Final Fantasy II Review

By Gary Kearney

As the famous Beatles song goes “It was twenty years ago today, Final Fantasy was released to play. It's been going in and out of style But it's guaranteed to raise a smile.” Well, maybe it wasn't “exactly” those lyrics but for the purpose of this review let's just go with it. The Final Fantasy series was launched roughly twenty years ago and to celebrate Square Enix is releasing special anniversary editions of a few FF games. The one we will be looking at today is the PSP release of Final Fantasy II. Let's see what's going on with this sucker...

I've played a couple of Final Fantasy games in my time but somewhere along the line they got a little too...well, pretentious I suppose. I'm a simple gamer. Give me a story that makes me want to keep playing, something pretty to look at, and don't make it impossible and I'm a happy gamer. The FF games have been pretty but the stories have gotten confusing. FF II is certainly a game from a simpler time with an old school RPG style and some audio and graphical updates to make it PSP-worthy.

Final Fantasy II start off with a great cut scene of a small town going up in flames. A group is seen running through the crumbling town loosing for a way out. Naturally it turns out that you're in that group and since your town has been destroyed you figure someone must pay. That someone is the emperor of Palamecia and the emperor goal is, of course, world domination. It's up to you and your crew to make sure that doesn't happen. Pretty straight ahead story.

I mentioned the graphical and audio updates. Of the two the audio is the biggest upgrade and does not seem dated at all. The graphics have been giving an overhaul as well. The characters are surprisingly detailed, the 2D backgrounds are very nice, and there is even the familiar disembodied little white glove as a pointer. The cut scenes are simply beautiful. You can not tell that the game harks back to the NES or SNES days graphically. The game is played in a traditional overhead style. Your group is displayed by a single character when roaming through towns, dungeons, and world but separates into individuals during battles and certain important conversations.

You're given tasks to complete in a very linear fashion. I admit that I have gotten spoiled with the more freeform style of play that most modern RPGs offer so it was a tad irritating to feel this restriction. Since there is no in game journal keeping track of what I need to do or where I need to go I keep forgetting, especially if I hadn't played in a few days. But this is just the way games where back in the pre-iPod days. You roam around talking to people and some times someone will say a word or two that's so interesting that you'll want to “learn” it , don't worry you'll know which word since it's always highlighted, so later you can “ask” others about it. Eh, that's cool I suppose. But it's odd that when you “ask” a person about a term one time they will give a great answer and the next time they have no idea what you're talking about.

Battles. Yep, there are going to be a lot of those and they are almost always going to be random. I do not care for the random battles, I like to see who's down the path or hall before I end up in a fight. The battles themselves are the normal old-style turn based fights. Each turn begins with you deciding how and who each member of your party should attack. You can take as long as you like to set up your plan. Once everyone in your party knows what to do the battle starts and all you can do is sit back and watch. After a while you either win and get some cash and experience, or everyone is dead, or something in between. What really stinks about FFII is the way leveling-up is handled. I guess some people could like it but I sure didn't. What happens is that instead of leveling up in the traditional sense you just get better at whatever it was your were doing during the battle. For instance, if you had a character who used a sword through the whole battle then your sword experience would go up. If a character did nothing but cast heal spells then they would get really good at healing but pretty well suck at everything else. I found this is be a huge bummer. Oh, and the only way to increase your HP is to actually take damage. So, strange as it may seem, you will probably start to attack members of your own party just to increase their HP. I believe there's a saying about who needs enemies with friends like these that could be applied to this logic.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 78%. Final Fantasy II is an interesting blast from the past for those die hard FF fanatics. Others may not enjoy the fantasy so much thanks to a very odd leveling system.