Prob the worst game out of the 6 pack.

[Vambran]

LvLing system is just no fun to play.
world map is barren and ugly.
dungeons full of dead ends and trap rooms.

I don't see my self ever playing this version again unless maybe they put in the extra dungeons. Not the worst game ever , i just rank it lowest out of the first 6 Final fantasy Games for overall enjoyment.

[Blackened Halo]

- lvl system is better than in the NES version, but they just made the game easier
- world map is a normal oldchool JRPG map ... why do you hate it?
- and this is the purpose of dungeons to feel like if you were in a maze

[Kaseijin]

I'd say playing it again it's grown on me a little but I'd definitely agree that it's easily the worst of the Final Fantasy series excluding spin offs. What I do like about it though, is the attempt at having a more in depth story which while fairly bland by modern standards is ambitious for the time. But the best aspect of the game is easily the soundtrack which really starts to remind me of something by Tchaikovsky which is probably the source of inspiration given the obvious musical reference to Swan Lake. Shame the game isn't much fun to play the soundtrack is really a masterpiece and the arrangement here only makes it better. Ironic that the worst Final Fantasy game has one of the best soundtracks.

[SC_Nikki]

It's actually one of my very favorites, maybe my overall favorite. I love the open customization, and the leveling never bothered me. And yes, the soundtrack in this version is phenomenal, bringing out the hidden strength it had all along. It adds to the immersion greatly.

[Vambran]

Originally posted by Blackened Halo:

- lvl system is better than in the NES version, but they just made the game easier
- world map is a normal oldchool JRPG map ... why do you hate it?
- and this is the purpose of dungeons to feel like if you were in a maze

The lvl system is the problem. I dont care if its easy or hard its just not fun to play. Glad they never did it again in Main Line FF games. Heard saga series did something like it though.

Map overlaps in many places which looks sloopy. Just giant chunks of land mashed together. 80% of it is barren. Almost all the towns in the game are located clustered together. Every other final fantasy world map had a theme to it and was put together in a eye pleasing way. FF1 Eye of the Hawk / Wing of the Hawk for example.

Those trap rooms are bland time killers. 1 or 2 would have been fine. But 10 per dungeon is a bit much. They never made dungeons again like this.

[SC_Nikki]

Originally posted by Vambran:

Originally posted by Blackened Halo:

- lvl system is better than in the NES version, but they just made the game easier
- world map is a normal oldchool JRPG map ... why do you hate it?
- and this is the purpose of dungeons to feel like if you were in a maze

The lvl system is the problem. I dont care if its easy or hard its just not fun to play. Glad they never did it again in Main Line FF games. Heard saga series did something like it though.

Map overlaps in many places which looks sloopy. Just giant chunks of land mashed together. 80% of it is barren. Almost all the towns in the game are located clustered together. Every other final fantasy world map had a theme to it and was put together in a eye pleasing way. FF1 Eye of the Hawk / Wing of the Hawk for example.

Those trap rooms are bland time killers. 1 or 2 would have been fine. But 10 per dungeon is a bit much. They never made dungeons again like this.

FF2 was indeed an experimental sequel, and it's clear they learned from it. But I enjoyed it for what it is. :)

I've probably gone back to it more than any of the other first six games over the years. FF5, by contrast, is the one I revisited the least, just because it demands such committed involvement on the player's part. One time I left it and came back, and had no idea what I was doing (the part of the game where you're running around to all the different meteors).

[MonkehMaster]

the original nes versions are 100x better.

[Zunnoab #931]

Considering they don't have an ultra-high encounter rate anymore I don't have a problem with the "trap" rooms. They are silly, but not that bad to me.

I think the wrapping world map is kind of neat too.

[Spooniest]

Honestly this opinion is shared by almost the entire fanbase. It's really difficult to try to defend the design choices in FF2.

I've gotten kind of salty arguing with people on the PR discussion boards over the last week, but this, I think I just have to concede. No matter how much polish gets put on it, Final Fantasy II is fully garbo.

We all have our own reason to despise it... But at least we can all agree that this is not the one you rec to a new fan first.

[Marmorkatze]

FF2 is an aquired taste. It certainly shows what the series would later become and is far more story driven, than the first and maybe the third (not too far into the Pixel Remaster of 3 and only played through the c3D Remake).
Though in terms of gameplay, it really something else.

Played through the GBA Remake at least twice and in the end, the only way for me beating any of the final bosses was by spamming magic, since I couldn't deal any damage with melee weapons at one point in the game. Played up to the point where I need to enter Kashuon for the sun fire and while the games seem more generous in stat improvement, it still feels awkward.

[Vambran]

Originally posted by Fantasma:

FF2 is an aquired taste. It certainly shows what the series would later become and is far more story driven, than the first and maybe the third (not too far into the Pixel Remaster of 3 and only played through the c3D Remake).
Though in terms of gameplay, it really something else.

Played through the GBA Remake at least twice and in the end, the only way for me beating any of the final bosses was by spamming magic, since I couldn't deal any damage with melee weapons at one point in the game. Played up to the point where I need to enter Kashuon for the sun fire and while the games seem more generous in stat improvement, it still feels awkward.

They put in the blood sword for those end bosses. That or you can spam beserk till your doing 3k a hit. Still requires you have lvl up your defence to a point where he cant one shot you and take away your buffs.

