Douglas's game of the week: Final Fantasy Legend 2

[Sim Kid]

The Final Fantasy Legend series aren't even Final Fantasy games at all-I remember hearing them in the SaGa series, and most of the games were japan only. The Final Fantasy Legend trilogy, like Final Fantasy Adventure, were given the names "Final fantasy" to make them sell easier. Hell, all they need to do nowadays is just say Square-Enix made it to get a game to sell big.


Final Fantasy Legend 2 was released in 1990-After the first game, Final Fantasy Legend was released. Final Fantasy Legend, even for the time period, was a perfect example of what an RPG should NEVER do. The leveling up system from Final Fantasy 2's back to cause lots of pain and torture, and in Final Fantasy Legend, they somehow found a way to make it even MORE unbearable than it was in FF2. Yes it's possible to make that leveling up system worse. Before I rant on and on about how bad the first game was, let's go to 1990. What has changed?


Quite a bit actually-The graphics are much better. Okay okay, the non-NPC sprites are recycled alot, but they look much better than the ones in the first games. The Battle animations now show the weapons hitting-You can actually see the sword slash the enemy, instead of a few lines appearing on the enemies like in the first game that zoomed by in like less than 1 second. Sure, the battle animations are also recycled, but they are a huge improvement from the first one. The NPCs also look good-Your dad and Mask bear a resemblance to Indiana Jones. Lyn also looks pretty good, and the NPCs who join in Edo also look really good. I also like how the gods look.


The storyline is much improved from the first one-A statue of Isis was broken into 77 pieces called MAGI. MAGI had the power to make people gods, so there would eventually be people fighting over them. Your dad hunts the magi and kesps them safe from the people who want to be gods-Some like Ashura and Venus are all power-hungry snobs who will do anything unless it gets their way. You set out to find your father, but you end up trying to gather all 77 MAGI to prevent any more gods from appearing-You'll have to push off all the new gods like Apollo and Odin (Though Odin's actually not quite evil-The only reason you fight him is because he said he'd give you other chances to fight but you must fight him.), and eventually, they become blinded by their own greed for power and then you have to fight them. The storyline does have quite a bit of cliches, but this was released in the early 90's when cliches like that were barley used.


The leveling up system of this game was the biggest annoyance ever recorded in the history of RPGs. You thought the Sphere grid was annoying? This leveling up system makes it look like regular levels! The leveling up systsem was definatley the worst idea ever thought up by RPG developers-It still remains the worst idea and we have stuff like Junctioning (Not quite as bad, but still annoying), the Card game in FF9, and Phantasy Star III now. In this annoying leveling up system, you gain health by losing a specific amount of health, strength by attacking, mana by casting spells, def by being hit, and so on. It's ungodly annoying, because if you thought leveling up in the early RPGs like Phantasy Star II, you have to fight loads of battles just to get the stats up. However though, your humans now actually gain stats unlike in the original where their health stayed at like 40-50 throughout the entire games while your mutants' stats grew like Zuchini(sp). Monsters are still as annoying to level up-They have to eat meat to get stat increases. It's really annoying when your monster sucks ass, then it eats meat, then it gets MUCH better, and then it eats another meat and then it sucks again. Robots are oddballs-Their health grows by giving them equipment, so they will probably be the first ones to reach 999 health.

The controls are much better-In the first, there was a slight delay (They probably got a hernia from their legs moving all the time-Ever notice that? That may be because there's no bathrooms in those worlds, yet there are suprisingly sewers. Of course, it's better than the alternitive-Toilets but no sewers), and here there's almost no delay at all. Hell, if you hold the a button, the battles just fly by-Even though if they go too fast, then you may lose track of what's happening and realize half your party's dead.

The difficulty is another annoyance in the game-This game, like every classic RPG-was plauged by sickenly common random encounters-While it wasn't as bad as it was in the first one, or Breath of Fire, it's still annoying here. Still, the battle theme is probably one of the best ever-It's very addicting, and I even found myself tapping it on the desk along with Dreadful Fight(Boss battle). It can easily get annoying when you're fighting every 3 minutes and are fighting like 10-15 monsters at the same time (GRRRR!!), but it's still very catchy. And like many other games, this game is stuck with putting WAY to much emphesis(sp) on leveling up-Getting to the next level is okay, but here you have this leveling up system. This means you'll be spending like 20-30 minutes trying to get each character's stats up or hunting for meat to feed it to your monsters to give them E-Coli to change them into different monsters. If your stats aren't high enough, then the game will become impossible-I was stuck at Odin for god-knows-how-long before I finally managed to beat him-I mean, you have 6 rounds to kill him and his monsters or else he'll kill you. In FF4 it was pretty hard enough, but here it's annoying-But luckily you have the Nasty Dungeon to level up! Luigi007 got stuck at the Dragon races-And I think that may be because his stats were low. But it's better than in the first where your stats had to be as high as possible before you even had to THINK about going anywhere near a boss. There are also NPCs that join your party, like say Lyn, Dad, Mask, etc. They're usually very strong and help a LOT during the hard boss battles. If you didn't have Mask to help you during the Ashura fight, then it'd be impossible.


