Having a completely BS difficulty curve right at the beginning is stupid. Stop doing this, Japan.
I'm happy to say that Final Fantasy Legend II is actually a great deal more fair. That is to say, you can actually leave your hometown and survive the battle with the first thing you come across. The game begins with a character selection, from which they can choose one of eight different character types - humans, mutants, robots, and a gaggle of monsters - and gender choices for both humans and mutants, but this does little beyond minor stat variations (males tend to have a higher Strength stat, females tend to have a higher Speed, if you're curious).
In the beginning, the player is treated to an opening text crawl. It speaks of MAGI (and yes, it is always spelled MAGI), a symbol of power the legacy of Ancient Gods. And of a new adventure that is about to begin...all of this without explain what MAGI is. The player is given a piece of it by their father before he flees out of a window - however - and later learns that MAGI are the pieces of a statue of the goddess Isis. Apparently just one piece has phenomenal cosmic power and can grant that power to others if they so take it - some pieces have even been used by individuals to become New Gods (no, not those New Gods). These pieces (seventy-seven in all, or so we are told) are apparently very important to keeping balance between the many worlds that are held together by the Celestial Staircase and...
...I've already lost you, haven't I?
Yes, this game might as well be in the Final Fantasy series. It has little to no connection to what came before, and has a plot that is so convoluted that it actually loops around infinity, going from ridiculous to awesome to just plain stupid very quickly and hitting every stop in between. Here's the worst part: that's still pretty awesome. The game starts out as what seems to be your basic sword and sorcery tale (barring the fact that you can choose Robot as a playable class), until you go to one of the shops outside of your hometown and can suddenly buy a rocket.
Now, one could argue that it's simply a rocket as in one that gets lit up, not a rocket launcher. Fair assessment, I would agree. After all, gunpowder in the real world has existed since at least the 9th century. Given the fact that this world is a seemingly medieval era one and has a Japanese developer (right next door to China, where gunpowder was first discovered), it is entirely possible that when you buy rocket, your character is just carrying fifty fireworks rockets in a leather sack and just using them as weapons against enemies. I could buy that.
...of course, then you're able to buy a chainsaw, and suddenly you can just throw that out the window.
Basically what Square did was this game was drop Dungeons & Dragons, Final Fantasy, science fiction, Western influences, Eastern influences, and pure and simple crack into a blender and hit the "purée" button until we're left with one hell of a mess. And it is glorious. However, it does get more and more frustrating, especially as you go on.
Much like the early Pokemon games, you have a bag full of items when you collect them and have no descriptor of indicator of what they do. Sure, some of them are self explanatory - like a sword...well, cuts things...and the aforementioned chainsaw cuts things slightly faster. But then there are items like "Stone". What does Stone do? Well, it appears to be a magic spell (yes, can buy spells that can be used by both humans and mutants) that paralyzes, but you really can't be sure about that until you put it to use and that's really not the best idea in combat.
Why? Because, again much like Pokemon, the entire game is an elemental rock-paper-scissors game.
Only you ever really get to learn what enemies are weak and strong to what until, like with items, you're in combat. So you can equip your characters with items for the battles only to find them completely useless and get your entire team slaughtered. Thankfully, there is a feature of the game that allows you to rewind time - upon death, the player characters meet Odin who agrees to revive them so long as they still have the strength to keep going.
Which works pretty well until the player characters kill him. Spoiler alert.
While this does indeed help by allowing what is essentially unlimited continues, Odin drops the characters right back into the first round of the battle exactly as they were. Hey, All-Father, crazy thought. How 'bout loaning out Mjolnir or that spear you have that literally cannot miss? From a more practical standpoint, if you do get into the situation that I mentioned before it gives you an opportunity to run. Unless you're in a plot-related or boss fight, then you're right screwed and better off just reloading a previous save.
The player has four stats that factor into key facets of the game - Strength, Defense, Agility, and Mana. Strength is the character's ability to deal out some physical hurt with, say, a sword or an axe. Defense keeps them from being hurt, usually having to be supplemented by armor. Agility deals with attack speed in combat as well as damage with ranged weaponry. Mana is spellpower, pure and simple, and Mutants have the highest but don't really excel in any other department.
In the beginning, the main character can pick three compatriots to go with them in a manner identical to the selection of the main character. Top tip: Do not pick a robot or a creature. Three humans and one mutant. Trust me. Pick whichever genders you like, but no robots and no creatures. Robots are good in theory, but upon death they drop in hit points until they're pretty much unusable. Creatures are a whole other mess of crazy. When certain enemies are slain (the combat is turn based, see literally any FF game to see how it's done), they'll drop meat. If you try to feed it to anyone other than a creature, nothing will happen.
If you feed it to a creature, however, that creature will completely change into another type of creature depending on the meat. However, there is no way to know just what each type of meat will turn each type of creature into. It would be very easy to have a Baby Dragon who is very good in combat and massively useful...and then have it turn into a demonic flower that has a weak attack that is completely useless to the situation. Really, unless you happen to be sifting through a walkthrough online, you're basically playing Russian Roulette every time you eat the meat.
So, with all my complains about this game...why is it still so appealing? Mostly because it preys on that tiny little fragment of the human brain that remains from our caveman ancestors that wants to beat the tar out of people and take their stuff...okay, let me retract that and work it out so it doesn't sound so absolutely horrifying. It's that instinct of an RPGer to hunt down enemies, get their loot, sell the loot you can't use to buy better loot and become stronger. But more than that, it's just fun to have situations like fighting a bunch of samurai in a feudal-Japan themed world and pulling out a chainsaw to clash with their katanas.
Those together make for an enjoyable enough grind. And as final a fantasy as the 600 other games that hold the title...
Final Fantasy Legend II is brought to us by Square Soft (now Square Enix) and is available for the Game Boy.
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