. Maybe Basuna

Yeah, for White spells, I agree. I think the elemental spells are also pretty useful too. Definitely a small % of the total spells. A lot of them are just useless. So disappointing.

I can't wait for FF5 and FF6 Pixel Remasters. I know those are great games so it'll be a reward after playing FF2 lol. Never again.

[Katie]

Another problem I want to mention, just in case anyone is curious, is that Protect Rings don't actually protect against Death. The Coeurl's in the final dungeon still instant-OK you.

Ribbons don't seem to protect against much either. I actually got one very early as a lucky drop against that Lamia Queen boss in Hilda's room and it did squat for me all game.

The status effects really ruin the pixel remaster, even more than the bad spell designs do. I've been ambushed and game-overed twice in the last hour now due to this crap.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Katie:

Another problem I want to mention, just in case anyone is curious, is that Protect Rings don't actually protect against Death. The Coeurl's in the final dungeon still instant-OK you.

Ribbons don't seem to protect against much either. I actually got one very early as a lucky drop against that Lamia Queen boss in Hilda's room and it did squat for me all game.

The status effects really ruin the pixel remaster, even more than the bad spell designs do. I've been ambushed and game-overed twice in the last hour now due to this crap.

That's because physical attacks don't have an element, so there is no protection from them. That means the Coeurl's attack, if it hits, has a 100% chance to inflict it's status effect. Items like the Protect Ring only work against spells and abilities, not "normal" attacks. Yes, it's weird, but it's also why EVA is the best stat in the game (by a LARGE margin).

Speaking of traps, never Dual Wield unless you're trying to level multiple weapons. Shields are FAR more important because of the above EVA emphasis in the game.

Regarding spell, and to a lesser extent weapon, skills... you really don't need to grind much in the game except maybe Magic/MP and potentially any late game spells you want to catch up. The non-grindy end game spell levels you should have are pretty much 6-8, with weapon skills being more like 8-10. Grinding all the way to 16, spending an hour early game getting 5k HP, and stuff like that isn't really necessary in FF2. It's definitely a bit awkward but the grind isn't really there unless you want to over level content.

[Katie]

Originally posted by Zsrai:

That's because physical attacks don't have an element, so there is no protection from them. That means the Coeurl's attack, if it hits, has a 100% chance to inflict it's status effect. Items like the Protect Ring only work against spells and abilities, not "normal" attacks. Yes, it's weird, but it's also why EVA is the best stat in the game (by a LARGE margin).

Speaking of traps, never Dual Wield unless you're trying to level multiple weapons. Shields are FAR more important because of the above EVA emphasis in the game.

Yep. I actually used shields on everyone but my Archer for 95% of the game. Near the end, I decided to go with 2 weapons. I had a few reasons for this.

The end-game dungeon floors are small and the game auto-saves every time you enter a new floor. The game-over ambushes, while insanely annoying, are still fairly rare - about 1 in 50 encounters. This means that if my current seed does not ambush me, I am better in every encounter, and if I am ambushed, I'm still better in 49 out of 50. If I actually die in that 50th encounter - oh well, I just reload.

The second reason is that Leon sucks. He is really garbage. I'm sure I could have spent time grinding him to improve his damage and evasion, but I just wanted to finish the game. Routinely, he was not able to beat a single Coeurl or a Lamia Queen on his own. So, I dual-wielded on Firion to basically give me another attack each turn that didn't suck. I also equipped all the high agility/evasion gear on him to keep him alive, but he still sucks because his starting stats were so low.

Anyway, that was my reasoning.

[Paratech2008]

I'm with others in not being thrilled with Final fantasy II. I enjoyed the first one much better.

I'm going to play Ultima next and hopefully Final fantasy III after that. I hope I'll enjoy those both better than Final fantasy II.

[Katie]

Originally posted by Paratech2008:

I'm with others in not being thrilled with Final fantasy II. I enjoyed the first one much better.

I'm going to play Ultima next and hopefully Final fantasy III after that. I hope I'll enjoy those both better than Final fantasy II.

Final Fantasy III is the best NES Final Fantasy by a mile. It is not as story-oriented as FF4 or FF5 (due to the limitations of the NES), but it is remarkable closer to those games than the first 2 in the series. It has a decent job system, and the dungeon design is a lot better (similar to FF4-6 - they finally got rid of the obtuse mazes and are much more rewarding to explore). Like FF4, it also multiple airships, multiple overworlds, and a really cool final dungeon. You can really see where FF4 evolved from. This Pixel Remaster is also the best version of the game too, imo. With the updated graphics, it actually feels a lot more like an snes game compared to the first two. It's pretty easy to see how it got 93% positive reviews over FF2's 77% once you start playing it.

[fmalfeas]

If you want to steamroll the game so you can win and have done with it, it's really, really easy.

First, *NO EQUIPMENT*. None. At all. Sell it all. Buy potions or something.

