Guy speak beaver.
My experience with Final Fantasy II is unique. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but in retrospect, I consider myself lucky because I had the opportunity to encounter it earlier than most people in North America.
In 1991, I moved to Oxford, Mississippi. My dad decided to get his PhD at The University of Mississippi, studying herpetology and environmental science. This move caused enough friction between my parents to end their marriage. My mother didn’t enjoy living in Mississippi and decided to go back to Alabama. She took my younger brother with her. I stayed with my dad until we moved back to Alabama in 1996.
I grew a lot by experiencing campus life at such a young age. Most of my time was spent in the biology building, Shoemaker Hall. This time on campus taught me about a lot of things. Especially college football. One of the few things I love more than Final Fantasy.
My dad and I lived in four different places while we were there, but we started out in married student housing. When my parents divorced, university housing moved us to a two bedroom unit. Then repairs were needed on that building and we were moved again. Finally, when my dad finished his degree, we moved off campus to an apartment just down the street and started working for Ole Miss professionally.
Mr. K’s dad is Dr. K. I hope to also be Dr. K in the next few years.
I really only made friends in the first and last place we lived, but one of the things I distinctly remember from the married student apartment we lived in was the cultural diversity in the building. There were five units on the ground floor and five above it. A laundry room was in the center support structure. Each unit had three bedrooms.
Across the way was a young family from India. They had a son named Aman. Next door to us was a family from Ireland. They had a -ginger- daughter named Crystal. In the back of the building was a mixed family-a former Air Force officer and his Japanese wife. They had a son named Jiro. We were all around the same age. I think Crystal may have been a couple of years older. All of the adults were studying something at the university either at the Master’s or Doctoral levels.
Not sure how a family from Alabama ended up with that kind of diverse mix, but I’m glad we did. I don’t remember who lived upstairs or in the unit directly across from us (all I remember is it was a young couple who gave us all caramel apples at Halloween).
Jiro, Aman and Crystal were my closest friends for the year I lived in that unit. Crystal had a Nintendo, but the four of us all had the tendency to congregate at Jiro’s house.
He had a Famicom.
I have a pretty awesome story about Crystal, her Nintendo and the original The Legend of Zelda game that takes place 15 years later and involves sexy times. But that story’s a secret to everybody.
Anyway, most of the time, the four of us took turns playing the Japanese cart of Super Mario Bros. 3 on a black-and-white television, but I distinctly remember Jiro’s parents playing Final Fantasy II. Of course, I had no idea what was going on due to the language gap, but his mother absolutely adored this game.
I also remember watching her play while we enjoyed treats like dango or beignets she’d made for us as a snack. I always preferred her sweet potato tempura. No one else in my life has ever made it as good as she did.
I remembered the original Final Fantasy game from playing it at Denise’s house in Alabama, but this was different. I never even tried playing it. Not even a year later, bad memories of the Marsh Cave were still fresh in my mind. I consider myself lucky though, because I got to experience this game so early in life. Although it did make for a very confusing moment when I first became acquainted with Final Fantasy IV. I already knew what FF2 was, and that was not it.
Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of this game. I think Mateus is a fantastic antagonist, but the game feels like a long series of breadcrumb fetch quests. The world memory system seems tacked onto an already shallow story and the experience system, while unique, lacks the functionality to make it viable.
Had the requirements for growing attributes, like health and mana not been determined by random number generator, it may not have been so bad. Weapon, armor and spell proficiencies (as well as physical and magic defense) grew by number of times they were executed. Other attributes were not. This system, even on the PSP, just doesn’t hold up. Especially because the damage modifier bug, where you’d repeatedly whack yourself, was removed. It adds another degree of brokenness to an already frangible system. Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of stat ups can be handled incredibly well (Final Fantasy X being a strong case in point), but this title just didn’t do it.
There are even a lot of musical tracks that I feel don’t hold up in this game. Considering there’s only a few dozen tracks, in my opinion, that’s a lot of missteps for Uematsu-san. I really only like two songs from the entire game: the final dungeon, Castle Pandemonium, and the finale, Love Will Grow. Even the boss music falls short. It simply doesn’t convey any real sense of danger.
It wasn’t until the game was finally released on PS1 that I took the time to play through it. And I’ve only done it one other time since.
In preparation to write this review, I called my mom and dad to see if they remembered the names of any of the parents, but they don’t. Well, they remembered Aman’s family’s name, but that was it. Some things are better left in the annals of memory, I guess.
Breakdown:
- Order played: 9 of 12
- Order completed: 9 of 12
- Place among my favorites: 12 of 12
- Number of times completed: 2
- Versions completed: PS1, PSP
- Versions attempted: PS1, GBA, PSP (watched a partial Famicom playthrough)
- Definitive version: PSP/iOS/Android Anniversary Edition
- Favorite track: Castle Pandemonium
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