Final Fantasy 2 is a game with a very intriguing story and setting let down somewhat by it's progression systems and other frustrating aspects of it's turn based combat system.

Unlike the previous and future Final Fantasy titles, you level up skills by using them in battle (or in your menus e.g. Cure). While this works well enough for weapon skills, magic skills require you to spam each spell individually in order to level it rather than there being a encompassing white magic or black magic skill which would have made the grinding less tedious. Stat skills are also difficult to level and are not always clear as to how you even level them in the first place. You level HP by taking significant damage and you level MP by casting at low reserves for example.

Combat is mostly the same as previous and future titles with this entry adding the combat rows. Most status effects now persist after battle which will force you to stock up on lots of curatives. Some enemies will give a player status effects with successful melee hits and this debuff will happen *every* time. This can be very frustrating and can result in being stunlocked to death in many situations. I would recommend quicksaving often while dungeon delving.

I was going to not recommend this game largely due to the status effects issue I mentioned above. Now that I've gotten to the end of it, I feel like there was still enough good aspects of the game to still recommend. The story (for an NES game) and setting are definitely the game's strongest aspects by far and kept me interested. Getting through the grueling final dungeons and beating the final boss has left me feeling very satisfied. While this is definitely not a good choice for a new comer to the franchise, I definitely recommend playing this if you have played other Final Fantasy titles.

Final Fantasy 2 is a game with a very intriguing story and setting let down somewhat by it's progression systems and other frustrating aspects of it's turn based combat system. Unlike the previous and future Final Fantasy titles, you level up skills by using them in battle (or in your menus e.g. Cure). While this works well enough for weapon skills, magic skills require you to spam each spell individually in order to level it rather than there being a encompassing white magic or black magic skill which would have made the grinding less tedious. Stat skills are also difficult to level and are not always clear as to how you even level them in the first place. You level HP by taking significant damage and you level MP by casting at low reserves for example. Combat is mostly the same as previous and future titles with this entry adding the combat rows. Most status effects now persist after battle which will force you to stock up on lots of curatives. Some enemies will give a player status effects with successful melee hits and this debuff will happen *every* time. This can be very frustrating and can result in being stunlocked to death in many situations. I would recommend quicksaving often while dungeon delving. I was going to not recommend this game largely due to the status effects issue I mentioned above. Now that I've gotten to the end of it, I feel like there was still enough good aspects of the game to still recommend. The story (for an NES game) and setting are definitely the game's strongest aspects by far and kept me interested. Getting through the grueling final dungeons and beating the final boss has left me feeling very satisfied. While this is definitely not a good choice for a new comer to the franchise, I definitely recommend playing this if you have played other Final Fantasy titles.