PROS:
There are some recycled assets, but they’ve been cleverly tweaked—like merging Crescent Lake and Cornelia to create Fynn, The backgrounds are nice, with the snow terrain of Salamand standing out in particular. The castles and Mysidia Tower were designed with some sense of logic; I appreciate how the layouts of the lower and upper floors stay consistent—somebody was actually thinking about architecture.
Main character sprites are practically nonexistent, you're just blobs moving across the screen, but everyone else is distinct enough that you can tell who they are. There are some impressive animations: the airship traffic around Fynn, the Dreadnought exploding. Visually, I didn’t really miss much from the later remasters, which speaks to the Famicom game’s art.
For an 8-bit RPG, the pacing isn’t bad, and the guest characters are fun and memorable, even if their actual utility is questionable.
The main campaign isn’t
too brutal. A lot of bosses are crammed into the final dungeon. The few that appear earlier are mostly pushovers. Elemental and Cure magic isn’t an absolute nightmare to level and works well enough without hours of grinding. Ultima, despite its bad reputation, is actually decent.
CONS:
In order of increasing rage:
- Everything Is Luck-Based. You might get ambushed by a squad of generals who gang bang you before you can blink. Esuna might remove a status effect. Your items might do the same. You might gain MP at the end of battle—even after chugging through a ton of mana. Crack open this chest and it might vomit out a nightmare beast that immediately casts multi-target Death on your party.
- Stat Downs/The Game Punishes You for Experimenting
Train in more than one weapon? Congrats, now none of them are strong enough to hit when you actually need them. Let your black mage attack? Whoops, there goes their intelligence. So many spells are redundant because they’re bugged, or a superior version comes along five minutes later. Ultima, the spell that should be the weakest in the game, is somehow stronger than your already-leveled Holy. Flare? Go fuck yourself.
- Status Ailments Are the Worst
If you’re hit with a status effect in battle, you don’t gain any experience. I get the logic behind it, but in practice, it was so infuriating that I replayed the entire game just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind. Esuna is worthless unless you grind it, as status effects persist even outside of battle unless it is high level. This means constantly wasting turns in battle just to make sure you can actually cure yourself later.
I hate grinding. But in
Final Fantasy II, status ailments will absolutely ruin your day. My first time through, I tried training all three characters in weapons—made the early game a breeze. Then, by the mid-game, it turned into an absolute slog because I was
constantly being blinded, poisoned, charmed, paralyzed, or cursed. And somehow, Fire 3 is a perfectly good attack spell, but Esuna 3 can’t even cure the worst status effects? WTF is going on here?
Oh.