Second, everyone learns Esuna, Basuna, and at least one attack magic that isn't undead-only. You spend some time spamcasting them to level 7. Don't need to go higher than that.

If you REALLY want, you can do this with Blink as well, but...meh.

Now, you may have noticed as you did your spam-casting grinding with 4 nekkid people, that you punch stupidly hard, and dodge nearly everything.

And yep, it's true, naked with bare hands is the second most powerful gearset in the entire game, and allows for full-power magic. Given that it's only exceeded by wearing unique stuff so only one person can possibly outdo it, no need to bother. Just naked brawl through the whole game.

The attack spell is for those enemies who are immune to all non-critical melee damage. Doesn't matter too much *what* the attack spell is, so long as it works. May need to avoid the elemental ones if you're worried about 'healed by this element' stuff. Oh, hey, there's a use for Flare.

Things that are immune to non-crit melee are pretty low HP in general, so no need to max out the nuke.

It won't take long before you can punch down the empire captains in the city just north of start, and you can grind your fists skill to level 8 on them.

Enjoy steamrolling the game.

[carnage_panda]

Magic is overpowered in this game. You're just suffering from not knowing things about the game like the example of your character wearing a bow. That comes with a hefty -70% to spell accuracy. FF2 started the whole thing where spells get multiple hits that carries over up until 4, so as your character levels up their spell it'll get more hits, but wearing a bow and other items like shields, heavy armor, heavy gloves and helms will penalize your magic.

By the time I was in the Tower of Mysidia I was hitting weak points for spells like thunder and scourge 7 for 2500 damage which is far above what I could do with a melee weapon. Also status effects like stop and confuse are stupidly overpowered. A multitarget stop spell will paralyze most groups of enemies and Carl will one-shot itself when struck with confuse.

[fmalfeas]

Originally posted by carnage_panda:

Magic is overpowered in this game. You're just suffering from not knowing things about the game like the example of your character wearing a bow. That comes with a hefty -70% to spell accuracy. FF2 started the whole thing where spells get multiple hits that carries over up until 4, so as your character levels up their spell it'll get more hits, but wearing a bow and other items like shields, heavy armor, heavy gloves and helms will penalize your magic.

By the time I was in the Tower of Mysidia I was hitting weak points for spells like thunder and scourge 7 for 2500 damage which is far above what I could do with a melee weapon. Also status effects like stop and confuse are stupidly overpowered. A multitarget stop spell will paralyze most groups of enemies and Carl will one-shot itself when struck with confuse.

Yep. Though there's one big reason to focus the fists, with magic as a secondary thing (beyond just blitzing the game to get it over with). Fists don't use MP.

[carnage_panda]

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

Originally posted by carnage_panda:

Magic is overpowered in this game. You're just suffering from not knowing things about the game like the example of your character wearing a bow. That comes with a hefty -70% to spell accuracy. FF2 started the whole thing where spells get multiple hits that carries over up until 4, so as your character levels up their spell it'll get more hits, but wearing a bow and other items like shields, heavy armor, heavy gloves and helms will penalize your magic.

By the time I was in the Tower of Mysidia I was hitting weak points for spells like thunder and scourge 7 for 2500 damage which is far above what I could do with a melee weapon. Also status effects like stop and confuse are stupidly overpowered. A multitarget stop spell will paralyze most groups of enemies and Carl will one-shot itself when struck with confuse.

Yep. Though there's one big reason to focus the fists, with magic as a secondary thing (beyond just blitzing the game to get it over with). Fists don't use MP.

I have a negative opinion on fists as things are now. Square Enix hasn't even commented on the 100% status effects ridiculousness so they might have intended to be complete jerks allowing players to be one shot by chickens and Carl, and stunlocked by paralysis/sleep.

Going bare-handed shoots your evasion to around 0% and the only way to counteract this is to get evasion to 99% and grind enough multipliers or abuse the blink spell for that so that your characters aren't even getting hit so I highly recommend wearing shields or weapons like the main gauche. Especially since characters in the back row can be targeted by melee attacks unlike in the NES version.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by carnage_panda:

Magic is overpowered in this game. You're just suffering from not knowing things about the game like the example of your character wearing a bow. That comes with a hefty -70% to spell accuracy. FF2 started the whole thing where spells get multiple hits that carries over up until 4, so as your character levels up their spell it'll get more hits, but wearing a bow and other items like shields, heavy armor, heavy gloves and helms will penalize your magic.

By the time I was in the Tower of Mysidia I was hitting weak points for spells like thunder and scourge 7 for 2500 damage which is far above what I could do with a melee weapon. Also status effects like stop and confuse are stupidly overpowered. A multitarget stop spell will paralyze most groups of enemies and Carl will one-shot itself when struck with confuse.

Yeah magic is great but you have to know that before hand and build for it. You can't sort of dabble in magic use, but you need to focus on it early and often for it to shine. Considering how low effort melee spam is, and how obfuscated the magic penalty is, I think this is also why people think magic sucks in FF2.