As we know, Final Fantasy was never intended to be the success that it became. Because of this, the team felt that Final Fantasy was their last hurrah, and started off with an epic story about saving the world from complete and total annihilation. How do you follow that up?
Well, when Final Fantasy II was greenlit, the team had to determine a real identity for Final Fantasy as a series. They never specify whether or not Final Fantasy 1 and 2 take place in the same world but judging by the geography, it's fairly safe to say they switched worlds entirely, as would become the standard for the series. Instead of forces beyond anyone's control destroying the fabric of reality as we know it, Final Fantasy II decided to ground things a bit more with a story about overthrowing a corrupt empire.
For the first time in the series, we get to see character-based plots, a melding of open-world and linear gameplay, Cid, chocobos, all kinds of staples that would last through the next 25 years. But that doesn't mean it was all for the better. Final Fantasy II made many missteps along the way.
I already went into great detail about the battle system in my last post so read that if you'd like the details. Suffice it to say, it was an interesting change but severe balance issues crush it from ever being as good as simple level ups.
The storyline takes quite a while to become even remotely interesting, too. Sure this is an NES game and the fact that it has any storyline at all is quite the accomplishment but still. If the battle system and world are uninteresting, the game better have a great storyline to keep it all together. The story does get quite good by the end. Characters develop slightly over the course of the story, twists and turns keep you guessing what will happen next and none of your missions ever feel trivial. In fact, if anything, you feel a sense that this rebellion is entirely resting on the backs of these three kids.
Still, because they wanted you to feel a part of this rebellion, you are always forced to return back to Altea after every single dungeon to report in to your superior. It's not a big deal once you get the boat and are strong enough to deal with the infrequent water encounters, but prior to this point at about halfway through the game, trekking back to the first town requires either a ton of patience or excess money to pay for all the trips back home. It's frustrating and pointless, especially when some dungeons will actually warp you back home instantaneously, it makes you wonder why they all don't do this.
Final Fantasy II shows off a new dialogue system as well that actually allows the player to interact with the NPC's. This system was far ahead of it's time but suffered from ambitions beyond the hardware's capabilities. Basically, as you talk with people, you can learn keywords that you can then parrot back to everyone from a list. You can also use items in this manner. While this could have been really neat, it doesn't ever really go anywhere. Usually, Princess Hilda gives you these keywords and then you repeat them back to her to learn something new. Only rarely do you need them for anyone else and if you use the wrong keyword, you only get a ? in reply. What may have been a really cool immersive system quickly becomes a minor puzzle to figure out delaying the next hint from being given.
In the end, Final Fantasy II is severely aged. All of it's systems were revolutionary for their time but now are just relics of historical gaming. I'd recommend it if you're looking to see the roots of Final Fantasy, as many of the systems first showed up in this game, but if you're looking for great classic RPG's, this one's probably not worth your time.
So to explain this next bit, I figured that using a traditional scoring method was rather pointless in this case since I'm comparing all Final Fantasy games. So instead of giving games a score out of 10, I'm simply going to rank them in order from worst to best. Obviously opinions will differ. Final Fantasy games can be absurdly polarizing but I feel like this is a more effective way of ranking them. Note that low games are not necessarily bad, they just rank lower than the higher ones on my list. Even Final Fantasy II, I would rank around a 6/10. Just keep that in mind as this blog progresses.
Rankings:
Final Fantasy 2 < Final Fantasy
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