Genesis Device (Day 210)

I'm incredibly relieved to say that I've finished Final Fantasy II. With that done, there's only Final Fantasy X left for me to complete in the main series, although there are quite a few side games that I haven't touched. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do about Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. There's a good chance I'll be playing the latter at some point, but when would I get the opportunity to play XI? And what amount of time would I have to put into these games to consider them completed? In the case of Final Fantasy XI, the level cap is 99. Normally i would consider an MMO "beaten" once I've reached the level cap, but that seems incredibly excessive in its case.

In the case of Final Fantasy II, I definitely can't say it ranks among me favorites in the series. There's a good reason why I've waited this long to actually play through the game. Although there are many positive aspects of this game, the execution is lacking dramatically, at least in the Origins version that adheres so closely to the original. Like the Elder Scrolls series, Final Fantasy II has no traditional leveling system. Stats are increased and modified by taking certain actions. If you take damage during a battle, your HP may rise. If you attack with a weapon, you may gain strength and/or proficiency with said weapon. This is all well and good and I think at least on this level the system works. However, leveling spells is a different story.

Magic is drastically undertuned in Final Fantasy II, especially when it comes to hitting multiple enemies. In the first game of the series, only higher level magic was capable of hitting multiple opponents--but the damage was the same regardless of the number of targets. In Final Fantasy II, spells can be single or multi-targeted with a massive decrease in damage. As a result, it is seldom ever worth it to target spells at multiple enemies. Unfortunately, even when spells are single-targeted, they'll generally do far less damage than attacking physically. Furthermore, it is a significant time investment to even level up a spell far enough to deal just barely comparable damage to these attacks.

Spells required 100 points to level up. At early levels, you might get 2 points per spell casting, but very soon you'll only be getting 1 point per cast--which means that you'll have to cast a spell 100 times to level up a single time. Spells cap out at level 16. By the time I defeated the final boss, Maria's Flare was at level 8 and was dealing somewhere around 800 damage. Comparatively, Gus, Firion, and Leon were dealing anywhere from 900-1500 damage just by attacking physically with no investment of MP. To be honest, it seems like I would have been better served not using attacking magic at all--although support spells like Berserk and Haste are still eminently useful.

I haven't played the PSP version of Final Fantasy II so I can't say if it's any more balanced or not. I like the system introduced in the game but it is impressively flawed. I would definitely be interested in playing a version of the game that was more effectively balanced.