Pros: You know, there are games that get released in Japan that never see the light of day here in the US. In turn, some of those games never see...

Cons: Oh, boy. Where to begin? 1)Gameplay: Here is where the bulk of the game's problems lie, I must admit. After the success of the first game,...

Pros: You know, there are games that get released in Japan that never see the light of day here in the US. In turn, some of those games never see the light of day at all outside of Japan. Some of those games never see the light of day at all--for good reason. FF2 was released for the NES in 1988 in Japan, following the surprise success of the original FF, the game that saved Square's financial ass. Until 2003, the only way to play the second in the series was via emulators and ROMS. So why did it take 15 years for FF2 to make its way over here? No idea. Can we guess? I don't know. Regardless, it finally made its way over for the PS1, which is the version I'm reviewing.

Now, keep this in mind as you're reading this review: this was a game released for the NES. For those of you newbies who think that the era of video games began with the N64, the PS1, and the Dreamcast…how I'd love to see you plod through a game like the original FF, or the original Legend of Zelda. You'd cry. They couldn't fit a long, convoluted plot or 8 hours of cut scene on an 8-bit cartridge. All they had was a loose story and lots of gameplay. Repetitive? Oh, yeah. Annoying as all hell? You betcha. However, back then, we loved it. That's what made video games a challenge. At the end of a 22-hour game, fighting millions of random battles, here you are at the final boss--and you should feel a sense of accomplishment after you did the impossible…but…

…this game made me wanna cry. To the older gamers, this second FF game is a long exercise of endurance. With everything that seems to be so wrong with this game, I am shocked that the series kept going. By the time I got to the end of the game, I never even bothered with getting all the items and rare drops--I just wanted it OVER. Here's some pros (and they were hard to find):

1) Well, keep in mind that this was a re-release of a game originally on NES. The gameplay graphics did get cleaned up a bit, making it look like an SNES game. Also added was an opening CG video. Also, the battle screen took on a couple of changes, most noticeably the information areas during battle, and now we have pre-rendered backgrounds depending on where you are. A nice touch.

2) A main premise in this game's plot is the navigating through dungeons (as was true for the early FF games as a whole). As in the first game, there are no save points in dungeons (save points in dungeons won't exist until FF4, when the SNES cartridge can handle it). However, the PS remake gives you a wonderful thing called a Memo Save function which enables you to quick-save your game to the temporary memory of the PS. It's horribly useful when you're going through a 10-floor dungeon and know that if you die, that's a couple hours of gameplay lost. By using the Memo Save, the game loads from the temporary memory and will stay there until the power is turned off or the data is overwritten with a new memo save. This is a welcome addition from the NES original, where there was no such function; if you died in a dungeon, tough shit--you're forced to reload from your last real save point. With just how difficult this game is, the Memo Save is a god-send.

3) For its time, the story was pretty solid, simplistic as it was. It was the first of the series to have a semblance of an actual story, as opposed to just 4 characters running around saving the world. FF2 had a number of firsts, things that would stay throughout the series and are still around today, a few of the big things being:

--First game to have the Chocobo, and its theme song.
--First game to have a character Cid, and having the theme of Cids owning Airships.
--First game to use MP.
--Only FF game without the summon creature Bahamut.
--First game to have characters with real names and personalities.
--First game to have an androgynous character, though that might be the fault of the CG intro.

As would be the case for all the FF games up to 9, music was done entirely by Nobuo Uematsu, which ended up being rearranged in the PS remake. A decent sound, some of which still stands up in Uematsu's giant body of work.

Cons: Oh, boy. Where to begin?

1)Gameplay: Here is where the bulk of the game's problems lie, I must admit. After the success of the first game, Square decided they wanted to be a little experimental with the next game. We begin right off the bat with the battle system. Battles are conducted as normal, simple turn based battle system (as the ATB wouldn't come into play until FF4). However, upon victory--Square decided to toss the traditional methods of using experience points--individual stats will get raised depending on the actions in battle. Examples:

--if one character takes a beating, you will see an increase in max HP.
--if one character uses a lot of MP in battle, you will see an increase in MP.
--if one character uses predominately physical attacks, you will see an increase in strength and attack power.