There's little replay value here-Sure, there's using different combonations, but that's more or less all replay there is besides the Nasty Dungeon.


The music and sound have also improved much from the original-The battle theme (Criticai hit) and boss theme (Dreadful fight) are very catchy. Sure, some of the themes get old quick, but you have the jukeboxes to do that. Plus, they even make a joke about it (I don't know if it is, I haven't been in Edo for years):

*Music changes*
"Wha? What is that horrible music?!"

Yeah, some of the music gets old fast, but it still has a great soundtrack.

Overall, Final Fantasy Legend 2 is still a great game, but it was caught in the dreadful era of Cliched storylines (Though quite a bit of the storyline wasn't a cliche), Pallette-swapped monsters (And even the Final Fantasies were caught in that era), and way too much emphasis(sp) on leveling up. If they had released an RPG like this today, it would be hated among all, but for the time period, it was still fun. If they rereleased this game, fixed the god-awful leveling up system and the too much emphasis on leveling up, the recycled sprites and pallette-swaps, then you would have a really great RPG for today's standards. It's still a classic-And one of the better RPGs on the Gameboy. 9.00/10


Pros:
-=MUCH better than the original=-
-=Some catchy tunes=-
-=more smoother graphics=-
-=More original plot=-
-=Battle animations=-
-=Battles can just fly by=-

Cons:
-=The game can be pretty hard if you're not careful=-
-=The leveling up system used here is the single most annoying thing ever to appear in an RPG=-
-=Trapped in the era of way too much emphasis on Leveling up=-
-=The music gets old=-
-=The annoying encounter rate=-
-=The battles can go by TOO fast=-


There, better CK?

[ August 25, 2004, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: Sim Kid ]

[LOOT]

You did this to piss me off, didn't you?

Actually, I didn't mean Final Fantasy Legends 2 was horrible. It was just my least favorite FF game that I played.

That, and that I last played it in 6th or 7th grade...


Visit Chao Adventures in the Comix Thread! Go and read them, now!

[Sim Kid]

Maybe. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Codiekitty]

Originally posted by Sim Kid:
The god-awful leveling up system was the biggest annoyance ever recorded in the history of RPGs. You thought the Sphere grid was annoying? The god-awful leveling up system makes it look like regular levels! The God-awful leveling up systsem was definatley the worst idea ever thought up by RPG developers-It still remains the worst idea and we have stuff like Junctioning (Not quite as bad, but still annoying), the Card game in FF9, and Phantasy Star III now. In the God-awful leveling up system, you gain health by losing a specific amount of health, strength by attacking, mana by casting spells, def by being hit, and so on. It's ungodly annoying, because if you thought leveling up in the early RPGs like Phantasy Star II, you have to fight loads of battles just to get the stats up. However though, your humans now actually gain stats unlike in the original where their health stayed at like 40-50 throughout the entire games while your mutants' stats grew like Zuchini(sp). Monsters are still as annoying-They have to eat meat to get stat increases. It's really annoying when your monster sucks ass, then it eats meat, then it gets MUCH better, and then it eats another meat and then it sucks again. Robots are oddballs-Their health grows by giving them equipment, so they will probably be the first ones to reach 999 health.

...

-=The God-awful leveling up system is used=-

Doug, develop a vocabulary. Each and every single time you have ever described this game's leveling system you've used the G-A word. I got really sick of reading it a long time ago, I'm sure others did as well, and it makes you seem uneducated.

On the other hand, don't talk like you swallowed a dictionary.


Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

[Sim Kid]

I couldn't think of any worse-insult when describing the annoying-leveling up system.

[Beam Yosho the Drunkard]

Piss-poor?

[Codiekitty]

Here's a list of words and phrases I came up with off the top of my head that don't use curse words.

Lame
Awful
Terrible
Poor
Poorly thought out
Vomit-inducing
Created by Satan himself
RUN IN HORROR
Yikes
Oh dear

I'm sure there's more, but these are only the ones I could think off off the top of my heads.

Now, how you word the sentence to make all of these work is up to you. For example, "The oh dear battle system" just sounds lame. "But the battle system... oh dear..." doesn't sound anywhere near as lame.


Where are these lemmings going? The Super Nintendo Super Shire! Hop in line and follow them there!

[Sim Kid]

Vomit-inducing is more or less a good word of choice when describing the poorly thought out leveling up system.


RUN IN HORROR's more or less what's better when describing the first Final Fantasy Legend. (Alot of complaints I heard about the first one was that you don't get a party yet they say you can in the manual. In the Manual, they tell you where you can get a party. Most people must've skipped that part)