Final Fantasy II

Due to the Let's Play videos I have been watching on YouTube I was motivated to go back to the Super Nintendo and work on my gaming resume.   By beginning working my way through the JRPG Final Fantasy series, one that I have little to no experience with.  So I started with Final Fantasy II (aka IV in Japan).

My play through was done without using save states or cheats.  So I was getting the original FF2 experience circa 1991.  I was surprised at the quality of the writing and the depth of the story.  Not only was the story deep for a game written for a "younger" audience I was surprised how self sacrificing the characters  were, the level of betrayals and redemption and how much violence was done to children, including having a couple of turned to stone.

By "the original experience" I mean I had several near controller throwing moments with the sheer number of random battles.  Random battles on the world map and random random battles in the dungeon areas all without the benefits of any warning at all.  I think this game would have been much better if the random battles were fewer and with some warning.  Even with all the random battles the amount of grinding required to finish the game was surprisingly low.  I was able to finish up the final boss battle on my first try.

My enjoyment of this game will definitely lead me into playing more classic games and more in the Final Fantasy series, I and urge you all to do the same as well.