I had a wealth to say about Final Fantasy, mostly because it was one of the great last-ditch
success stories in the early days of gaming.
But you can’t really get into such floral verbiage about Final Fantasy II.
And, just so that we’re on the same page, I’m talking about the real II.
Not the II you might know, on the SNES, which was actually IV.
We gave up that pretense back in ‘97.
Get with the times, folks.
This is Final Fantasy II, released just 365 days after the original Final Fantasy, and
initializing the complaints of “If it’s Final, why are there two of ‘em?”
Did you honestly think Square was going to let this now-very-recognizable name go to
waste?
Of course not.
II represents the series’ movement from a D&D-style party, where you begin the game
by tailoring the classes of your team, to a new, strange, classless system where proficiency
is determined by repetition.
Use an axe, and you’ll improve your axe attacks.
Take damage, and you’ll get more HP.
Cast magic, and the magic and your MP will improve.
On the one hand, it’s a clever system, and allows for the most fluid character development
this side of Final Fantasy XI.
On the other hand, like XI, it often demands grinding and grinding and grinding, and woe
betide ye if you want to switch weapon focus halfway through the game.
The plot concerns a rebel faction fighting off the incursions of an evil empire, and
if that sounds a whole lot like Star Wars...
well, it kinda is.
Perhaps this very parallel is what lead to Enix’s Star Ocean franchise taking its inspiration
from Star Trek, thus creating an apt rivalry...
only to be quelled by the merger of the two companies.
In a unique innovation for the series, and one which I believe should’ve been carried
into further installments, some keywords in your conversations with NPCs will be highlighted.
These terms can be learned, and then suggested to other NPCs elsewhere in the game to change
dialog paths, utter passwords, or ask for additional information relevant to a particular
subject.
It’s a slick system...
shame we haven’t seen it again.
Much like its predecessor and companion in this Final Fantasy Origins version, II comes
equipped with a dynamically-updating bestiary, a spiffy new CGI intro trailer, and a bevy
of Yoshitaka Amano concept art.
This augments redesigned sprites and artwork, richer backgrounds, and a remastered soundtrack
that’s par for the course in the FFO package.
At the time of its PS1 release, this was the only way to get your hands on Final Fantasy
II in English.
Granted, since that time, we’ve seen remakes on the GBA, PSP, and iOS devices, making it
no longer the rarity it once was.
But let’s not look past II’s most significant contributions to the series: Chocobos and
Cid.
Yes, those big, hulking, often-flightless overgrown canaries got their start right here,
though their role in the game is primarily as a convenient means of escape.
Cid, on the other hand, is exactly the airshipmeister you’d expect him to be, bouncing your protagonists
all over the world (for a fee, of course).
I mentioned recently that no one ever really references FFII, and while that’s most often
the case (except for outliers like IX and XIII-2), perhaps the reason is because these
classic Final Fantasy elements, by nature of their very existence, are a permanent callback
to one of those games that kinda just fell by the wayside.