3/5 ★ – Sharff's review of FINAL FANTASY II.

Its certainly not as bad as pro jared said it was but I see where he was coming from. The games leveling system isn’t as bad as I’ve heard. You level up every individual stat based on usage. It sounds annoying but when it comes to the normal rpg stats and leveling up weapons, the way you play is really no different than any other ff game, at least in this pixel remaster where they made it a tiny bit easier. Where my opinions differ in the leveling system is in magic. Magic also levels up based on usage, which is good for spells that you use all of the time like fire, blizzard, thunder and cure but for more situational spells like ones that heals status effects or ones that buff characters during bosses won’t get leveled up as quickly and if you want those stronger spells for more convenience, you’ll have to grind. You don’t need them too much until the end of the game and by that time a lot of this stuff could be fixed with items but honestly its kind of a bummer that something so convenient in Final Fantasy 1 has been made a lot more difficult to approach. The pixel remaster has added a way to make grinding easier by boosting stats but I mean… cmon. The gameplay aside from that isn’t so bad. Its kinda cool how you can create your own classes by deciding what characters play what roles in your party. Its more open than ff1. I see what they were going for. Theres also the dungeons which are eh. They seemed to be designed around making the player take long routes which forces them to do a lot of battles, but battles can be fun in this game in my opinion so I wasn’t super hurt. I don’t have a lot to say about the story, its predictable but its compelling. To compliment it, it has its moments of charm. Also I really liked Guy. I kinda wanna play it again except maybe the psp version instead with its extra content, so its not terrible in the way where I’d never want to play it again. It has its upsides but its not nearly as good as ff1 or ff3. This did set them in a direction though, so hey. I think its good and worth experiencing at least for that.