There is a tradeoff, though. If you overuse physical attacks, you'll see a decrease in magic power. The reverse is also true--if magic is overused, you'll see a decrease in attack power and strength.

While it looks innocent enough, it quickly becomes annoying as the player realizes that in order to raise HP, the character usually must remain nearly dead, often being forced to play with a party that is scraping by on less than 50% of each character's max HP. Same goes for MP--to see a rise in MP, one must senselessly waste their MP in battle. If you go through a dungeon and heal to full after every battle, chances are you won't have much increase in HP by the time you're done. By the time I got to the final boss, my characters had around 4000 HP, but only about 80 MP, simply because I refused to waste my MP--I needed it to use Cure outside of battle.

With each type of magic you use, you see a rise in experience for that spell. When you use a spell enough, it levels up. However, one will find that as the spells level up, MP doesn't go up with it. When you use Cure 1 so many times, it becomes Cure 2--that same spell now costs 2 MP to use rather than 1. By the time I got to the end, we were at Cure 9. You'd think that it'd cure a lot. You will find that before going into a dungeon, you will go through so many ethers because ethers restore 20-40 MP at a time. A needless waste, I think.

2) Another time-consuming element of the ability system deals with the weapons you gain during the game. Every time you use a physical attack in battle, you will gain some experience with a weapon (or unarmed if you have no weapon equipped). The more you use it, the more proficient you will become with that weapon (or bare fists), and the stronger you become as a result of weapon proficiency is amazing. The downfall comes when you want to change to a different weapon type that will give you higher attack power. Example: a character spends the first several hours of the game using swords, and eventually becomes very proficient at it. You go into a shop and see that if this same character switches to a stronger axe, you'll note the increase in attack power. The catch? You have to start back at 0 proficiency and use THAT weapon until you become proficient at that. It's good for the first half of the game, get everyone proficient in a wide range of weapons, but as you get late in the game, have characters stay with one type of weapon because by the time you get toward the end of the game, it'll take too long to become proficient at a new weapon type. Luckily, this idea was ditched after the second game.

3) In dungeons, the rate of random enemy encounters go up--you'll have a random battle every few seconds as opposed to the world map, where encounters are pretty low. Remember, this is a lesson in endurance--it's going to get repetitive VERY fast. And in dungeons, there are many items scattered about. Most of them are beneficial, and key items are often found in single rooms. The problem lies herein: dungeons are abundant in rooms. However, nearly every single room in every single dungeon is empty, a dead-end. Once inside a dead-end room, the enemy encounter rate skyrockets to the point where once you take that first step toward the exit, a battle ensues, often times with a really difficult enemy. After that battle is over, often times you will take your next step--and go immediately into another battle with another slew of hard enemies. The annoying thing is thus: unless you know exactly where to go, you're forced to check every single room of the dungeon because that key item could be ANYWHERE. 98% of the rooms in any dungeon are dead-ends and empty. But that key item might not be on the final floor of the dungeon--it could be in the middle. Anywhere. Combine that with the already super-high random battle rate that already exists in a dungeon--that, hands down, is the most aggravating part of the game.

The sad part? It got toned down for the PS re-release. If it was this annoying in the PS version, I shudder to think what it was like in the NES game WITHOUT a memo save function.

Final thoughts: unless you want to play all of the main numbered FF games, or you really want a major challenge, I don't advise playing this game. As I've said, I love the old games, I love the challenge, but this was beyond a challenge--this was work and not fun. The ending itself wasn't even gratifying, but I'll let you decide that on your own. Luckily, many of the things they tried in FF2 got ditched afterwards (although I hear they resurrected some of these ideas in FF14), always a plus. Because of the horrible gameplay, this ranks as one of the worst FF games ever. If you play it, I wish you luck, but don't come crying to me when you're mired in battle after endless battle.