If they released this game in the west at the time i think it would have not done well for the series. They made a good choice in picking FF4 for the next release.

[Apoc]

I have to agree, I would also add that early in the game you constantly backtrack. Go to that town, come back to the first town, then go back one town farther and come back again, repeat.

Also constantly switching the fourth party member is a very weird decision when the game is stats based and not level base so they can't adjust new party members level to yours so it will always be a weak character and by the time it's starting to be decent it switch for another one.

I don't think it's a bad game but I don't like a lot of the game design decisions.

[Trubbs]

The leveling system can be really fun but suffers from critical design defect which is the "soft-cap" you reach way too fast in the remasters. When your skills get sufficiently high, battles that are 1 round award no experience. This release is designed in such a way that surpassing the softcap is a massive pain in the ass and largely pointless as there are no enemies that are even remotely challenging when you approach level caps (spell and weapon level 16).

People who are hating on the leveling system in this game should try a game that did it well, like Wizardry 6-8. Might also be kinda fun to see how much of the inspiration and design for this game came from the original Wizardry games.

I think this game overall is great but there are definitely some severe crippling flaws. It's really a shame they didn't include any kind of "normal" or "hard" mode for those of us who really like a challenge.

[Persona Au Gratin]

Final Fantasy 2 is so different from the other games, I'd say that saying it's the "worst" is both somewhat meaningless as a statement but still true. Final Fantasy 2 is willing to do things that the other games do not do. It definitely suffers the most in terms of remaining faithful to the NES/Famicom experience than the other 5 games, that's for sure. But that alone is such an exception, I would never flatly compare it to the other Final Fantasy games without some caveat or explanation.

I don't care about the way it is open world because then Final Fantasy 2 becomes purely about acquiring loot and leveling up "reel fast and gud." Final Fantasy 2's ideas are so open to possibility, though, that it is at least interesting to examine how this works. It's an outlier to the series, I'll admit that.

What's such a shame is that if I push myself to get higher levels, I know exactly where it's leading. Unless you really have an addiction to efficiency and gaming, I think some of these ideas are rejected by players purely on the basis that Final Fantasy games are understood as telling a story. So Final Fantasy games convey scenarios and stories using the gameplay. Classes and jobs attached to characters that had some sort of greater meaning than just being able to "go somewhere and do something you may not survive doing."

Cecil's whole narrative arc in Final Fantasy 4 is about what the game says going from Dark Knight to Paladin means, for example.

Like, you have to see Final Fantasy 2 at times in a really abstract way. Going into combat is more like training than fighting if you play it a certain way, but the whole time the game has this story about rebels and stuff. If you go along the rail, the system has a seemingly different design as well. Things feel streamlined if you're about fighting and just doing things as you go. The problem is that that general system doesn't work well for spells that have to apply buffs or cure ailments, or if you need to build stamina and defense, because the reasoning or rules that make attacking or blocking or attack spells feel seamless to forward progression are precisely what make having a spell that cures status effects feel so tedious. That general system doesn't motivate forward progress for, say, getting confuse or stone off of you. Buzzword would be "ludo narrative dissonance" or whatever, but I think here it's actually meaningful and not contrived.

You have a lot of urgency to "stop the Dreadnaught" but you then might have to practice using a spell so you don't die because the a status healing spell can't just do what it says it does. It's not like Minwu even tells you to "practice/train." None of that stuff is motivated, the story's flow doesn't account for that. BUT IT'S SO INTERESTING just thinking about if it would.

You can play it how you want, but I think for what most players are there for going to Mysidia early doesn't have any significance and for good reason. Gaming the system is interesting if you like how it is and what's there, but it's also what makes Final Fantasy 2 so weird and kind of a let down when you just present it even as "less hard." That's where I'd say it's just old and has aged poorly. I can't trick myself into saying I would enjoy that or that I could make that more than what it is.

It just isn't doing what the other games do well and time has moved on so much I could seriously play something about making numbers go up that doesn't require me to re-roll any given screen with a quick save. But I don't want to leave what is there up to people who just like the grind. Minwu is such an interesting potential "mentor" character, for instance. The way Ultima works in this version... Final Fantasy 2 is the worst uniform Final Fantasy game but also one of the most interesting.

[MadDawg2552]

I just finished the game, and I can say grinding is completely useless. Just going straight through got me so overpowered it's ridiculous. I tried to grind out Ultima when I got it, but it just wasn't doing much damage at level 8 compared to all my other spells. I looked up how it worked and I said "screw that".

I ran from every battle in the last 3 - 4 dungeons except the forced battles in the chests and end bosses, of course. The 100% chance to get inflicted with whatever the monster has is stupid. The only way to avoid it is to grind out your evade, or just run from every battle, so I just ran from every battle. I got to the final boss and beat him in two rounds.

This is the first time I completed the game, and I don't think I'll ever play it again.

[StoneofTriumph]

The thing about Final Fantasy II is that it's basically the playable alpha version of what Akitoshi Kawazu would fully refine and flesh out in Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 (and to a lesser extent, RS1). There's a direct through-line between this game and those later games, and what we have here is the really, really rough cut of that.

It also kinda set the tone of how FF would heavily experiment with its own gameplay systems over the entire history of the franchise. The only character stat that has been in every Final Fantasy game is HP.