Final Fantasy II - Is the Pixelated Update as Poor as the Original?

I must confess, I was dreading writing about this game, although I am a fan of the Final Fantasy Series, this one was the one that wasn’t like the rest. Although not as bad a Final Fantasy XIII, to me it is quite close.

Final Fantasy II was a sequel to the first although not directly, it featured a new story, new characters and new mechanics which will be covered later.

Now I know what you are thinking, how could have played a game that was only released in Japan? Well the answer to that involves something that was dubious called ‘Emulation’ but let’s not go into that and instead go into why this game is the ‘lame duck’ of the series.

Firstly, they stripped the mechanics that worked in the first game, the magic system changed from spell slots to magic points, admittedly this worked in future games but not here. There is no leveling, to strengthen your characters you do an action such as swinging a sword and then you level up that ability, to level up your magic and hit points you must lose more than half of them in a battle after that your hit points and magic points increase. I admit it makes grinding interesting... for about five minutes. You then realise you have to stand there doing the same action over and over again, taking punishment to even stand a chance against the monsters and bosses the game throws at you.

Gone are the way spells worked, in the original game you had three levels of magic, fire you then brought fire 2 when you were powerful enough and then you brought fire 3(later changed to fira and firaga).  In this game, you buy the spell and cast it over and over again till it levels up, although an interesting concept, having to go through sixteen levels of magic is just painful and when you get the three best spells about three hours from the end of the game you just don’t bother with them. Why would you when the final boss can be defeated in one hit with a certain weapon?

Ok now onto the plot, I appreciate the fact that old school RPGs had you were a good guy and kill the evil bad, but when you try to rip of Star Wars create a fantasy sword and sorcery game around it and do it poorly, maybe it is time to go back to the drawing board.

So is the pixel edition any better… short answer is no. Long answer, they, may have removed the bugs from the first iteration of the game, and improved on the mechanics, however, the mechanics are the same tired ones, and the plot is still a cheap sword and sorcery version of Star Wars. But like Final Fantasy, the graphics are amazing and the music is amazing. Just don’t have me cast Fire 16 again, please.

I rate it two out of five battle axes.