final fantasy ii
late in ff1 i was starting to wonder if i'd enjoy this. just based on the way people talk about 2, and the fact that it's so close, it occurred to me that they were probably pretty similar. they are? and also really aren't. i'd say, straight up, that the things that frustrated me a lot in 1 are not gone in 2. despite a handful of really short excursions, there are even more full 5-floor dungeons and stuff in this game, and when you get surprise attacked by 7 of those imps who cast confuse 16, you know...you're playing the sequel to final fantasy. if anything, i think the monster closets are pretty in line with ff1's design ethos, though less interesting and clever than the trapped tiles. and ff2 also changes the structure of the game to be a lot more linear and direct in the main line (although a lot of the world map is open really early if you're willing to walk there). while i thought it was really interesting that this means the game feels a lot more like it codifies what the series became, it also highlights that unique, meandering adventure style of the first game. like dq2, i love that vibe, and it's so uncommon in games of the past 35 years that i'm a bit more impressed by it now. i think playing this game has made me like the first one more.
and later ones, too. there's lots of things (especially in 9 and 12) where i suddenly realized "oh, that's from this game." cid and hilda? mysidia (which is also the ff9 black mage village, haha)? chocobos, bombs, malboros and behemoths? (there's a lot of weird monsters that didn't become ff staples too though. though saga did end up with the lady vampires...) "dreadnought" "leviathan"?? this feeling like such a central entry in the series' structure and style is really exciting, especially since it's also the kind of "branching point" game that i'm often fascinated by. there's a fair bit of romancing saga-ness in the systems and stuff, even though the primary structure of the game is a lot more linear. in that sense i find the storytelling pretty interesting, it's got some innovative stuff in the way the state of the world changes repeatedly, including the airships flying overhead early on which ends about 1/3 of the way through.
i think the common interpretation of saga-ism (as seen in stuff like alliance alive and doujin games) is where you get some new spell or weapon and think "that sounds cool" and you just get to check it out and decide if you want to try using it a bunch or not. the way it's implemented here is like that, and it's transparent and simple in a way that doesn't really match the richer and more complex sense of "playing with the game" that emerged in that series over time. but i find that fun and easy going, especially because...i also got killed in battle a lot less than in 1. i think part of that is that you don't have to do much to make the incoming spell damage a lot lower (while in 1 it's really explosive in the midgame and only with late game gear did i start surviving it better), and things that smooth out the game a bit like MP restores and the ability to use revives are incredibly available. there are a couple of noticeable difficulty spikes and by the last few dungeons i was finding it hard to want to cast buff skills on turn 1 instead of trying to thin out threats. so, i don't really know if it's less janky because i feel like things like balance and comparative costs are all over the place, but it just feels a lot more straightforwardly player favored overall. like, on one hand, holy really does seem to just kind of stomp all over the main elemental spells conceptually, so it being not available until much later later makes sense, but things like that or aura which you only get kinda deep into a playthrough (at least without foreknowledge) take way too much work to level up to become truly useful. the ability to force your way to mysidia at basically any point in the game is really notable since there are a lot of options for things you can buy and plenty of them are really strong, but also i didn't feel like i had much money until i suddenly had what felt like i could buy as much of anything i wanted (with some limits on elixirs).
i played a version of ff1 where inventory limits functionally don't exist (there's just not that many kinds of items to have anyway), so it felt a bit different playing this game where it was a pretty big issue, especially as gear i wasn't sure how niche it was piled up alongside a bunch of forced key item slots. which reminds me of the light adventure game system. i thought it was cool! it's not ridiculously fleshed out but it's a nice take on this kind of thing, which is very influential on this series in general. i liked that there was often a bit more text you could get by using relevant but non-essential prompts.
the wonderswan version has gotta be one of the worst ways to play this, at least in english though, lol. the patch is pretty unfinished and a little busted even outside of typos, and the longer spell animations feel like a lot when you want to cast some things so much just to level them up...but overall i came away really positive, i still just feel so satisfied playing games that came out of that early era and seeing each of their own unique modes. it really makes me want to see where things go in 3, which is a game i first tried out a very long time ago, and made it near the end before not finishing the last dungeons. there's many things i remember, but now that i've got more context on what came before, it'll be really cool to see what else it brings to the table. and i've got just a few more first times from 8-bit home consoles i want to make it through, mainly phantasy star and dq4 (which will probably end up being yet another portable remake for me after all...). though i think now maybe i'll add mother to the list as well.
and then if i truly can't get enough there's always more, like megami tensei or something
