I beat the Famicom version of Final Fantasy II, and I liked the game, but I'm going to spend most of this message complaining about stuff that doesn't matter and embarrassing myself by showing that I play way too many video games.
The main reason I played this game is because I like playing the original version of games. Before now, I had only played the Dawn of Souls version of Final Fantasy II and I, but had been meaning to fix that for a while. I beat the NES version of Final Fantasy I on the NES Classic, and last year I finally beat the Famicom version of Final Fantasy III, which I had wanted to do for a long time because I really wanted to play a 2D version of that game (and apparently I'm not alone seeing how Square charges more for the Pixel Remaster of III than for I and II). With Final Fantasy II done, I have finally finished the NES/Famicom trilogy of Final Fantasy games.
So I was always going to play Final Fantasy II for the Famicom, but there's a reason it sort of jumped in line ahead of other games. That reason being gaming YouTube. I don't watch much gaming YouTube anymore, but for some reason YouTube has been constantly suggesting to me a five hour video about why Kingdom Hearts III is bad. The only Kingdom Hearts videos I watch are by Just A Pancake, who hasn't uploaded anything since September of 2020, so I'm not sure why YouTube thought I would be interested, but I was. I ignored it for a few days, but after seeing it suggested at the end of every video I watched, eventually my curiosity got the best of me. What could they possibly have to say for five hours? So I clicked, and it was absolutely positively dreadfully awful. I barely made it through the intro. He had nothing interesting to say. It was generic and bland and like the script had been written by an AI that was programmed with thousands of other gaming YouTube videos.
I then looked through the timestamps of the video, and saw that it was just the names of all the worlds from the game. Not wanting to watch the whole video, but wanting to at least know where the video goes after the intro seeing how I was already invested and the term sunk cost fallacy means nothing to me, I clicked on the Monsters, Inc. section as it happened to be in the middle. All he did was go through the Monsters, Inc. part of the game, summarizing the story and saying, "I liked this part, but I did not like this part." They showed cutscenes with no commentary during it and would just say afterwards whether it was good or bad. There was no analysis at all. They were just going through the entire game, world by world, and pointing out what they liked and didn't like. No deep dissection worthy of a five hour video. It was essentially an abridged let's play, but a lot worse than what Tim Rogers did in his Tokimeki Memorial review.
And that's my issue with gaming YouTube. So few people have anything of value to add to the conversation. They don't think and just repeat the same stuff over and over and over. Yes, we all know that the west did not get the real version of Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES, stop saying it. This is where it relates to Final Fantasy II. Every video I've ever watched about the game mentions how grindy the level up system is. How you're never going to get your weapon and magic to high levels without grinding. How hitting yourself is the best way to gain HP. How they use the target-cancel bug to level up quickly. But they never mention if they had to do any of that stuff. Whether or not the game was hard enough to necessitate either grinding or exploiting the system. They just say they did it and then complain about it.
Now then, I never grinded in Final Fantasy II, but I played the GBA version while every review I've ever seen was the PlayStation version. Maybe that version was harder and required such methods. So I wanted to test that, but instead of playing the PlayStation, I would play the hardest version, the Famicom version, and see what happened.
(As an aside, what does the average gamer mean by grinding? This is another gaming YouTube problem I have. Whenever a YouTuber complains about RPGs, they mention how you have to grind. Do they consider just regular fighting in general to be grinding? There are very few games where I think you have to stop and fight random battles so you are strong enough to continue. The vast majority of RPGs will have you at the right level if you just fight normally as you go along. Are these people running away from most battles and then can't beat a boss until they grind? I don't know what the definition of grinding is for most people, but with my definition even most old games don't have much grinding. Of course Dragon Quest I is basically a game entirely dedicated to grinding, and Dragon Quest II requires it because they didn't have time to balance the later parts of the game, but most of the time with old games you have to grind a little bit at the beginning but then you're good to go for the rest of the game. Like in the first Phantasy Star game where at the start you can only survive one battle before having to go back into town to heal, but once you do that a few times and are properly leveled, the rest of the game is smooth.)
After having beaten Final Fantasy II, I can say that you don't have to grind at all, even at the beginning. It is by far the easiest of the NES/Famicom Final Fantasy games. Don't worry about the leveling system, it will all happen naturally. You are not meant to get your weapon and magic to the max level. What JRPG actually expects you to be the max level to beat the game? Even the previously mentioned Dragon Quest I, a game about grinding, only expects you to get about two-thirds of the way to the max level. By the end of Final Fantasy II, other than my Cure spell, my highest level magic was Thunder at level four and it didn't matter. This game is easy. I even put myself at a disadvantage in the beginning by using Maria as a fighter and Guy as a mage, therefore losing out on the benefit of their initial stats.
I didn't grind for gil, I didn't grind for stats, I didn't use the target-cancel glitch, I didn't use the Blood Sword on the final boss, and I didn't struggle, I just kept progressing. There was one time when I thought I had to grind, but then I remembered I could show the Pass to get onto the Dreadnought instead of fighting the Captain, which I was not expected to be strong enough to beat at that time.
Final Fantasy II is not a masterpiece. There are plenty of flaws (the game doesn't even have an airship theme
), but the leveling system is not one of them. Think of it like a rudimentary class system. You're deciding what you want your character to specialize in, and without thinking too much about it, the game is going to handle the rest. You will level naturally simply by playing the game, it will just be presented to you in a different format.
Yes, I am someone that posts on a video game enthusiast forum, so I'm deep into gaming, I have played a lot of video games, and I'm better than most people at them. (The most embarrassing flex possible.) However, I feel like someone that dedicates a YouTube channel to video games would also be decent at video games. Even the ones that say they're bad at video games usually aren't bad. You watch their gameplay and they're typically just making beginners' mistakes that everyone made while calling themselves bad. So these people don't need to abuse the systems of Final Fantasy II. It feels like the issue I talked about earlier, one YouTuber mentioned it so they all have to mention it and it feels like the same script over and over and over again with no thought put into it. Just reading off the Wikipedia page and adding the same commentary that everyone else has.
My point is, if YouTube also recommends the five hour Kingdom Hearts III video, don't watch it. It's really bad. I'm not saying that as a salty fanboy, I haven't even play Kingdom Hearts III. I'm saying it as someone who really regrets giving that video a view.
Thank you for reading about my petty annoyances and how I beat a game entirely out of spite.