I don't remember thinking the bosses were particularly difficult. It's more the attrition of the long dungeon that was difficult in this game. You take a lot of damage, run out of spells, get poisoned or stoned or something like that along the way.
That's one thing I miss compared to the newer games. In this first one, I always feel like you want to minimize the number of steps you take to avoid extra battles. In the newer games, fights really just feel more like an inconvenience.
I can very easily see beating the game with using just melee characters. The Fighter and Black Belt (my classes changed now though) are doing the vast majority of the damage. The White Mage is pretty much worthless. The only exception having to heal the party. That seems like it would make things pretty hard until they go through the class change and can learn the early Cures.
I went unarmed with the Black Belt around level 12 I think, and his damage was massively increased due to so many hits per turn. Was using Silver Swords for a while too.
Yeah, it balances pretty well. The two fighters can absorb a lot of damage. With them up front taking most of the hits, at least in the early game, needing to heal isn't that big of a deal. And with a lot of attack power throughout the party, enemies fall pretty quickly.
I do need to keep a stock of 99 heal potions to be ready.
Later game might be more of an issue. Enemies will start doing multi-target spells and some of the later enemies hit hard even with a well-armored fighter/knight. But by then you get some healing magic, and a few items that can heal in battle.
An all mage party would likely be more difficult. And time-consuming to pay for all the magic spells.
Spent 3hrs slogging through the final tower, not being able to save. Not knowing how bad the bosses and final battle would be, I cheesed my way through without using any magic whatsoever. Saved it all for the final battle. I leveled everyone up to Level 40 before starting. They were almost level 42 when I beat the game. When I found a weak enemy in a group, I'd kill everyone but him and then I'd never attack him and use an item that healed for free (no magic points) every turn until my guys were all healed up before moving on.
A couple of the bosses I killed in 1 hit. Guess I leveled a little TOO much. Another boss took 2 hits. So I read that the final boss would be super hard. My Ninja was leveled high enough he was hitting 5-6 times every single attack. So as soon as the battle started I cast Fast on him, which he then hit the final boss 10-12 times every attack. I basically hit him with the Ninja, cast Fog2 on everyone for a little more protection, then hit him with my Knight. Then on round 2 I nailed him with the Ninja again and it was game over. Slaughtered. He hit my entire group with 1 powerful spell, and then hit another guy for a measly 60dmg. What a wuss.
That was fun, I enjoyed it. Final Fantasy II shipped out yesterday, so I'm hoping to have that in a day or two. It's an English translated cart. I know that game is not a good version of the series, but we'll see how it goes.
In my foggy memory, I seem to think that my characters were usually around level 20 when I beat the game, so you must have done plenty of grinding.
Yeah, that last dungeon is tough (but just wait until you get to FF3). You can use the White Wizard to cast exit, but that's the only way out and you need to restart.
I remember one time, my game must have glitched because like 3/4 through the game my fighter started doing like 1000 damage per turn. I think by the time I got to the final boss I one-hit him. Or maybe that was with Game Genie or something.
That was fun, I enjoyed it. Final Fantasy II shipped out yesterday, so I'm hoping to have that in a day or two. It's an English translated cart. I know that game is not a good version of the series, but we'll see how it goes.
Yeah, it's definitely the black sheep of the series.
It's cool in the sense that, even more so than the first one, you see a lot of origins of the series. A lot of things that are seen over and over again in the games started in FF2. And it's the first one in the series that is narrative-based.
It had an interesting character development system. There's no experience points, and you get stronger by doing (sort of like Elder Scrolls games). But the problem is that the game was horribly unbalanced. I think this could have been a really good game if they re-balanced it.
You gain levels in every weapon type by using a particular weapon type. Then that also applies to spells. Each different spell levels up individually by using it. And it also applies to your HP and MP. By getting hit more, you gain more HP, and by casting spells you gain more MP. All your characters are basically the same and you can build them however you like.
From what I remember, the problem is that early in the game, the overworld map has the same low-level enemies, so after a while you stop gaining skills, so you can't get stronger. Then you enter a dungeon or face a boss and you can't hit anything.
And the magic is dreadful. To gain a spell level, you need to cast it about 100 times. And this game introduces a ton of new spells (again, a lot of the FF classics, like Mini and Toad are introduced). It's just brutal to level those up. And that makes most of the status effect spells useless. They barely work at a low level. So you have to continually cast the spells, which rarely work, just to level them high enough so they have a chance of working.
I think this game also introduces an odd mechanic that the FF series used a lot in the early games, where there are false walls with hidden passages. FF3 and FF4 did it a lot. But I think this game started it.
