You Rebel Cur! (A Final Fantasy II Topic)

[Blade]

Okay so, here I am, having completed my first mission and joined the Rebellion against the Palamecian Empire. And from what I hear, the 20th Anniversary edition is the ultimate version of this game, so I've got a long road ahead.

Heck, your first mission (after barely surviving) is wrought with tragedy as you have to sneak through a bar amidst drunken (unkillable?) Soldiers and speak to a dying Prince who hands you his signet ring.

I returned back to Princess Hildagaarde (Hilda for short I guess) and presented the ring to her (and later the King for some interesting messages). And now her advisor Ming Wu has joined my party.

Ming Wu is the best thing to happen to me. And I'll tell you why:

I haven't even left the first area yet and Guy's stats are 9999 HP and 999 MP.

All I've been doing is investing in bare minimum equipment (because, let's face it, the more damage you take in this game the stronger you get), spamming spells, dual-wielding everything, and buying Ethers.

Ethers are for one thing and one thing only: the Swap Spell.

Why the Swap spell?

It is the single greatest way to monstrously boost your entire party's stats. Here's my method:

1. Spend a few thousand Gil on Ethers in the Altair shop (you should have enough by the time you get Mingwu.

2. Have Mingwu cast Swap on a (non-poisonous) enemy monster, then defeat that monster. He should have 5 or 6 HP and 0 MP.

3. Use your Ethers on Mingwu to bring up his MP (usually 1 Ether is enough of a start).

4. In the next battle, make sure Firion, Maria, and Guy are relying on physical attacks (also put everyone in the front row so they can get hit and boost their Stamina).

5. Cast Swap on the entire party. It will shuffle their HP/MP down to the next character (so Firion gives Maria his stats and Maria gives Guy her stats and Guy gives Mingwu his stats and so on and so on). This will reduce the amount of MP the characters have, but because they're busy doing physical attacks they won't be using up that MP, and you'll have a wider pool of MP to tinker with every time you use the Swap spell (you just have to use another Ether every time you run out of MP when the lowest MP stat cycles around again).

6. Because you're 'rotating stats', finish every battle after a successful swap. Then repeat the process and over time your base stats will grow.

I've been doing this for several hours now and my entire party's MP is maxed at 999 (but keep doing this method anyway as it boosts your Magic stat).

Eventually your entire party will be ridiculously strong and ready for anything (short of negative status spells such as Petrify) that the game throws at you.

Also, make sure to have plenty of MP left to heal your party as making them fully healthy before entering Inns saves you a ton of Gil.

Right now I'm busy mastering my party's spells while topping off their HP (which takes quite a bit longer, but is sooo going to be worth it). And I haven't even gotten very far in the game yet!

 

[Blade]

Getting lost is EASY!

So it turns out that even with high stats, it's very easy to get lost and wander in to dangerous areas in this game. Took me a while to even know where I needed to go to and exchange 'key words'/'key items' with.

My next mission consisted of going up to Poft, talking to Cid, going further north to Salamand and talking to the old man about Mithril.

At first I didn't know where I was supposed to go, because two of the 'new areas' are portal caves (that you really shouldn't tackle until later in the post-game anyway) on either side of the mountain pass with Salamand sandwiched in between.

After some serious wandering around (and picking up some free spells as item drops along the way, hehe) I found my way to Semitt Falls Cavern, and started wandering around picking up items.

Dungeons in this game are so foggy it's hard to know if you missed any treasures or not, so backtracking might be a pain later on, also it doesn't help that there are useless "empty rooms with encounter traps" built in to each and EVERY dungeon. How annoying.

So I take on a knight (who went down with a single spell cast) and rescued the hostages in the cave, and got the Mythril. Went back to Salamand to check up on everyone, then headed back south to Altair.

It's a lot harder to head south without a boat or airship and not knowing where Poft proper is (since it took me a while to figure out how to use the map lol).

Needless to say I got my share of battles in on the way back (even ran into a pack of Adamantoise sooner than I was supposed to...oops too dangerous, head back to the safer route).

So I return and finally rest and upgrade to Mythril equipment, which is pretty good considering, but not as good as some of the later equipment.

After that my next mission was to go out and find a way to blow up the Dreadnaught, so I have to go North to Salamand again to pick up the Goddess Bell, backtrack AGAIN through Semitt Falls to pick up the Snow Craft and head north again, this time with the old man in tow (yeah I'm not bothering to level up my guest allies since they're only in my party for short intervals, at least until I can teach them Swap).

