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Final Fantasy II

aka: FF2, Zui Zhong Huanxiang 2, ファイナルファンタジーII, 最终幻想2

Description

The Paramekian Empire decided to take over the world. Its soldiers and Dark Knights persecute innocent people, burn whole villages, hunt down brave warriors. Now Phin, the homeland of the four heroes, has been destroyed by the evil empire. Only four young warriors could escape, three men and one girl. On their way to a neighbor town Altea, they were attacked by the Dark Knights. Three of them were brought safely to Altea by the order of the rebel army. But one has not yet been found...

Final Fantasy II (not to be confused with Final Fantasy IV, released in the West as "Final Fantasy II"), like its predecessor, is a top-down role-playing game where the player-controlled party travels through the overworld, fighting enemies, buying weapons, armor and magic spells in shops, and resting in town inns. Combat is round-based: the player selects commands for the whole party, and then watches the combat round unfold.

The game has an unusual character-building system. The three main controllable characters and a few others who may join the party can be fully customized by the player, without restrictions of classes or abilities. There are no character levels in the game: characters grow stronger by performing the same action repeatedly, which might increase one parameter but decrease another. For example, sustaining damage gradually increases the character's hit points; casting spells raises intelligence but lowers physical power, etc.

Weapons and spells, on the other hand, can be leveled up. The more a certain type of weapon is used in combat, the more proficient the character who uses this weapon becomes in this particular type. The power of a magic spell also gradually increases when used repeatedly in battles.

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (NES version)

17 People (16 developers, 1 thanks)

Original Concept
Character Design
Programmer
Scenario
Music by
Game Design
Additional Programming
Graphics
Sound Design
Program Assist
Thanks to
Director
Producer

Reviews

Trivia

Features

Final Fantasy II introduced some of the familiar features of the series for the first time. These include the fictional bird chocobo (which can be found in the Chocobo Forest, south of Kashuon) and a character named Cid.

It was also the first Final Fantasy game where each of the party members had their own lines to say. In the first game the four main playable character were speechless.

NES Emulation

Final Fantasy II for the NES was never released by Squaresoft outside of Japan. However the game has been translated to English by amateur translators. To play this version a NES emulator and the patched/translated ROM file are required.

Soundtrack

The Queens Temptation track on the Final Fantasy I+II soundtrack is not a piece written by Nobuo Uematsu. The tune is a small part of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's famous Swan Lake ballet.

The unreleased Dungeon track on the Final Fantasy I+II soundtrack CD was not used in the final version of Final Fantasy II. However, an almost exactly identical version, though with a few more instruments, is played in the Magic House in Final Fantasy VI.

Save Game

When you're saving your game, you'll have to choose one of the four slots to save to, then, if there was already a file in the slot you selected, a message will ask you if you really want to overwrite the data which is stored here. Actually, if you reset your console at this time, you'll note that the game is already saved! Looks like the actual program does save the game first and cancel the save afterwards if you select "no". This could be useful if you're saving too much quickly.

Title

The game called Final Fantasy II in the West (originally released for SNES) was in fact Final Fantasy IV (it was the fourth game of the series that hit the Japanese market).

Wonderswan Color

The Wonderswan Color re-release features much better graphics and slight changes in gameplay system (for example, the characters target the next enemy automatically in battles). This release is nearly identical to Final Fantasy Origins for PlayStation (of course, it doesn't have the CG intro).

Information provided here also contributed by Bregalad, Roedie, and Metal Overlord.

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Related Sites +

  • FF-Fan (archived)
    A fansite that offers all kinds of information on the entire Final Fantasy franchise, including walkthroughs, game media, discussion boards and fan art.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 7321

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Unicorn Lynx.

Nintendo 3DS added by GTramp. Wii added by Lain Crowley. Wii U added by Michael Cassidy.

Additional contributors: Indra was here, Alaka, DarkDante, —-.

Last modified February 22nd, 2023.