This game also has dual-wielding. And you can even dual-wield shields.
And a lot of the dungeons are odd. They use this design where you come to a dead end with multiple doors. Only 1 will lead you to the next area, and the other doors are just empty rooms where every step is a fight. So you walk in, have to do a fight and then you can walk out and try another door. Seemed like lazy design. But sometimes those are tougher fights, which help you level up your skills.
And it has a back-row front-row fight mechanic. You can't hit enemies in the back row without a long-range weapon (or magic). So you have to kill the enemies in the front first. You can also do this with your characters.
I remember it was best to dual-wield. It levels your weapon skills faster.
I don't think there's much reason to use more than one weapon type per character. You can mix and match if you want, but it's slower to gain levels and doesn't have much advantage.
I seem to remember barefists were really good early on, but get weaker by end game. I think the best end-game weapons are swords. But any weapon type is viable.
If you want to try and play legitimately, I'd recommend giving each character the heal/cure spell and the life spell. Those ones you'll probably level up pretty quickly on their own and you can gain levels on those outside of battle.
For other magic, I'd probably just pick one elemental spell for each character and just level up the one spell. That way you have ice or fire or whatever magic when you need it. Otherwise, it's way too much time to grind.
I think there is one late-game spell that gets stronger if you have more than one weapon type learned. But it probably isn't even worth it.
Your female character starts in the back row. I wouldn't keep anyone in the back row. They never get hit early in the game, so they never gain health. Then when enemies start using magic, you're screwed. You'll die in one hit, and when you die you also don't gain health.
Since the game is so broken, you can totally game the system. I'll put these tips in spoilers, since they might be considered cheating:
You can attack your own characters. And that also helps you level up. So even early in the game you can increase your health quickly by beating the **** out of your own characters. Just find an easy enemy. Then take all your characters down to low health. Then win the fight and you'll gain health.
I remember dual-wielding shields one time, and it ended up maxing my agility to insane levels and no enemy could hit me with a physical attack. This has a downside of possibly making it harder to gain HP, though.
The ultimate cheat for this game, is that you technically gain your skill point when you input the command, not actually when the character performs the action.
So, the quickest way to increase your skills is the command-cancel trick. When it's your turn, you select for your character to attack. Now this character has gained the skill. Then when the next character comes up for a command, you press B to cancel and go back to the previous character. Now you can re-enter the command and gain the skill again. You can repeat this over and over to gain a skill level in a single fight.
This works for spells too. It's probably the only realistic way to level up all your spells. But it's still a grind.
Keep in mind that you can only gain one level for a skill per fight. So I think doing it 100 times gets you a level. Doing it more than that is a waste of time. But I think you can gain one level for multiple skills (weapon, and all the different spells).
And this only works for the first 3 characters in your party. Because when you enter the command for the fourth character the round of the battle begins so you don't have the option to cancel.
And after a certain point, you stop gaining levels against weaker enemies. So you can't level up the highest levels right away.
This does pretty much break the game because it makes you as powerful as you can be at a given time. A good balance is to only do it in boss fights to make sure that you gain your skill level. Especially late in the game, I think in most fights you don't gain skills, so it's hard to get to the highest levels if you don't gain enough of the skill against a boss.
Thanks for all the tips. Sounds like an interesting game, though a bit confusing on the game mechanics. I'll probably use a guide start to finish to get through it in the most efficient way possible. I'm just playing them to experience the series, so not going too hardcore with it. So with that, I don't mind cheesing my way through it at times either.
It's amazing what they are able to do with the old rendered backdrops. It'll be a while before I get to 9, but I'll definitely be playing it on PC and doing the visual mods. I actually purchased FF7 this weekend with the sale that's going right now. I had planned to do the same thing with that game.
If anyone comes across mods like these for any of the FF games, please post em up! I'll do the same when I get closer to playing FF7 and later games.
That looks pretty nice. Unfortunately, FFIX is maybe the only FF game that I didn't manage to get working on Linux. Most of the others seem to play perfectly through Steam's Proton.
I remember FF7 and FF8 got a lot of hype when they were released. Personally, I didn't care for them all that much. FF9 was way better. And it seems like a lot of people never really talk about that one. I think I only did play it once.
I probably played through FF7 at least 3 times. So, in terms of total time played, I probably did play that one the most.
