FFII's role in the growing of the franchise.

Imagine this for just a second. If Final Fantasy II had flopped horribly in Japan, would our favorite characters ever have existed? Cloud and Sephiroth would just be doodles in Amano's sketchbook, perhaps. Maybe another series would have sprung up in Final Fantasy's place. Do you think when Square made Final Fantasy II that they were just looking for a quick buck based on the surprising popularity of the first roleplaying game, or do you think that perhaps they knew what they had control of from the beginning, an awesome staple in the roleplaying game genre?

Final Fantasy's success in 1987 was unexpected, so if FF II had flopped, it would probably have been recorded as the so-and-so sequel of a good game. But we wouldn't be here discussing it, so we wouldn't miss the series because there would be nothing to miss.
Incidentally, there's a chance that the Dragon Quest series would have been hyped a lot more in the States, and now we would all be DQ fanboys in a DQ forum.

Incidentally, I love Dragon Quest. =D

Is it any good? I only saw DQ 8, but I'm not sure it's my kind of game. What's your say?

It would suprise me if they anticipated that it would be the first of 12+ sequels. Maybe modestly sucessful, but not that sucessful.

I doubt even Lucus himself foresaw that he'd be able to make more than three Star Wars movies.

Am I the only one that found DQ to be really friggin' hard? I've played DQI and DQII, and they were hella hard. Maybe I just sucked at them.

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Originally Posted by Morningstar

Am I the only one that found DQ to be really friggin' hard? I've played DQI and DQII, and they were hella hard. Maybe I just sucked at them.

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DQ games are indeed hard. But they're still awesome

If FF II would have flopped, the rest of FF series would have never existed. We either would've gotten another series or DQ would've been a lot more popular

Its too hard to say what would happen, I would think that JRPGs would probably be snuffed out and instead we would only have boring "infinite hours of stat tweaking for no smurfing point" western RPGs. I know FFIV would be a very different game cause FFII seems to be its heaviest influence.

Since Final Fantasy was made because it was their final game(which was fantasy-based), I think it'd be ironic if their sequel ended up being their last game. :P

Later Dragon Quest games are easier than the early ones, in my experience. I didn't experience much trouble in DQV, and I haven't experienced much in DQVIII yet either, although I'm still only about twenty hours into it. But yes, the DQ series is well worth playing, though to date the only ones I've completed are DQI and DQV.

Some people here feel that FFII was the so-and-so sequel of a good game. I haven't really played much of either, so I can't comment. :monster:

I think they were just ridin' the wave, possibly while developing better ideas for FFIII and the job classes and all that. But it wasn't really a flop, and introduced significant character development and a more complex story.

As an RPG I think Final Fantasy II is amazingly smurfing awesome.
As a Final Fantasy, however, it's just so-so.

Standing on the shoulders of giants. FF2 blazed the way for so much that the franchise holds dear.

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Originally Posted by Linus

Imagine this for just a second. If Final Fantasy II had flopped horribly in Japan, would our favorite characters ever have existed?

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>>> We would be playing Square's Tom Sawyer XII right now..

FFII introduced the side view without the boxed in menus and added more character development as opposed to the last game.

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Originally Posted by Crossblades

DQ games are indeed hard. But they're still awesome

If FF II would have flopped, the rest of FF series would have never existed. We either would've gotten another series or DQ would've been a lot more popular

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To be honest, I didn't really find Dragon Quest games to be hard, though I did play those first before ever trying a Final Fantasy game [back in the NES/SNES age of course]. I feel that recent Dragon Quest games weren't very good at all, but the old ones were the best [I-IV]. Dragon Quest is awesome in many ways except for the fact that Akira Toriyama does the artwork for it. But obviously, Dragon Quest no longer piqued my interest after Dragon Quest IV, whereas Final Fantasy still continues to pique my interest.

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Originally Posted by scrumpleberry

I think they were just ridin' the wave, possibly while developing better ideas for FFIII and the job classes and all that. But it wasn't really a flop, and introduced significant character development and a more complex story.

