I think I figured out what's really wrong with this game

Two things.

One, it was trying too hard to do far too much at once. It changed everything from the ground up with only one game before it as a frame of reference. To its defence a LOT of games in the late 80s were experimental sequels, such as Zelda II, the infamous reskin of Doki-Doki Panic as SMB2 and so on, but those were all still good games in their own right. Not that I don't like FF2; I actually quite enjoyed each attempt I've made to play through it (on what must be like my fourth run through the game now, and what I'm confident will be my second time actually beating it... damn it's hard!) but once you happily embrace all the stuff that's completely different to the first with how you develop characters I find it genuinely enjoyable.

Two, it gets a bit repetitive. Every boss fight I've done so far has been a case of having Maria cast Berserk on Guy, having Guy hit it with an Ancient Sword to inflict Curse, then having Guy switch to a better sword to finish it off. Almost every boss fight has been two rounds. Then there's the random encounters: I'm basically spamming Mini and Toad for almost all of them now that they're at a high-enough level to hit almost every time.

As I say, I still like this game, but now that I've played it a lot what I consider to be its real flaws are just getting that much more obvious.

What did you think was ultimately wrong with this game?

This coincides with repetitiveness but I will say the dungeon design. It is atrocious in this game. Barring the linear "yellow brick road" dungeon design of FFX and XIII, I can honestly say that FFII has the worst dungeon design in the series. If it wasn't so easy to bork the gameplay, then the game might have been salvaged. Instead, most of the dungeons are pretty much meandering mazes with huge encounter rates, involving you searching through doors that 90% of the time lead you into a barren room which you are transported into the middle of instead of just the doorway, and said rooms have an even higher encounter rate than the normal dungeon. Even with high powered party, the dungeons and encounter rate come off more tedious than challenging like in say FFI and III where it is very easy to be killed by even normal encounters if you are just haphazardly paying attention.

As long as you build the characters along the way instead of just power grinding early, then the dungeons are not so bad, but if you are playing Origins and want 100% on Monsters and treasures, this game will drive you mad...

Other than that, I don't appreciate the limited Inventory made more atrocious by Key items taking up permanent slots. Where's the Fat Chocobo when you need him?

Fully agree with Kanno. I played the Origins version and dungeons were just a Quicksave affair. Can't be doing with this. Step step step ENCOUNTER step step ENCOUNTER step ENCOUNTER business. A little cheap, but it was driving me to frustration.

Still, you make a good point about it doing too much at once. I mean, I can't knock it down for this, but when you consider what a leap it was between that and FF1 in terms of what they were trying to do, their hearts were in the right place.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Instead, most of the dungeons are pretty much meandering mazes with huge encounter rates, involving you searching through doors that 90% of the time lead you into a barren room which you are transported into the middle of instead of just the doorway, and said rooms have an even higher encounter rate than the normal dungeon.

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For some reason my friends find it hilarious when I use the term "encounter room" playing this game.

It's funny because its an accurate description of the game. ;)

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

What did you think was ultimately wrong with this game?

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It was too good for this world.

The story is a star wars rip off?:bigsmile:

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Originally Posted by Christmas

The story is a star wars rip off?:bigsmile:

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Funny, I always felt that way about XII, but not II. Really, there's some Star Wars in many of the FF games.

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Originally Posted by Alpha2099

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Originally Posted by Christmas

The story is a star wars rip off?:bigsmile:

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Funny, I always felt that way about XII, but not II. Really, there's some Star Wars in many of the FF games.

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The opening FMV literally looks like a scene from a Star Wars movie.

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Originally Posted by Alpha2099

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Originally Posted by Christmas

The story is a star wars rip off?:bigsmile:

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Funny, I always felt that way about XII, but not II. Really, there's some Star Wars in many of the FF games.

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The common consensus is that FFXII feels like FFII which copied Star Wars :D

XII feels more like Star Wars because the advanced capabilities of the system (PS2 vs. NES) allowed the world of XII to look more Star Wars-esque. I think there were some types of humanoid races that looked like Jar Jar.

I like the battle system of this game. It reminds me of those old bullies at school that go " stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself " !


I find it weirdly hilarious that the basic battle system to gain tons of HP is basically the characters hitting themselves. :jess:

I don't really see the Star Wars vibe within it though. Alot of the FF games have the underground rebel group defeating the evil empire or evil company or evil government...

Well you've got a young boy who loses his family and joins the rebel army that is led by a strong willed princess of a fallen kingdom, the evil sorcerer emperor has a dark mysterious bad ass knight with strange powers backing him up as his side kick and has a strange connection to the main characters, and part of the plot involves rescuing the princess from a powerful doomsday flying vehicle that can level large populous areas with ease and you ultimately destroy it. That right thee is about half the plot of FFII, that's probably a quarter of XII's plot though the Leviathan is not anything special like the Dreadnaught of FFII is. So in a nutshell:

Firion = Luke Skywalker
Dark Knight Leon = Anakin Skywalker/ Darth Vader
Emperor = Emperor Palpatine
Dreadnaught = Death Star
Princess Hilda = Princess Leah

There are easy parallels to the rest of the cast as well.

The thing that drove me crazy about this game was the whole "no real exp...just level as you do abilities 'n' stuff". I prefer everyone being able to pick up slack for everyone else as it is needed, and unfortunately that did not really result in me doing anything other than doing extra needless battles.

Did anyone do the Soul Of Rebirth portion? I never played the GBA one :(

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

What did you think was ultimately wrong with this game?

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As with some of the other members here, I'm not a huge fan of the high encounter rate and the need to inflict self harm in order to safely raise your stats.

I was still able to enjoy the game because I liked the characters and the story, but I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I were able to gain EXP instead of hitting myself. Unfortunately, this flaw innovation will make or break the game for some people.

I'm probably a rarity on here to have actually beat it maybe a year or so ago on the original cartridge. It's pretty fun if you watch hcbailly's tutorial on youtube about the battle mechanics and understand how to level up in the game and realise you can toad/mini almost everything. I'm not sure about the encounter rate, but I'm pretty sure it's similar to FF1 where when you turn on your game it's predetermined how many steps and what encounter you run into. Maybe the encounter rate went up? It does go up in those traps, though. That's fine, just don't go in there next time if you die. Berserk (which I think raises your hit rate) and curse and mini and toad are very useful compared to other FF's. Compared to the original version of FF1, FF1 had a lot of broken spells. The villain is underrated, as stated in another thread, and the soundtrack is underrated as well. The Rebel Theme, world map theme, and mysiddia tower themes are very beautiful. Pandemonium also is a good song. I also like how even the original version had boss music.