So we wander around in the Snow Cave for a while (which is really pretty by comparison to the rest of the dungeons I've seen) and Guy ends up talking to some beavers (how he knows how to talk to them, I have no idea, so don't ask).

We end up picking up the Goddess Bell after a short skirmish with an Adamantoise...who ironically HATES Ice spells despite this being an Ice cave. Oh well.

On a notion I decide to de-equip the old man prior to fighting Borgan, that pirate guy who betrayed the empire that I could seriously care less about...so he sends a boulder after us and the old man (somehow) stops it and gets clobbered...I know I'm supposed to be sad, but this was about as short as my stint with Aria in FF3 (if not shorter). Yes, contrary to what FF7 fans think, FF games have a penchant for killing off party members in the older games. Deal with it.

Okay, that aside, I head back out (messing around with the hidden Snow Craft Puzzle memory game and earning some gil and items) talk to the people, give my condolances in Salamand, then head south to Poft, where I eventually talk Cid in to getting me a ride out to Kashuan Keep.

For a castle surrounded by mountains, it's kinda spooky in a Transylvania sorta way (thankfully there's a Chocobo to the south so I can take my time).

So anyway, I ring the doorbell (snerk) and open up the keep and OH hi Gordon (ya big chicken), how'd you manage to get here without the Goddess Bell??? Oh well, I give him some equipment, a few spells to stay useful and we ascend in to the depths.

It doesn't take me long to figure out there's Gold Armor in this place, but the trick to getting it all is what makes the trek tedious. Too bad you get better armor later on and don't use this equipment for very long.

So I pick up the Egil's Torch and grab the Sunfire, then as I leave, I see a (very rare) in-game cutscene of Cid's ship getting caught by the now-active Dreadnaught. Wow, the graphics are pretty good for a remake.

Moving on, I head south to find out that Hilda got caught and several places that 'conspired with the rebels' got bombed the crap out of...and despite the entire towns supposedly being 'destroyed' the shops seem to remain intact...so much for destroying the town...oh well again. (Though I guess they were bombed earlier in the story and me being in a rush to get better items, I just kinda forgot the sequence of events).

Okay so we're clear, Altair got bombed, Minwu left to heal people and do White Mage stuff, I went north to get the Bell for Sunfire and picked up the Old man for a short stint, then Gordon later. Then I end up rescuing Cid and Fake!Hilda and blow up the Dreadnaught.

So I head south to Altair, talk to the folks there (losing Gordon in the process without bothering to unequip him ugh), and they tell me I need a ship to go to Deist.

So I go out, talk to a girl in the shipyard northwest of Altair and get a ship (yeah pirates are wimps) and I get Layla (or however you spell her name, towns and names are forgettable in this game, who names a town "Poft" anyway???).

So now I got a ship, and on a whim I go to Deist, get hammered by Hill Gigas and realise I may be slightly out of my depth as far as equipment goes.

Undeterred, I train a bit, improve my attack power, and enter the cave north of Deist, though at the time I had no idea why I was there except to pick up a pendant...I head back, talk to a dragon, still no clue what to do, head back in, this time wandering around aimlessly lost and come across a Manticore (aka a Chimera). He's no problem but what happens afterwards made me realize I maybe missed something. An empty green pool with nothing to do with it (no key items worked either haha).

So now I gotta go allllll the way back to Deist Castle (using Teleport spell and healing my ally cuz apparently Teleport HURTS), and I end up learning about the Dragon's Egg, which I have to drop off into the pool...sooo, I hurry back, drop it off and talk one last time to everyone before sailing south.

On a whim I go to a Tropical Island (apparently I'm not supposed to be there but I'm too strong for anything in that place) so I bulldose everybody pick up a few spells, kill a rhino boss and grab something called a Black Mask. Not sure what it's for yet, but I'll find out later I guess.

So I sail the ship back to Altair fight the fake Hilda to find out the REAL Hilda is a tournament prize held by the Emperor...then Gordon rejoins, then a little south past the peninsula of Altair, I take the ship and head through a forest and further south to what I believe is Mysidia fighting sexy vampire Succubi and Brain demons as I go.

Yay! I now have some awesome equipment and can teach everyone Swap! Also Holy and a crapton of other spells. Still need a bunch of other things, and I have to rescue Hilda yet, but all in all making some headway.

