If you think on this with only the original Final Fantasy to compare it to, Final Fantasy II seems like Square just dumped the entire bucket-load of "Epic" sauce into the mix. The story might seem pretty tame and generic now. Evil empire, yada yada. But I feel they went all out in trying to make this quest as awesome as they could. And with such a small development team, it's amazing how much they were able to accomplish.

After the happy-go-lucky first game where everyone lives and people seem to have only minor inconveniences (Elfheim and Melmond did the worst, I'll admit), this game went dark! Some of your party dies, villages get bombed. Infiltration, betrayal, and tricks. Later games used these more, but this used them really effectively for its time.

This game really impressed me, and it still does today. I love FF II!