Final Fantasy II: A Retrospective - IGN (original) (raw)

Final Fantasy has always been something of a divisive series, not just in terms of those that like it and those that outright don't, but also within its own fan base. The reason for this is simple: Each new core entry is essentially a reboot, bringing forth a raft of thematic and systematic changes that can just as easily alienate fans of prior releases as much as they can thrill.And alienating, in particular, did 1988’s Final Fantasy II’s changes prove to be, seeing it stand all these years later as one of the least divisive entries and for all the wrong reasons. It’s forever found languishing at the bottom of folks’ lists when it comes to customary discussions on series favourites - even IGN’s - with its levelling system a particular sore point for many.

Final Fantasy II gets easily and unfairly dismissed when, in fact, there are a lot of positives to talk about.

Having recently begun a journey through the series from the start - in some form anyway, thanks to the various remasters/re-releases available on PSN – once the credits were rolling, I couldn’t help but feel that Final Fantasy II gets easily and unfairly dismissed when, in fact, there are a lot of positives to talk about…

(It's important to note, although most will probably have realised, I'm referring to the original Final Fantasy II that didn't make it outside of Japan until 2003 in a remastered format, not the rebadged Final Fantasy IV that the US came to know as Final Fantasy II in 1991. All screenshots used are from the PSP re-release. Also - 28 year old spoilers follow!)

From the opening moments, the storytelling lessons learnt by Square from the first game are abundantly clear, with Final Fantasy II's dramatic opening marking a stark improvement over its predecessor in terms of establishing both its world and characters. True, you're still introduced to this setting through limited textual exposition as with the original, but here there is absolutely no ambiguity as to the initial stakes, nor the investment of your party members.

I mean, it's not long after being introduced to the peaceful city of Fynn - two lines of text in fact - that a surprise attack led by the nation of Palamecia and its Emperor Mateus takes place. Not content with his army's pillaging, Mateus summons fiery demons to his cause, and thus the city burns as unprepared civilians are left to panic, scrambling for their lives as attempts to repel the assault fall short.

Those not murdered by Palamecian forces make a run for nearby Altair and that, true to form, includes four plucky friends - Firion, Guy, Maria and her brother Leon - who have just seen their loved ones slaughtered in the madness. Before they can reach safety, and without much combat experience behind them, they are brutally cut down by pursuing horsemen and left for dead.

Three of the core characters... but what of Leon?

Thankfully, Firion, Maria and Guy survive, found by Fynn's Princess Hilda during her own escape, and are resuscitated at Altair by her most trusted aide, Royal Mage Minwu. The fourth member of their team, Leon, is sadly missing, presumed dead. Bursting with anger and a thirst for revenge, the surviving trio begs Hilda for permission to join her army, but are refused due to the same combat inexperience that saw them downed originally. The group also learns that the evil Empire is hard at work constructing The Dreadnaught; an airship with unprecedented destructive power, which they'll soon use to bully the world into compliance.

There are a lot of interesting things to unpack here, with many contrasts to my experience with the original game. First of all, it’s worth mentioning that each party member has a canon name this time (from research, these weren’t pre-set in the NES version as they are in the remake, though are still considered canon), and all have backstories that, however minimal, at least hint at lives before Final Fantasy II's epic events. This setup seems like a world away from the original's lacking premise of 'Four heroes suddenly appear because prophecies', and I was a lot more invested because of such a simple shift.

In happier times...

Furthermore, not only is the player’s first interaction with the party a pre-determined “failure” (a storytelling device that has gone on to become a genre staple in itself), but far from being heralded as the destined heroes of the world, the trio are not even trusted to defend themselves, forced to prove their worth before being allowed to join the good fight for real. This adds more weight to the process of levelling up; the party are weak thanks to their humble upbringings in a famously peaceful village and must toughen up if they’re to get the justice they seek. It makes sense and provides context for your actions.

Far from being heralded as the destined heroes of the world, the trio are not even trusted to defend themselves, forced to prove their worth before being allowed to join the good fight for real.

To my surprise, given its age and my experience with the original game, what follows is an enjoyably deep story that, despite being every bit as fantastical in nature as you've come to expect from this series, tries to keep its feet on the ground or, at the very least, keep its major events connected to the characters in your control. This is a direction highlighted best by clever usage of that fourth party spot vacated, of course, by the missing Leon.

