FFII needs more Yoshitaka Amano art

Final Fantasy II is probably the Final Fantasy game I played the least of. I owned it – it came in the same box set I got Final Fantasy I in – but I stopped playing maybe five minutes in. I got as far as "If you raise one stat, you'll lower the opposite stat" and stopped – if you get better at magic, you get worse at hitting things; if you get better at hitting things, you get worse at magic. Oh, and earlier versions of the game had an exploit you could do to get around that, but they fixed it for the playstation release.

┻━┻︵ \(°□°)/ ︵ ┻━┻

So yeah, I got about five minutes in, realised that I would have to commit to a character build and NOPED OUT. Baby!Susan knew what she was about and it was NOT THAT. ... I can't pretend I've grown though, because the first thing I did when the pixel remasters came out was check if FFII still had that system. GOOD NEWS: THERE IS NOW NO DOWNSIDE TO LEVELLING UP YOUR CHARACTERS! So now I'm playing FFII for effectively the first time ever.

Seriously, now that the trade-off mechanic is gone, I'm really intrigued by the mechanics of FFII. You don't have an overall level! Instead, all of your individual stats and skills and spells level up as you use them, so if you want to get better at hitting people you need to hit them, if you want to get better at magic you have to cast spells, if you want to get better at not dying you have to get hit a lot. And each spell or weapon levels up on its own track, so even if you're a solid fighter, if you're a swordsman you're going to be better with a sword than you are with a bow you've never used before. It makes sense to me! Kinda reminds me of how Final Fantasy XII works, in that anyone can be good at anything and equip anything, except instead of buying licenses you're straight-up just doing the repetitive training thing.

It seems to encourage the complete opposite playstyle to FFI, at least for me. Instead of hoarding all of my spells for later in case I need them, I have to cast them or I'll never get more MP! And I can't just buy a Cura to get better healing, I have to keep casting Cure until it gets stronger! ... It does get to a weird point though where you can price yourself out of casting Cure, but still be able to cast Life no problem. And it makes sense, it's just weird!

So far the major downside to this system is that I can't gauge how far through the game I am. In regular games, you can kinda parse it out so if you're level thirty, you're probably getting close to the halfway point, right? Whereas here I'm just like "... I have no idea how to interpret these numbers." I'm like seven hours in! I feel like I'm a decent chunk into the game, but I have no way of knowing, especially considering how much time I spend Being Lost.

Behind the cut: notes on the game as far as Deist. The make take-home point is that every character who shows up, I'm like oh hey, I recognise that Yoshitaka Amano character design!

( Read more... )

Things that are interesting: this is the first installment with Cids and chocobos! Despite most of the rest of the gameplay not getting brought forward to future installments!