Final Fantasy II
Brandon g
Even though this game came out in 1988, one short year after the first Final Fantasy, this game seems to be the antithesis of its predecessor. Whereas in Final Fantasy I, your characters could be a Fighter, a White Mage, a Thief, or a number of other classes of warriors, the characters in FF2 had names, personalities, stories, and feelings. This was a huge step for RPGs. Even by today's standards, the characters and plot in FF2 are some of the strongest out there. Also, this game seems to have the least rampant Final Fantasy logic of the entire bunch.
I must confess, I've not played the original NES version of this game. The NES version was never officially released (or translated to English) in the US; many fan translations popped up, but I couldn't get one to work for me. Square later re-released the game on Playstation with new graphics and sound, and a new translation. This is the version I've played. So I might be missing out on some of the great Final Fantasy logic that occurred in the original 8-bit version. Really, this is alright with me.
Experience Points? Phshaw!
The most revolutionary part of this game was that it totally did away with experience points. Instead, the game employed what I like to call the Common Sense Method of Leveling Up: when you use a sword, you get better at using a sword; when you use magic, you get better at using magic; when you dodge a hit, you get better at dodging hits; and when you carry heavy weapons and armor around, you get stronger.
While this made a lot of sense and it allowed players to customize their characters as they saw fit, it also provided players with a unique challenge: leveling up was hard. As your characters got stronger, they took less damage and dodged more hits, meaning that it would take longer for them to take any real damage to build up their endurance. Players got around this by making their characters beat the stuffing out of each other while their opponents watched in utter amazement. Indeed, many enemies would run away in terror or confusion as players would turn their characters on themselves.
This also raised some other interesting questions, such as: How in the world can someone shoot him or herself with a bow and arrow? Final Fantasy players don't ask questions, though. Not questions pertaining to logic, anyway.
Yarrr! We are Pirates!
Without a doubt, the coolest part of this game is Leila, the pirate chick (originally named "Raila" in Japanese, because there's sometimes a little trouble distinguishing between Rs and Ls when translating from Japanese to Engrish). Final Fantasy II is the first Final Fantasy game (and the only one, besides FF5) to feature a pirate as a playable character. Not only that, but the pirate is a girl. That's so sexy. Mmmmm. Oh, anyway, players usually agree that Leila, in addition to being uber-sexy, is the best temporary character in the game, thus again proving that pirate + sexy = awesome.
A female pirate. Mmmmm.
Final Fantasy Logic Score: 2
There isn't a lot of faulty logic here to work with; but the reviews and player's guides for this game go to show how weird the Final Fantasy community truly is. Most Final Fantasy players agree that this is the worst game in the series because their logic is considerably skewed from playing other Final Fantasy games. Squaresoft learned from their mistake here and made sure that every subsequent Final Fantasy game was packed full of Final Fantasy logic for their rabid, illogical fans.