Many times throughout, as the story dictates, the party is joined by one of seven major characters, each with solid reasoning for joining the fight at their given moments. Josef, for example, is a blacksmith skilled at forging legendary Mythril armour, and joins the group to lead them to a key item as both reward for rescuing his daughter and as a way of acting on his hatred for the Empire. Later on, Ricard, the last surviving member of an order called the Dragoons, teams up with Firion’s gang after they’ve been devoured by the Leviathan, because they stand a better chance of escaping the belly of the beast together.

This member switch-up means that no matter what is happening in terms of the team’s overall goal of saving the world, it’s easy to remain invested in all the moment-to-moment happenings too. Rather than being told where to go to acquire an important item or information, the reason for doing so becomes a member of your party. This makes a world of difference to both plot momentum and the player's understanding of the team's goals at any given time, and prevents offshoots from feeling like unnecessary deviations or arbitrary game-lengthening.

Though subsequent entries are definitely better known for it, Final Fantasy II also uses its party configuration to take the series' first tentative stabs in dealing with the subject of death. Four of the temporary party members meet their ends during the adventure, and while all four deaths are certainly clichéd and feel a little formulaic thanks to each being the result of sacrifice, they never feel pointless.

Poor old Josef, eh?

The first even hit me hard as I was unprepared, seeing aforementioned Josef willingly lose a fight with a runaway boulder in an attempt to buy the group time to escape from a crumbling cave. It feels particularly brutal because not only did you just spend a significant amount of time with Josef, learning about his background and family life, his importance to the cause, and investing in his abilities through battle, but also because, _well_… games didn’t do this to playable characters back then, did they?

Later on, Minwu’s death, while not even remotely as surprising, still manages to be affecting for different reasons, and not just because he’s easily the best written character in a game where Square were still discovering their writing chops. His death is necessary to receive what is practically the most powerful ability in the game; the Ultima tome. His death is the ultimate sacrifice. One life to save many; an offering that gives the team the key to ending the threat.

The best attempt at an emotional payoff, however, comes not from death, but from a re-emergence. Late on, the team is amazed to discover that their former comrade Leon is very much still alive and, unbeknownst to them, has been working against them the entire time as the emperor’s mysterious Dark Knight. The friend-turned-enemy is a well-worn trope in storytelling, sure, but the clues for it are sown pretty well here, drip-feeding suspicion without leaving the reveal feeling like a pointless endeavour.

The thing is, even after the reveal, Final Fantasy II subverts expectation brilliantly. I mean, it would have been all too easy to resort to cliché and have the group, most pertinently Maria, talk her brother back from the dark side before beating the boss together and then living happily ever after, but while he is welcomed back into the fold, the events are far from a fairy tale.

Leon fighting alongside the others.

After Mateus is seemingly dispatched, Leon announces his survival by installing himself as the new and equally malevolent emperor, but his reign is short-lived. In fact, it never really starts... Mateus makes a dramatic return from the depths of Hell, more powerful than ever, and easily reclaims his throne. It’s only when Leon has no other option that he agrees to fight alongside his friends once more, and only to take down his former master.

And even when the real battle is eventually won, Leon is still so twisted by hate that he refuses to accept the happy ending; too much has happened between him and the others to slip back into their old lives and he leaves on a self-imposed exile, despite Firion leaving the door open for reconciliation.

It’s only when Leon has no other option that he agrees to fight alongside his friends once more, and only to take down his former master.

While its age means that the dialogue lacks the nuance to really give this scene the punch it deserves, I still love the grit of it. Brilliant and bittersweet. Bravo, Square, bravo.

One criticism I’ve always levelled at JRPGs as a genre, is that story and gameplay are often completely separate entities, however, Final Fantasy II does have a half-hearted crack at providing players with more agency in story beats with its 'Key Terms' system. Throughout, you have the opportunity to learn a number of key phrases, the first being 'Wild Rose', which when repeated to the right people will open up new dialogue. While the effort made to make me something other than a passive observer is definitely appreciated, the system feels way undercooked, amounting only to committing red words to the game’s memory bank and then endlessly using each on talkative NPCs until you get something worthwhile. It’s no surprise, then, that this was dumped and occasionally bettered in subsequent entries.

