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+----- Thread: Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) (/showthread.php?tid=246)
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Weltall - 12th February 2003
Final Fantasy II Review
By Ryan Usher
Final Fantasy II, known as IV in Japan, was the first really great game in the long-running series in my opinion. This ten-year old game sported, for its time, good graphics, excellent music and solid gameplay that was improved upon a hundred-fold for the next installment. Because it's unfair to compare this game to its predecessor, I'll leave FFIII out of this. You are Cecil, the captain of the Red Wings Airship Squadron of the kingdom of Baron, the most powerful nation in the world. Feeling that missions of petty theft and murder that his king commands him to complete are too much, Cecil rebels against his king and slowly discovers just how vast this evil is, and the consequences of it completing it's goal of acquiring the four Crystals of Earth.
Graphics
The graphics of FFII could rightly be called NES graphics with 16-bit enhancements. Graphically, not much really stood out and took advantage of the SNES's extra power, leading one to believe this game may have started development on the NES. The environments are large and colorful, but character graphics are very small and squarish. Monsters are large and have a fair amount of detail. Magic animations, for its time, were pretty nice, though some of the more complex ones create noticeable slowdown.
6.0
Sound
The sound for this game is quite good, and when compared to the graphics, it's much more apparent that the sound was developed with the SNES's far-superior sound capabilities in mind. While nothing really stands out, altogether it's a nice ensemble.
8.5
Gameplay
Not quite so varied as RPGs are nowadays, but it's still soild RPG fare. There are many places to explore, and there are three world maps! Certainly a very epic game, and definitely worth playing.
8.5
Modern Appeal
If you like traditional RPGs, there's not much to dislike about FF2. It's a regular RPG. No more, no less.
Purchase Price
I had an easier time finding this game than I did finding FFIII, but this was four years ago as well, and you would likely have to resort to eBay and pay $60-plus for it. Unlike FFIII, this game was and is an SNES-exclusive, for it was not re-released in the FF Anthology CD in 1999. If you can't stomach playing it on an emulator, good luck finding it.
Total (not an average) : 8.0
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Dark Jaguar - 17th February 2011
Never actually read this review until now. I'll add that technically even when this was written there was a Playstation anthology out, as Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger got packaged together as Final Fantasy Chronicles (yeah yeah, Chrono Trigger's not a Final Fantasy game). That one was the original version of FFIV without all the censorship, poor translation issues, and outright removed content of the US original. Now, there's FFIV for Wonderswan Color (with visuals enhanced a bit but the sound reduced to 8-bit level), and GBA (sound again at SNES levels, visuals taken from the Wonderswan version, import the European version if you can, the US version suffers from numerous slowdown and glitches that were fixed in that version, which is also in English and works on any GBA so it works out fine). There's FFIV for DS (completely remastered into 3D with additional story and gameplay elements, and voice acting). They even rereleased the SNES version, in all it's poor translation glory (it's even still called FF2) on the Wii virtual console. To round it all off, there's an upcoming PSP release of the game. You'd think they'd put the DS remake on there, but instead for some reason it's basically the GBA game but with redone 2D visuals at a higher resolution, and they packaged it with a similarly enhanced "The After Years", the spinoff sequel to the game that, actually, didn't really live up to what most had hoped for in a sequel to the storyline. Basically, FFIV has been rehashed a ridiculous number of times. Most of them have been released in the US, and all things considered, it's been known as FFIV here longer and in more versions than it ever was known as FF2. Even so, every single time an American gaming news site reports on a new version of FFIV coming along, they always point out "What you may know as Final Fantasy 2" as though anyone knows it as that any more.
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - EdenMaster - 18th February 2011
Because, DJ. If you just say FF4, there will always be that one guy who says "Which one? Oh, the one with Cecil. You mean FF2."
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Dark Jaguar - 19th February 2011
Screw that guy! That guy's got no excuses!
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Weltall - 20th February 2011
Frankly, I find it kind of amazing that FFIV gets all the rehashes and VI is more or less left alone (at least, in relation)--it only got two re-releases I can think of offhand.
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Dark Jaguar - 25th February 2011
Yeah that's right I think. There's the PS1 release and the GBA enhanced release. Oh, there's also the Wii release, though that's literally the SNES ROM with no changes (still called FF3 in fact).
I myself wonder where the love is for FF6. It's my personal favorite of the series. With the new 3DS at near Wii levels, and the new Sony system of unknown name being supposedly as powerful as a PS3, it's never been a better time to do a 3D remake of the game, and it wouldn't suffer from N64 level graphics like the 3D remakes of FF3 and FF4 did, it'd be capable of looking amazing. I also mentioned how that game in particular is ripe for spinoffs. There's a LOT of territory the original story never examined that they could dive right into, from a game set in the War of the Magi/Triad, to one set during the one year time skip during the game, to one set during the forming of the empire while Terra is growing up (they never do really explain what she did before Kefka put that slave crown on her or what most of her life was like until that point, just the barest explanation of a time just before she was born). In that one I think playing as Leo the whole game would be cool, maybe he's the one that has to stop some crazed rage Terra goes into and finally agrees to let Kefka enslave her, or something like that. It could even start out with Leo invading the southern cities for the good of the Empire. Heck there's plenty of room to explore the rebuilding of the world after the game when magic is gone. There's certainly far more room for backstory games in FF6 than there were in FF7 (Crisis Core is about the only one that's actually an interesting bit of backstory, the rest are unneeded additions of plot that aren't needed to fill in FF7's original story).
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Weltall - 26th February 2011
There's plenty of room right within the game itself to warrant at least extra content. What was the rest of the team up to while Locke and Terra went to Thamasa? What did everybody do to keep busy during the year after Kefka broke the world, and before Celes began reforming the crew? There are dozens of events that happen during the game that would make interesting adventures all by themselves.
Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Dark Jaguar - 26th February 2011
Yeah I mentioned the time skip as potentially worth of it's own game. Other things could always be fleshed out in a remake, that's true too.
RE: Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV) - Dark Jaguar - 31st March 2022
Addendum! As it turns out, the PS1 retranslation (and subsequent ones based on it) are actually... terrible. They gave in to the pressure caused by the fan translation and made things edgier because they thought that's what people wanted. The J2E fan translation isn't very accurate at all.
https://legendsoflocalization.com/final-fantasy-iv/
More details here!
As it turns out, in spite of some censorship, the original SNES release has the most accurate translation.
As for FFVI, in that case the GBA translation (and later releases based on it) has the most accurate translation, save for some really painfully dated pop culture references. The one exception would be Kefka's dialog which still hews closely to the SNES game. That, as it turns out, is a good thing. Kefka's dialog is apparently very boring in the Japanese original, and his "Jokering up" in the US version was a stylistic choice meant to make him a more interesting antagonist. It's no wonder he's a much more beloved villain in the US than in Japan. I'd say we got the better end of that deal. I still am not a fan of the silly forth wall breaking stuff with NPCs commenting on how Kefka's name is spelled though.