Apologies if this is all out of order, but this game gets very confusing at times.

 

[Kuja9001]

im never playing this game again

 

[Ite]

I remember getting so lost on the world map surrounded by DEADLY-ass monsters and no saves to go back to (I played Dawn of Souls version)

Managing to escape with my life is actually one of my fondest memories of FFII. Something about those first few FF games sparked the imagination in a very unique, randomized way.

The closest thing I've had to that experience in the post FF7 games is running into elementals on that oil rig in XII.

 

[Blade]

lol I'd say "Last Ones" (Lightning Returns) and "Oversouls" (FFX-2) are about the equivalent.

 

[Arth]

Fighting with the Blood Sword against the final boss made the fight waaaay too easy. Even in the most updated version, this game still has too many issues imho, worst FF of the classic series.

 

[ForceStealer]

Eh, I like 2's plot, that puts it over 3 for me. 3 has more solid mechanics, but there's no reason to play it considering the job system has been refined and perfected in 5, 10-2, and Tactics, and 3 has no story.

 

[Farron]

Eh, I like 2's plot, that puts it over 3 for me. 3 has more solid mechanics, but there's no reason to play it considering the job system has been refined and perfected in 5, 10-2, and Tactics, and 3 has no story.

Yeah

I hear that most fans call or label Final Fantasy 2 the worst of the series but imo it can't be because for 25 years ago when it was created it actually has a decent plotline and story.

Final Fantasy 3 while it did have better gameplay the story wasn't there and what was there was already recycled from Final Fantasy 1

that and Xande is a terrible Final Fantasy Villian

So much so Square had no problem putting the dark force that he summoned in Dissidia as the main badguy role to battle Onion Knight instead.

Paramecia however is one badass Emperor that over ruled Satan and God.


FF 3 is only worth playing to see and experience Final Fantasy history and listen to the good music imo, while FF 2 is worth a couple of playthroughs.

 

[Arth]

With this argument, I could ask why bother playing FF2 when later FFs had better written plots and characters? Gameplay-wise, I prefer returning to the old job system of 3 rather than playing the easily breakable system of FF2, not to mention the HELL (get it?) of an encounter rate in comparison to other FFs..

 

[Dawnbreaker]

FFII was a good game if for nothing else than its villain. I know the Emperor was not actually the same as the one in Dissidia, but what I saw of him in FFII (which, admittedly wasn't very much, since never I beat the game, to my great shame) was just delightful. And it was a challenging game, too. That said, I hated the levelling system...or maybe I just wasn't very good with it, as that was part of the challenge. xD

 

[Blade]

Once you figure out how stats grow, you can pretty much find ways of exploiting it.

Tip 1: HP/Stamina Buff someone, then attack the crap out of them, not only is it good for their Stamina, but it's good for your Attack Power and Weapon Proficiency. Trust me, once you hit 9999 HP, it takes forever for any of your allies to physically kill you. Even if they do, just cast Life and boost your Life spell.

Tip 2: Use Swap on everyone. Best spell in the game, both for HP and MP. Swapping in rotation gives your allies Low MP status, and so long as they aren't casting the spell and you're using their spell pool, you can keep boosting their base MP. Once it maxes, just keep doing it to boost your Magic.

Tip 3: Cast your own spells on yourself. Good or bad, it boosts your resistance to spells. You can save bad status spells for enemies, but elemental spells boost your elemental resistance. This plus Shell means spells will hardly put a dent in you.

 

[ForceStealer]

With this argument, I could ask why bother playing FF2 when later FFs had better written plots and characters? Gameplay-wise, I prefer returning to the old job system of 3 rather than playing the easily breakable system of FF2, not to mention the HELL (get it?) of an encounter rate in comparison to other FFs..

This isn't an equivalent. Stories are unique (despite whatever oversimplified themes you're about to give me regarding 2's story.) No other FF uses the dialogue system two did, and there aren't any other villains that conquer Hell and bring it to earth.
And is two's encounter rate really worse than one's or three's?

FFII was a good game if for nothing else than its villain. I know the Emperor was not actually the same as the one in Dissidia, but what I saw of him in FFII (which, admittedly wasn't very much, since never I beat the game, to my great shame) was just delightful. And it was a challenging game, too. That said, I hated the levelling system...or maybe I just wasn't very good with it, as that was part of the challenge. xD

Despite what I said, I confess I've never finished two all the way. I always hear conflicting things about the levelling system. Either that it's too hard or too easily broken. Which is it?