For all Final Fantasy II does get right in terms of storytelling, it’s the combat mechanics where Square took the biggest risks. Final Fantasy II has its negative reputation for this exact reason, and it’s easy to see why: Gone are character and party levels, and in their place is, _well_… self-directed repetition; rather than levelling stats, you're levelling individual attributes.

Party like it's 1988.

This means that if you want to get better at something, you need to do a lot of it. Want Firion to improve his swordplay? Hit more enemies with swords. Want your healer to restore more HP? Heal lots. Want better defensive stats? Well, then you’d better be prepared to allow your team to take a lot of knocks.

It’s really not a far cry away from systems found in modern RPGs, such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but my first impression here was that it didn’t quite meld well with turn-based combat.

Playing in this way off the back of an already grind-heavy predecessor, and having the manipulable stats broken down to this minute degree made the levelling process seem like it would be a huge, impenetrable wall. In fact, there are so many attributes that you can and need to level up independently that I actually nearly gave up in the first few hours when improving them to any significant degree seemed painfully slow going. Still, committed to finishing it, I resolved to persevere and, thanks to some quick research on the interwebs, I discovered a way to make the system work more efficiently.

I discovered a way to make the system work more efficiently. Chiefly, I made my party fight amongst themselves.

Chiefly, I made my party fight amongst themselves.

Basically, Final Fantasy II doesn't care whether you're being hit by fiend or friend, so by having my melee characters beat on their teammates while my main magic users cast offensive and defensive spells on everyone, I was able to boost my party in the most pressing stats swiftly and easily. I didn't do this in all fights, of course, but as a tactic, it definitely provided a valuable advantage in getting ahead of the difficulty curve and helped me tool my team for whatever specific threats the immediate region might try to hit me with.

Airships really are the only way to travel.

On face value, of course, it’s pretty dumb to need to spend a solid chunk of playtime having your team squabbling against each other instead of taking on the enemies, but, I have to admit, it added an extra layer of in-fight management that I found lacking in the original and, at a stretch, I could justify it by reasoning that they were simply sparring and training together.

(This workaround, by the way, is apparently a watered-down version of a development oversight in the original release, where those keen of eye realised that stat boosts were permanently applied when selecting an attack, not committing to it, meaning you could repeatedly cancel all your party’s selected moves and still keep the stat increases for each. Very cheeky…)

This levelling shortcut also opened my eyes to just how big the scope was for party customisation: No one in your party is stuck in a specific class; they can use any weapon or spell providing you put the time into training them. In the beginning I had still habitually fallen into the trap of setting my team up with a dedicated warrior, healer and black mage configuration, but when I realised that my main damage dealers could also learn healing spells and buffs and vice-versa, it felt amazingly freeing, and completely transformed the way I prepared for battles.

Requires some prep.

After a few hours of believing this to be the worst levelling system ever conceived, it had suddenly clicked with me in a way it doesn’t seem to for others. I ended up positively hooked on the rhythm of it, spending many nights not even progressing the story at all, only expanding my party's range of skills. I even got to the point where I’d accidentally made the latter half of the adventure way too easy. Hey, I was having fun, that's all that matters, and that’s what I will take away from this experience.

So, this turned out to be a bit of a weird one for me. With so much negativity surrounding its formula, I had originally entered into Final Fantasy II expecting to like it much less than the original, but I ended up liking it a whole lot more. Don’t get me wrong, there are definite missteps; levelling shouldn’t require a thematically weak workaround to not be painful, and the opening few hours were definitely a struggle until I figured out how to abuse systems in ways that suited me.

"And my natty hat along with it."

Once I’d cleared that hurdle and formed that understanding, however, Final Fantasy II’s true scope was revealed, and I was able to enjoy most of what it had to offer. At the centre of it all was a solid plot that made more effort to make me care about its characters than its predecessor, and kept me invested by occasionally letting loose from its thematic chains of Good vs. Evil, and deviating enough from popular clichés to surprise.

While Final Fantasy II may never top my ‘Favourite Final Fantasy’ list, ultimately, I'm glad I stuck with it; there's a lot more value to be found in this risky sequel than most seem to give credit.

Andy Corrigan is a freelance games journalist based in Australia. He's intending on playing through every Final Fantasy game and you can read about the original game here. Tweet at him here.