FFII's role in the growing of the franchise.

[Rase]

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.

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.