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

Final Fantasy II was one of those Final Fantasys that I would always start but never go past the first area due to the internet’s complaints about the levelling system. I always thought one day I would finally get around to properly playing it and there was no better time than when the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection was released. As the pixel remaster provides some quality of life features such as turning encounters off and boosting experience and money gained from battles I thought I could use that to my advantage to overcome the much disliked levelling system. The levelling system isn’t great I’ll admit that but it isn’t as bad as the internet was making it out to be. Rather than the traditional levelling system like other FF games, each character's stats are improved as they either deal or take damage in battle. It makes sense that if you use ‘attack’ a lot or receive physical damage a lot these are the stats that grow, it means you can tailor your character’s growth the way you see fit. Where this majorly falls short are the white and black spells. They don’t all level together, they all level individually. So unless you’re using say, Blizzard all the time and you come up against an enemy weak to ice, you’re gonna be still struggling to cause significant damage against the monster despite the vulnerability. The visuals for the pixel remasters are just incredible, the colours are vibrant and the designs timeless. Despite not being technically ‘new’ to the pixel remaster they do perfect them from previous versions. I played this on my Nintendo Switch in handheld mode as I felt the pixel graphics are much better suited to a small screen than a big TV and the colours looked gorgeous on that OLED screen. At its heart FF2 is still a NES game, simple in nature where you just go from dungeon to dungeon fighting enemies up to the boss. You do a fair bit of backtracking as you learn words and you go back and forth like an excited child that has just learned a new word telling people that word. I do feel as though this game would be a lot shorter if people had phones. The unique monster designs are also reflected in the game’s roots. With only a few different types of enemies but with a different colour palette as you progress through the game. Like with the pixel remaster of the first Final Fantasy this to me still reminds my recommendation to anyone who has experienced the more modern games and would like to retrospectively play the older ones. It's not the BEST Final Fantasy of the pixel remasters, possibly one of the weakest but you won’t be disappointed playing it to completion.