Secondly, is the system not basically exactly the one that the Elder Scrolls uses? I know people have issues with TES levelling and all, but it's not as derided as FF2's is. What exactly is the difference in execution?

 

[Dawnbreaker]

I don't think it was the same as the leveling of Skyrim, at least I've not noticed it to be. Skyrim's leveling is more selective, rather than randomized. I mean I know you can force the game to level up you the way you want to in FFII but it seems like a lot of extra effort to customize. Maybe the other ES games are like that, don't know, didn't play them, but Skyrim is much more user-friendly, with less dicking around.

 

[Farron]

With this argument, I could ask why bother playing FF2 when later FFs had better written plots and characters?

To experience Final Fantasy history, see Firion's story and know more about his world than just that random guy with the rose and experience a different leveling up system.

Also if you like playing Final Fantasy IV then Final Fantasy II is good fun too since there is some familiarly between the two

and Final Fantasy's male White Mage and Final Fantasies first rather strong and mentally tough females Hilda and Maria. They are no Samus's but they are a breakthrough for game made in 88

FF3 has onion kinghts ? what the fuck ????

And the DS remake kids had no personality whatsoever, the FF 2 characters had rather basic personalities but at least you could tell that Firion was brave, loved his town, and was shy around flirty women.

Maria was brave too and liked Firion. Minwu was wise, intelligent and mysterious but also noble.

the ff 3 DS kids were basic stereotypes like nerd, treasure hunter dude, noble knight and " the chick "

a 14 year old yaoi Naruto fan- fiction writer could do better with character development

Gameplay-wise, I prefer returning to the old job system of 3 rather than playing the easily breakable system of FF2, not to mention the HELL (get it?) of an encounter rate in comparison to other FFs..

Yes but the Dress Class battle system has been done so much better in FF V, The Tactics games and even X- 2 blows it out of the water with no Blitzballs included.

To be fair Final Fantasy VI has a pretty high encounter rate as well. The encounter rate in The Phoenix Cave is just insane.

FF 2 is no way near a wonderful Final Fantasy game. But the worst in the series ? Lol nope, sorry. Not even close.

 

[Blade]

Okay, let me clarify a bit more about the leveling system.

The system itself is actually quite broken...but the process to exploit it takes a while.

You could argue because it takes a while to exploit the game with god-like stats that it's balanced. But as with FF3, that's not true either.

Let me put it another way:

FFII and FFIII have something in common.

That commonality is in the irony that fighting weak monsters is the best way to get stronger.

In FFII's case it's all about boosting stats through dramatic growth changes (Low HP, Low MP, Repeated Spellcasting, Repeated Attacks). Once you achieve these, the game isn't a problem. The game itself would be a lot more difficult if you simply wandered the world and followed the story without stopping to grind.

In FFIII's case it's similar in that your actions give you job points. The more job points you have the stronger each job becomes. So by fighting weak characters by sitting and blocking all day gives you a ton of turns with which to level up your jobs. Ultimately this maximizes your Job potential, if not your Experience, which comes with time and patience.

The same could also be said of FFXII: The more weak monsters you kill in a Chain, the more Liscence Points you get, the more loot you get per drop to farm Gil. Sure you don't get much EXP, but you get everything you need to progress further in to the game, even if all you're doing is one-hit-kills for hours at a time.

 

[Arth]

I´ve played FF I , II and III in a row in the most actual versions and FF II was easily the worst considering the encounter rate. I never wanted to compare FF II to III story wise as I know Square had their schemes at the developement, I mean, it can´t just be coincidence that the FFs (at least the classic series from I-VI) starting with odd numbers have their focus more on the gameplay while the ones with even numbers have a bigger story and character developement ( at least as I´ve seen them and mostly enjoyed them ).

I can see your points about FF II but there were too many small aspects ( Altair backtracking, the highest encounter rate in any of the remakes of the classic FFs ) which prevented me from enjoying the game as a whole as I did with all the other earlier FFs I fetched later and overall I prefer the usual leveling system of the other games over the mechanics of FF II, you can´t discuss about taste

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

For the record, III's Counter rate is a lot higher than II's. As a matter of fact, II's was even lower than I's.

