After the rollicking success of the original Final Fantasy, Square Enix (then called Squaresoft) released the somewhat experimental Final Fantasy II. By many accounts, Final Fantasy II has always been something of an odd bird as far as the larger pantheon of Final Fantasy games are concerned due to its bizarre approach to character growth, but it did kick off the tradition of evolving the game's various systems every few sequels or so. With the tricked out rerelease of Final Fantasy II on the PSP, very little has been changed outside of the updated graphics and music, so the aberrant leveling system (which doesn't actually allow your characters to gain levels in the traditional sense) is completely intact, for better or worse.

Level Faster N00bs

The idea behind Final Fantasy II's approach to leveling is that your characters get better at different skills the more they use them. It's an intriguing idea, because it essentially strips out the classic Final Fantasy class/job system and replaces it with an amorphous collection of statistics that you can choose to improve... or not. What makes this system awesome is that every character in your party can become a magic user and also dual-wield heavy axes at the very same time. To some degree, this makes your characters very similar, even though some differentiation tends to emerge organically while you play. It's only natural that the character that acquired the fire spell first will be your go-to guy for torching bad guys, but if you want to put in the effort to build a homogenous group of jacks-of-all-trades, the game won't stand in your way.

In the older versions of Final Fantasy II (formerly released in the US in 2003's PSone Final Fantasy Origins compilation), it is said that this strange character development system lead to bizarre player behaviors, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the PSP version. See, since your characters get better at things by doing them, many players would turn their characters against each other, hacking and slashing their comrades in order to artificially inflate their characters' attack and defense abilities. While you could still probably do this in the PSP release of Final Fantasy II, it doesn't feel particularly necessary as (similar to the PSP release of Final Fantasy) the game's difficulty seems to have been dialed down a bit. Although hardcore Final Fantasy fans may find fault in Final Fantasy II's scaled-back challenge, we didn't mind so much because it relieved the game of one of its major criticisms: that the only way to play through it was by exploiting the leveling system.


Besides the freaky leveling system, there is still a solid (if antiquated) Final Fantasy game here, and those players that enjoyed the rerelease of the original Final Fantasy on PSP will likely find this title to be almost as good. The improvements to the graphics and the audio are top notch and there were quite a few times when we'd pause during battles simply to gaze at the stunningly rendered backdrops. Really, the only thing standing in the way of Final Fantasy II becoming every bit of the fan favorite that Final Fantasy has become is the quirky and sometimes confusing way the game approaches skill-building.

As a result, Final Fantasy II may not be a surefire hit for Final Fantasy fans across the board. Still, for those who are interested in some slightly-skewed nostalgia and the freedom to manipulate their characters' skills on a microscopic level, Final Fantasy II is a perfect time sink of RPG pleasure.