Final Fantasy II - Like an old comfortable sweatshirt

[GameMasterGuy]

Not sure if the GF people are just being noobs or not, but it seems that it's back to being useless in the PSP version:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/615911-f ... /650976182

[Xeogred]

Solo power level? I've never heard of such a thing. I'm assuming that means KO all party members except one, then that remaining party member gets more experience points per battle?

You got it, this is how it is in a lot of FF's. So did you ever do this in between all your edits? exp is divided among party members, so kill everyone off but Cecil and he'll get 5x the normal exp. Best place to level him is against the dragons near the final save point. After that I would always bring in one other person and keep Cecil, so you can continue to get a bit more exp. Kind of unbalances the party, but chances are not everyone makes it through the final battle lol. If I remember right I think I pretty much ended up solo'ing Zeromus with Cecil only since Big Bang just kept taking everyone else out, so I just kept unloading the X-Potions/Elixers on him while fighting in between.

[Ziggy]

Stuff about Dark Matter, including the GameFaqs link.

Haha, you can have Edge throw it at him for 9999 damage? I wonder if that's true, I wish I would have tried. Next time I face Zeromus, Edge probably wont be able to steal it again.

So did you ever do this in between all your edits?

No, I did not. Maybe I'll give that a shot just to see how it works.

[Ziggy]

So I just beat the game. Cecil was at level 72. Honestly, Zeromus wasn't that hard. I think I died the first time because I didn't know what I was doing. And I think the only reason I died the second time is just from a case of bad luck. I happened to get hit with Big Bang twice in a row so I didn't have a chance to heal. That just seems like total bad luck. I'm thinking I might have been able to beat him the first time if I knew what I was doing. Although, maybe the few extra levels helped out some.

Also, Edge was able to steal the DkMatter again on the first try. I guess after you get him up to a certain level, he can just steal it easily. He was at level 70 when I beat Zeromus. And no, you can't throw it at him, that info from the GameFaqs thread was wrong.

[Ziggy]

So started playing FFV. I'm only about an hour in (I'm ready to leave the first town encountered) but I think it's awesome so far. When looking at screen shots, I always thought it looked just like FF4. But after playing it for a while, there's just a lot of small things that look slightly better. It seems like they add up and the entire game ends up looking better. The menu seems a little cluttered compared to FF4, but I'll deal. And the music has been amazing so far.

I'm playing the SNES English fan translation on a flash cart. After playing for maybe 30 minutes, I decided to boot up the PS1 version just to compare. I'm now very happy with the SNES version. The PS1 version, it just seems off, kinda hard to explain. It seems like it almost stutters at times because it takes an extra second or two to load something. It just doesn't seem as well presented as the SNES version. And it doesn't sound as good either.

I thought you weren't able to run in the SNES version, the only thing I would miss from the PS1 version. But after I made a character a thief and realized I could now run, I think the PS1 version has nothing over the SNES version!

[Xeogred]

Congrats on FFIV!

FFV, heck yeah! Yeah, the PSX version is just not right at all. There should still be a normal run, but Thief's run is like fast-forwarding, lol. Unless normal running was added in the GBA/PSX versions, I'm not sure. Even though I praised up the GBA version earlier in this thread, I guess I probably wouldn't mind playing a translated SFC rom someday.

Hope you continue to enjoy it! I'd say if you like it already at the start, it only gets better. Once you get to ... I'll say the "Second Chapter", things really pickup and get amazing.

The music I don't think is quite as consistent as FFIV or VI's OST's, but when it's good it's damn good. I think it easily has the best "caves" theme in the series, and other songs completely rock. The underwater theme comes to mind too (reminds me a lot of FFVII's underwater theme).

It can definitely be a bit brutal early on though, like when you get to the Fire Castle and whatnot. You can fight Shiva early on, but she always completely owns me until I get Fire 2 and go back after some leveling. I love how open the start of the game is though, is are other parts of the game later on. It can be a little overwhelming, but hopefully it doesn't bother you. That's part of the beauty to FFV (my prediction), with the game being fairly open at times, topped off with the flexible job system, now that I'm a big fan I can see it probably being one of the most replayabe FF's for sure, lending itself to a different experience everytime moreso than other FF's.

Definitely my Final Fantasy of the Year for 2011.

[MrPopo]

The menu is much more cluttered than IV's, but that's because of the job system. Some things you should know about it:

1. The freelancer (no job) and one other job (no spoiler) inherit the best stats among all of your mastered jobs and inherit several of the passive skills you can learn from jobs
2. Several of the passive skills, such as equip-swords, come with a matching stat boost. So if you put equip-swords on a magic user not only would you be able to equip swords, you would also have a large strength boost to make the sword more effective
3. Unless you plan on doing a lot of grinding in the end of the game you should focus a particular party member on either physical jobs or magic jobs. You will get more end-game mileage out of it than if you did mixed stuff like a knight who can cast white magic.

[Xeogred]

You will get more end-game mileage out of it than if you did mixed stuff like a knight who can cast white magic.

Oh no you didn't! For awhile there I kind of built Bartz as if he were Cecil, haha. But, I focused on all the fighting before I had him take up some white magic.

For me it went kind of like this:

Bartz - fighter/some white
Galuf - black/time
Lenna - white/summoner
Faris - misc

Red is fun, but I didn't focus on it at all in this playthrough. Seems pointless if you build up two mages and two fighters I'd say. To be honest though, I didn't use black magic that much at all later in the game. Time got really awesome for offensive magic eventually, so I focused a lot on that and summoning. But, it's all up to your play style. I remember dabbing into black magic again later on when I had level 3 magic for a bit and it was insane. So it's certainly not bad at all, just wasn't my focus.

Also I made sure my mages learned Barehanded for the earlier bits of the game which helped a lot, but that was my strategy.

Also, make sure you pay attention to a lot of the unique equipments in the game and I wouldn't sell them. Even if their stat ups or whatnot aren't great, sometimes the bonuses they give completely outweigh it and can be used together with certain classes to dominate, etc. I want to say one of the best ones was some Tiara that halved MP usage or something, so I could just dominate with my summoning, lol. There was a lot of other crazy items that sometimes even gave job-like abilities. Lots of fun stuff.

[MrPopo]

Red Mage is essential for all your casters. The Double command lets you dual cast any magic you have equipped, so if you equip Double and Time you can dual cast Meteor, or do Meteor Quick, Meteor Meteor, Meteor Meteor.

[Xeogred]

Yeah, but that's not really needed until end game. , I didn't really see any point to using Freelancer until then either, but that's me. It was really cool how that worked though.

I abused the game at the end and maxed out everything... pulled the soft save trick on the Movers.

This is after I legitimately beat the final boss first though, and it was nuts. But I still think the fight at the castle at the end of the second chapter was more intense, holy balls.

Definitely knew what I was doing most of the game though. I made sure to get 4x Attack right away when I got the Hunter class. 4x Attack + two handed Ninja... ah snap.