 

[Arth]

Even in the Remakes? I only have played those, I think I've read about this encounter rate thing in a FAQ or something..but FF II still got enough issues I could criticise even if that's true xD

 

[Blade]

I've played both games (especially recently) and encounter rate is pretty much equal in both games. There is no "Titan's Tunnel" equivalent to FFI where you step on a panel for a guaranteed fight. Sure you get encounters, but the rate is fairly common in both.

Not only that, but the only reason FFIII has a "seemingly" lower encounter rate is because you get airships sooner. Once you have those, the game feels like it speeds up quite a bit.

In FFII and FFIII you have no encounters while you're in the Portable Rowboat, so that's not the issue either. FFII's only downside is the "fake empty rooms with monsters" that you run in to in each dungeon.

Story-wise and Gameplay-wise I don't see FFIII having more over FFII (or vice versa). I honestly think you're generalizing and making assumptions.

I don't know if you've played FFII's 20th Anniversary, or the recently released PSP version of FFIII, but I recommend both. You'll be surprised at the experience.

 

[Arth]

Yep, I still didn´t enjoyed some of the mechanics and even if the Emperor´s story sounds awesome, the final battle against him was lame as hell as long as you have that one sword, I haven´t experienced such an easy gamebreaking tool in the other final battles of the other games. That was a letdown for me and I don´t understand why they didn´t make the game a bit harder by changing the abilities of the sword or something and please, don´t come with the argument ´´ If you want a bigger challenge, just don´t use the sword´´. Usually I play games in a normal fashion and just get all the things I could only miss if I´ve never played a videogame before and wouldn´t know that in every wall could be a secret passage. So why shouldn't I as a normal gamer take the sword and play it as the developers seemingly want me to play it.I think it´s a bad design choice to give me this high class item with such ease and Iexpected the game to be a lot harder if you play it for the first time which is an addition to my list of things I didn´t like in FF II.

It might sound like this but I don´t despise everything the game has done, I like the story, music (the world map theme is one of my Favs of the whole series), some characters, the graphical update in the 20th Anniversary Edition looked also nice so it still got a few ups, but some downs which I already mentioned based on my memories. I think if I would´ve researched a little more, I´d find more things which didn´t make me jump for joy. I´m standing by my opinion that I didn´t find the game quite as tremendous as the other games of the series and I still would consider it the worst of the classic series based on my experiences with the 20th Anniversary Edition. Sorry if I got on the wrong side of some FF II fans here, it´s just an opinion...

P.S: Sorry for the many ´´I´´s at the beginning of the sentences and the grammatical errors, been too tired to write in a more beautiful way and don´t take everything too serious, I never wanted to attack somebody just because he/she likes the game

 

[Blade]

the final battle against him was lame as hell as long as you have that one sword

This ALONE proves to me you haven't played the game recently.

It's called a Blood Sword... And really they aren't that broken, just a stopgap for better weapons (depending on your damage output). Also, in the 20th Anniversary version, there's a post-game dungeon that makes you kill the Emperor in Heaven, which makes it even harder.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

FFII was actually the last of the classics I tackled simply because I had heard so many bad things about it. I ended up liking it better than I and III, and sometimes more than IV.

 

[Blade]

I was just thinking about part of the reason I like FFII.

Honestly, I wish more games ceased with the Level System. No more level 100 caps or 99 stats or capping at 255.

Stats should be based on a ratio system or something. Like a percentage. I do like the way the FFXIII series handled the damage output in that you can't do high damage unless you stagger an enemy, but something's missing.

Something that can make a game feel like...I dunno...like it's not over and your stats can still be managed somehow. Like an infinite stat generator or something (I know that sounds abstract but that's the only word I can use to describe it).

Like, for example...let's say you made a powerful character with 'devastating physical attacks' (because you've been practicing with your sword every day)...they could be in a high percentile like 95% or something. But then...some random species of monsters shows up (an evolved subspecies or something) and tweaks your Percentile and it automatically drops because something stronger appeared in the field.

It doesn't mean you're any weaker than you started...it just means you have to get stronger to compete with the evolving bestiary (or some equivalent).

 

[Arth]

Fighting with the Blood Sword ...

If you would´ve read my posts, you would have seen that I used the correct term already, not calling it again should symbolise that I dislike the sword and its way too overpowered skill against the endboss I guess, we won´t come to an agreement about the game...