Where to start with this one. First off the story is good, kind of what you’d expect from a final fantasy, big bad guy, a twist and Cid is introduced in this game as the inventor. Unfortunately that’s where my praise for this one stops, the gameplay is ok, it’s the same turn based combat as the first game but the level up system is this game is very divisive.
It reminds me of the Skyrim style of levelling where you gain xp for your weapons like swords or axes or magic and the more you use them the stronger you are, which is great except FF2 also does this for health. So the more you get hit the more health you get, which makes it very easy and tempting to exploit this and break the game. You could for example go unarmed with one weaker character and wail on one of your others and get your health up to 9999 before even the first boss if you really wanted to. The pixel remaster does fix this a bit, it lets you switch it to health gained after a set amount of enemies are killed but it’s still very easy to exploit.
For example I had no idea where I was going and ended up grinding through 2 hours of higher levelled monsters with magic which meant that all my boss fights I could run on auto and win while AFK making an unbranded non sponsored noodle in a pot snack. This dulled any challenge in the game for me and meant I flew through the story once I realised where I was going.
Another issue I have is I’m addicted to platinums and intend to try and platinum as many ff’s as I can and the bestiary in this one that you need to 100% is in the strangest order imaginable. When your trying to catch all the enemies and the first 3 you find are 15,74 and 140 in the list it makes it very challenging, in an annoying way. I had to use a guide online to find them all, some of which are missable, which was very annoying and takes away from the achievement.
I finished this game in 14 hours and like I said before it was very easy to do after my initial balls up which led to being massively overleveled. I enjoyed to basic story and I do like the swap out mechanic for the 4th character in the party which constantly swaps at points in the game, however they are irrelevant because of this as my main 3 we’re 4 or 5 times stronger than them.
There are no classes in this game so everyone can do everything. I can see where they were going, giving you more freedom to level the areas you want and make your party more custom to your preference however it doesn’t seem to work, probably again due to the massive overleveling but none of them feel like they have any real characteristics. I prefer having a leader that’s balanced, a tank and a mage or two.
Overall I can’t give this game any higher than a 6/10, it’s not bad but it just doesn’t feel right and the combat elements take away from what this could have been. I can see why the original was divisive and if it wasn’t for the fixes the pixel remaster introduces this could have been as low as a 4/10. After that disappointment, it’s on to the next one.
Reviewed by MoonHead
Released on Sony Playstation 4 April 19th 2023.
TastyRetroGaming 