Final Fantasy II Review You spoony bard!

Upfront confession: I've never played Final Fantasy II before. For almost all of these Virtual Console re-releases, I've got at least some nostalgic play experience with the games from my childhood days. Final Fantasy II, though, I never got around to -- the RPG era on the SNES began for me with Final Fantasy III, and then Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermoreand even a bit of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest made it into my 16-bit system's cartridge slot before that era ended. But, again, never II. Until today.

I've spent the last week playing through Final Fantasy II for the first time through the Wii's Virtual Console, and it's been a lot of fun to experience it, totally fresh, in an emulation of its original American release. I can easily see how this installment in Square's long-running series became such a fan favorite, as it transitioned the wildly popular role-playing franchise from Nintendo's 8-bit hardware to a machine with a lot more power to take advantage of. Even just the opening scene -- employing Mode 7 scaling techniques to present a pseudo-3D view of the world while airships soar through the sky -- I can still appreciate for its artistry and technical achievement here, nearly 20 years later. It still looks great.

But I wasn't really ready for this game to have so many little quirks.

Yes, the numbering in the game's name is weird again. This one is more commonly called Final Fantasy IV today.

Take the translation, for starters. It's been pretty well documented that this first stab at bringing the game's script into English was pretty rough, but I always thought that just meant a few chuckle-worthy lines like the famous "You spoony bard!" got through into the final product. I didn't realize that the whole game was filled with grammatical errors and weird dialogue exchanges. It's a bit of a turn-off.

Then there's a ton of character turn-over. I'm used to some switching around in the ranks of your core adventuring party from those other SNES RPGs I listed up above, but Final Fantasy II feels like the most inconsistent of them all -- characters come and go with ridiculous speed, sometimes only joining you for the length of a single dungeon crawl before the plot carries them away from playability. It feels almost worthless to spend time investing in leveling anyone up, because it's like you're always only five minutes away from them leaving you anyway.

And then there's the total lack of challenge. Again, I knew enough about this edition going in to remember it was an "Easy Type," a toned-down, less-difficult edition of the Japanese original created as a concession to RPG-inexperienced American players in the early '90s. Every town in the game even has a "training room" to tutorialize the uninitiated. But I didn't realize just how easy this Easy Type would be -- it's almost comically simple at times. There was one major boss in the middle of the adventure that I killed in one hit. No joke.

So my first experience with Final Fantasy II has been eye-opening, to say the least -- but that doesn't mean I haven't had fun. Even with its many quirks in place, this has still been a compelling adventure to experience. Its characters have made an impression on me, from the redemption-seeking main hero Cecil to the childish mage twins Palom and Porom. I could identify with Tellah's quest for revenge, as an aging father maddeningly seeking justice for the loss of his daughter. I even enjoyed the depth given to Edward, the bard, whom I'd always just assumed was a joke character thanks to the old "spoony" line -- he's anything but.

And it's in that that I think Final Fantasy II still succeeds. That even through a terrible translation, a challenge factor that was way too watered down and a plot progression that keeps key players spinning in and out of the spotlight seemingly too quickly, this game still manages to get you invested in its characters, and its world. Again, it's easy to see how this installment became such a fan favorite, and why it was selected by Square Enix for both the remake and sequel treatment over the past few years -- it came to the GBA as Final Fantasy IV Advance in 2005, then again to the DS as Final Fantasy IV in 2008. Its storyline was expanded withFinal Fantasy IV: The After Years on WiiWare, which launched last year.

CLOSING COMMENTS

The final question, then, is which version to get. This Virtual Console re-release wins the argument on price, as at just eight bucks to download it's an incredible value -- tracking down the GBA or DS editions would certainly cost you much more than that. But that may be the only key advantage this VC version holds, in the end. The remakes have been much more in-line with the story and gameplay experience that Square's artisans originally intended, and are certainly a better way to go for players, like me, who've just somehow managed to miss this adventure altogether over the past 20 years.

So I'd recommend investing the extra time and cash to find one of those two portable packages, unless, unlike me, you're a gamer who first played this one in this original SNES form back in the '90s. Then the nostalgia you'll get from its many quirks, its goofy translation and its far-too-easy difficulty level will only serve to reinforce your love for Cecil's quest -- a love that I can understand and appreciate, even though this way my first time meeting the spoony bard.

Review taken from http://wii.ign.com/articles/107/1078571p1.html