Well, let's get the big ones out of the way...

Basics that every Scrub should know about FFII

Find the Blood swords, I know they are usually pretty blah in the later entries but in FFII they are godlike as they have a funky damage formula that basically allows them to ignore defense. Against most of the bosses in Pandemonium, they have the best chance to cause massive damage even against the final boss.


What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger, by this I mean that FFII has a funky experience system where stats, abilites, and weapon efficiency are raised by using them. Want to make an awesome swordsman, just keep using those swords and your character will soon be able to hit more and harder with it. Casting the same spell over and over will raise its power and ability to hit targets. Using lots of physical attacks will raise your strength, using white or black magic will raise spirit/magic as well as MP. Taking damage will raise HP, defense, and magic defense. Just be careful not to try to go for total balance as raising some skills lowers others, for instance, raising strength will actually lower your magic and spirit stats. The reverse is true as well.

One programmers oversight is another man's easy trek to godhood, this pretty much sums up the most notorious thing FFII is known for, its horribly exploitative battle system. You see, all those stats you can raise don't actually put into account who is attacking you. That's right, monsters and bosses are not the only people who raise your stats, you can actually have your whole party beat the crap out of each other and level up a ton very quickly. Later on, you can get a spell called Swap that exchanges the players HP/MP with the monsters. Go back to the starting town and battle the Goblins that have HP/MP in the single digit and just watch your HP and MP go through the roof.

It gets even more abusive, magic and weapon action XP points are calculated after you confirm the command, not when the command takes place... What this means is that you can have Firion cast Fire and before you put in the action for Maria, you can cancel Firion's action and gave him cast Fire again which will give him 2 Exp. towards his fire spell instead of one. You can pretty much enter, and cancel a hundred times in battle and have the spell go up a level. Weapons work the same way except for Shields I believe. This means some serious crunch time in the beginning of the game can have your whole party with maxed out magic and weapon skills before leaving Fynn. The only trick to this issue is that your fourth party member cannot take part cause once their action is set, the battle commences so this means only Firion, Maria, and Gus can take advantage of this abusive oversight cause FFII does not give the player the ability to reshuffle their party.

Tread softly and remember sometime the monsters carry big sticks, despite its large world map, FFII has a very creative way of making sure the player goes to the next story point. The game has invisible roads that weak monsters traverse that gradually get stronger as you progress through the game, everywhere beyond these roads are filled with monsters you probably won't be able to gight until near the end of the game. Take the first town, all around it are nothing but Goblins but if you head a little too far south from their, you are knee deep in Ogre territory and those things will make mincemeat out of you. This can make progressing through the game very difficult in the early parts. Just remember to always take the quickest and most direct way to the next location. Later, you can find Chocobos who will help you traverse much more easily.

Today's special guest is going to teach us about Chi'uan Tiger Style Death Palm! The one really cool thing about the Guest Characters is that many of them teach you more about the abilites and weapons you can use. The idea of being Barehanded seems like a lame way to fight cause obviously a weapon is better right? Not really, as Josef will teach you cause he's FFII's token monk character who will show off the ungodly power of being bare handed and having high proficiency with said weapon. Minwu shows off the high level healing magic, and Gordon is going to show you how awesome shields are. Basically, pay attention the items and weapons your guest use cause it will help you immensely to better understand the battle system/experience system as well give you better ideas for more diverse party options.

These rules apply to all version of FFII