Final Fantasy II (SNES) Playthrough [1 of 2] - NintendoComplete
1,128A playthrough of Square's 1991 role-playing game for the Super Nintendo, Final Fantasy II.
I know that the game has been referred to as Final Fantasy IV for a long time now, but the official change in numbering for the English release didn't happen until the game was rereleased on the PS1 ten years later.
*This video is the first of two parts, since YouTube didn't like my original almost 13 hour long recording. Part 1 shows from the beginning up through the end of the Eblan caves (where you see Edge for the first time as he challenges Rubicante). You can find the second half here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NRY-UrLomM
There is one edit made in the playthrough - to lessen the need for grinding late in the game, I spent some time leveling up Cecil on Mount Ordeals. I cut this chunk out, but the edit shouild be obvious from the jumps in stats and on the in-game timer on the status screen
This is the game that turned me into a die-hard JRPG fan. I got it for Christmas when it first came out, and it was a pretty mind-melting experience for a 9 year old in 1991. I had played stuff like Dragon Warrior before, but this was beyond compare.
Along with being the first 16-bit Final Fantasy game, FF2/4 was the first time in the series that the characters really had firmly dictated roles and personalities. It did away with the character customization options in favor of delivering a stronger narrative with a much heavier focus on character development, and it succeeded in a big way. Though the extreme melodrama might seem a bit quaint by modern standards, this was quite a revelation when it was new. The plot makes quite a few detours throughout (it even puts you on the moon!), and I remember some of the plot twists really taking me by surprise when I first played it. The characters do a solid job of at least attempting to develop over the course of the game (Cecil is such an awesome protagonist!), and the plot holds itself together admirably well considering how easily it could have gone off the rails. It somehow succeds in all of this despite having one of the roughest (pre-BoF2) RPG translations to be found on the SNES, and it clearly defines the foundations upon which the rest of the series (through FFX, at least) was built. I loved these characters by the time the game was over. Hell, I even have a tattoo of Kain as part of the mass of tattoos that run down my right leg.
The gameplay system saw a fair jolt in the upgrade to the SNES, as well. The "active time battle" system premiered here, marking the first time that enemies could, based on various stats, act "out of turn" if you took to long deciding what you do, or if chose an action that requires an unusually long time to pull off. It may sound small, but it changed everything - you had to be far more careful with your strategies this time around.
And finally, the graphics and sound here set the genre standard for quite awhile after its release. The larger, far more detailed enemies, the mode-7 map, full-frame battle backdrops, and the quality of the spell effects were a huge leap from the 8-bit games, and the soundtrack is still among the best orchestral scores ever pumped out by the SNES. The quality of the compositions and of the samples used for synthesis was unparalleled, and the work of Uematsu and the Square sound programmers garnered Square a great deal of recognition way back. It's hard to overstate just how much of the game's tone and feel relies on its music. I've always loved the soundtrack - if push came to shove, I'd have to say it's my all time favorite soundtrack from a video game. And not the later remixes - I mean the original SNES music.
Final Fantasy II was a landmark game, and even though Final Fantasy III surpassed it in many ways, I always find myself coming back to this one. It's my favorite RPG of any platform, and in my mind, it's one of the strongest games in the series. Great stuff.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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