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The story seems rather dry to me, but then again it's not something I'm going to hold against it, considering the era in which it was developed, in which case it was quite an advanced story considering other games of that time. Also, I'm pretty amazed at how they were able to cram all the information for the skill-up system into the NES cartridge [it seems a lot more complex and meticulous than a basic leveling system]. To me, that's pretty amazing.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Its too hard to say what would happen, I would think that JRPGs would probably be snuffed out and instead we would only have boring "infinite hours of stat tweaking for no smurfing point" western RPGs. I know FFIV would be a very different game cause FFII seems to be its heaviest influence.

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I doubt JRPG's would have disappeared, or even completely banished from the States. Whenever there is an absence of a viable product for a market there is money to be made. Square, Enix, Sega, or some other company would have found success in the US likely.

Also, there are plenty of times I prefer "infinite hours of stat tweaking for no smurfing point" western RPG's to "infinite hours of leveling to be the stupidly hard super secret boss" eastern RPG's. :)

If it flopped, it might not have been the end of Final Fantasy, Square might have just tried harder on a kind of "comeback" game for FFIII. But then again, FFIII itself did kinda go back to the style of I, in many different ways, and shed off a lot of the changes that were made in FFII. It makes sense when you figure Akitoshi Kawazu was the director, and took the levelling system in FFII into the SaGa series.

If FF DID end, it would've changed the direction of Japanese RPG's. There might have been another series to innovate and set the style for other JRPG's (other than Dragon Quest that is). Or they would've all been more like Dragon Quest...

In the end, this is all speculation, but I do feel FFII is the best Final Fantasy on the NES, its Gameboy Advance port is one of my favorite games in the series.

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Originally Posted by Rase

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Its too hard to say what would happen, I would think that JRPGs would probably be snuffed out and instead we would only have boring "infinite hours of stat tweaking for no smurfing point" western RPGs. I know FFIV would be a very different game cause FFII seems to be its heaviest influence.

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I doubt JRPG's would have disappeared, or even completely banished from the States. Whenever there is an absence of a viable product for a market there is money to be made. Square, Enix, Sega, or some other company would have found success in the US likely.

Also, there are plenty of times I prefer "infinite hours of stat tweaking for no smurfing point" western RPG's to "infinite hours of leveling to be the stupidly hard super secret boss" eastern RPG's. :)

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I may have been hasty when saying "snuffed out" but it depends on who had the strongest influence when it came to creating "story driven" games. Phantasy Star pioneered it but I feel DQ is what made it dominant and I feel DQ only started to move that route due to its rivalry with FF.

I just wonder if FF would have tried another story based game had II flopped? The original NES FFIV may have come to pass and we may have never seen the FFIV we know. They may have stuck to something closer to early DQ instead of gravitating towards Phantasy Star. Had that been the case, who knows how many series would have gone down the same route. FF may not have started the idea but I feel they pushed the boundaries of JRPG's in the SNES era and its possible it could have been a more muted experience had they not gone down the path of story telling. JRPGs may still exist but they would be very different from what we know. Course this is all speculation.

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Originally Posted by KoShiatar

Final Fantasy's success in 1987 was unexpected, so if FF II had flopped, it would probably have been recorded as the so-and-so sequel of a good game. But we wouldn't be here discussing it, so we wouldn't miss the series because there would be nothing to miss.
Incidentally, there's a chance that the Dragon Quest series would have been hyped a lot more in the States, and now we would all be DQ fanboys in a DQ forum.

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I've been a fanboy on a DQ forum for quite awhile.

FF2 is a very important game in the series for several reasons:
1. It introduced chocobos and Cid for the first time.
2. It was the first game in the series to feature named main characters with storylines and basic personalities. Though they went back to generic heroes in FF3, it was for the last time before they switched back to FF2's style for good.
3. It had a complex battle system for its time as well as introducing temporary characters and allowing you to fully customise your characters, which you could not do in the original.
I agree that if FF2 had flopped we would not be experiencing FF today, and I think the JRPG genre as a whole would be quite different. One good thing that would have come out of it is no Compilation of FF7 and no Spirits Within. I still want those 2 hours of my life back.

Two was the first one I played, and I loved it.
also, I have never played dragon quest

I loved The Spirits Within :(

Holy 2009 thread! :eek: Oh well, FFII needs the traffic!

I don't think FFII was just Square trying to cash in. They completely redesigned the leveling system for one, and for two they took the time to create a story that went far beyond games of its time. It seems like they took FFI's success and decided 'well that worked, let's open up the can of ideas now and really wow them!'