For me, FF7 was a bit of a let down after FF6. Presentation was better. But I thought they sort of dumbed down the gameplay. In terms of combat, all the characters were basically the same (the only real differentiator was the weapons they used and statistically those were all about the same too. The only thing that made a character better than another was the limit breaks). They stripped out most of the gear characters had. And finding gear in treasure chests is one of the things that made exploring the dungeons more fun. Reduced number of characters in the party at a time (although I think I read that was a technical limitation). They didn't have things like classes anymore. I didn't like the pre-rendered backgrounds and how they limited the dungeon/town design and navigation. Then FF8 was even worse (again, except for presentation).
Not that it was a bad game by any means, I still played it a bunch of times. I just liked the old ones better. I didn't buy consoles anymore, so I had the original 4 or 5 disc PC port versions of FF7 and 8. I played FF9 on an emulator only. And I never played any past FF9. I have them on Steam now, so I'll probably get to them eventually.
I really enjoyed FF7, but I never finished it. I've been wanting to for all these years now. I watched a friend play FF8 a couple of times, but that's about it.
That would be amazing! But yeah, sadly they are doing not smart things. Like "remaking" FF7 into a bunch of different games with release dates quite a ways apart.
I want to play that one. But it's got a really high price. I usually see it listed for $80. I think I saw it for $50 on sale, but that still seems like way too much.
It's kind of a tough balance on these remakes. If you change the feel of the game too much, than it sort of alienates the old fans, which you would think would be the main audience. I mentioned it earlier, the PSP version of FF1 looks really good, but I think it really takes the soul out of the game with the changes to the spell system and removing ineffective attacks.
Even graphical updates can piss people off. Look at the backlash they got for the FF5 and FF6 PC releases. I've only played them briefly to see what they're like. It looks like they got the feel of the gameplay right. And the graphics are updated. But that graphical update doesn't work well. But, from Square's perspective, it was probably a relatively inexpensive effort. It's more of a gamble if they invest more for the Octopath style.
I want to play that one. But it's got a really high price. I usually see it listed for $80. I think I saw it for $50 on sale, but that still seems like way too much.
It's kind of a tough balance on these remakes. If you change the feel of the game too much, than it sort of alienates the old fans, which you would think would be the main audience. I mentioned it earlier, the PSP version of FF1 looks really good, but I think it really takes the soul out of the game with the changes to the spell system and removing ineffective attacks.
Even graphical updates can piss people off. Look at the backlash they got for the FF5 and FF6 PC releases. I've only played them briefly to see what they're like. It looks like they got the feel of the gameplay right. And the graphics are updated. But that graphical update doesn't work well. But, from Square's perspective, it was probably a relatively inexpensive effort. It's more of a gamble if they invest more for the Octopath style.
i think FF5 and 6 PC remakes got flak because they were straight up ported from the mobile phone versions with the awful UI and the updated kind of goofy looking sprites. So it doesnt translate all that great to a non-mobile screen size.
Octopath is great. The battle system is great, the graphics are great, the individual stories are kind of meh and the stories don't seem to converge into a final big grand finale (missed opportunity there), but its fun.
Started Final Fantasy II this afternoon. And yep...not a fan of the "leveling" system. I'm going to cheese my way through the game and I've just been attacking my own characters to level them up super fast.
Will be fun to still experience the game mechanics, how it all works, the characters and enemies, story, etc. Not too far in yet, so don't have much of an idea how the game will play out.
i think FF5 and 6 PC remakes got flak because they were straight up ported from the mobile phone versions with the awful UI and the updated kind of goofy looking sprites. So it doesnt translate all that great to a non-mobile screen size.
Octopath is great. The battle system is great, the graphics are great, the individual stories are kind of meh and the stories don't seem to converge into a final big grand finale (missed opportunity there), but its fun.
Sounds a bit like that game Square did for the SNES. I think it was called Treasure of the Rudras or something. I don't think it was released in North America, I just had a translated ROM. But it had a few chapters where you play as individual characters and then the final chapter you joined up. I remember it being pretty good.
Definitely need some serious grinding to get anywhere in Final Fantasy II. The worst part are the spells. Having to cast each spell a significant amount of times to get a single level out of them, when they level to around 16, is insane.
Also, without cheesing your way through it by hitting your own guys...I can't see beating this honestly without a monumental commitment to playing it for a very long time. There's no indication of where to go at all as well. They'll say the town name, but all you get is a crappy overworld map that has no towns listed. It could literally be anywhere in the game world and you'll get random encounters the whole way. So step into the wrong area and you could get whacked in one hit and you're done. Brutal game.
I basically hit him with the Ninja, cast Fog2 on everyone for a little more protection, then hit him with my Knight. Then on round 2 I nailed him with the Ninja again and it was game over. Slaughtered. He hit my entire group with 1 powerful spell, and then hit another guy for a measly 60dmg. What a wuss. 
