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Final Fantasy II always comes across as the black sheep of the series. Often cited is the weird leveling system. So I've always been scared off from seriously trying it. But should I try it? Don't just give me a yes or no, sell me on it!

So the leveling system in II is a "learn by doing" system. This basically is the prototype for the entire SaGa series, so it has value experiencing the genesis of those ideas. The original release on the Famicom has the most breakable version of the system; if you're intentionally trying to cause stats to go up you can get them much more easily than in later ports. So if you're willing to read up on the system you can easily have a party that can handle challenges. But the big thing is that you won't get enough stats just from trying to walk through dungeons like it's an SNES Final Fantasy. I think that's what throws people; the removal of levels tricks people into thinking they don't need to grind, but it's still an 8-bit RPG and it needs grinding. One very nice thing, though, is that if you know what you're doing you can frontload al of the grinding into a single session and effectively be set for the rest of the game. It's a pretty trivial solo character runthrough.

The other thing that's worth mentioning is II is much more story heavy than any of the other NES releases. It has deeper events than we would see in III, and it has an adventure game-esque keyword system that gives you a bit of a feeling of being able to actively learn about the world, rather than just hitting event flags (though in practice it's just hitting event flags).

No. Too much grind IMO. 3 was mostly fun in comparison.

I played through Final Fantasy II twice. First using a translation patch on the Famicom release, and then again on Final Fantasy Origins on GBA.

MrPoPo did a good job describing the game. The weirdest part of the game is that the most effective way to grind that I found was to go fight Imps in the first field, but attach each other instead of the enemies.

There are a lot of recycled graphics from the first game. That didn't bother me, but I could see it bothering some people.

There was one puzzle that I thought was a little obscure. I think I would have gotten it if I was a little more patient, but it's pretty late in the game, and I didn't have the patience for it at that point.

There is a decent amount of plot. Your party has three core members, and different characters join your party throughout the story. These characters leave your party later, and they take any equipment they have equipped when they do, so that's something to look out for.

Overall, it's a much more ambitious game than the original, and I appreciate that.

If you're looking for an NES RPG and haven't played Dragon Warrior III, I'd take it over Final Fantasy II. I thought the first Dragon Warrior was kind of boring, but DWIII has a lot of personality. It's grind-heavy just like FFII, but I though it was better.

I probably wont ever play the NES version. I own FF Origins for PS1, so that's probably where I'd start. Dragon Quest is on my radar, I haven't ever played any of that series before.

I have to be honest, I was never willing to give FF2 a chance because of it's reputation (it has a non-standard leveling system that's borderline broken).

I'm not sure of the state of the Origins version; I know the GBA port is harder due to removing some of the exploitable bugs for easy stats, adding monster quality gates (can't get stats off of easy stuff if you have too many already), and not doing much to improve the gains otherwise.

Well I know that FF1 on Origins has an Easy and Normal difficulty mode. I don't recall if FF2 does as well, but I think it does.

I'm guessing that I was never aware of the level up exploit MrPopo mentions for the Famicom original. I just ground the weird, old-fashioned way by attacking my own party members. I spent a decent amount of time grinding in both.

I know I did substantially less grinding in the GBA version than the Famicom version. FF 1&2 both required substantially less grinding than I had done on the NES/Famicom versions of the games. They were both pretty easy plays, and FF2 had some cool additional content that revisited some earlier characters in the game.

The GBA ports look pretty different than the PlayStation versions, and were actually called "Dawn of Souls" rather than "Origins," as I mistakenly did earlier.

Once you realize that you can attack your own party members to help level them up, Final Fantasy II's progression system is pretty easy to manage. I don't really get why so many people find it off-putting. It's a fun game.

I did enjoy the GBA version decently well.

The NES release is more deterministic in getting health ups from attacking yourself, and there's a bug for weapon skill ups. It's again, deterministic, just use a weapon 100 times. But if you confirm a weapon attack so it moves to the next party member, then cancel back, the number of uses counter still goes up. So you can cancel 100 times in a single battle and guarantee a skill up. You can't do it for the last person in party order, but since that's a rotating slot anyway you don't really care until the end of the game, and at that point you can reorder and just do a quick session with that character.