I'll be completely transparent from the beginning - while I enjoyed this game, I did not enjoy it as much as the original. The game itself added some cool new ideas which I liked in theory, notably character progression being tied to "learning by doing." The more you cast a spell, the stronger it gets, the more you use a weapon, the better you get at using it, if you use a lot of melee, your strength goes higher, if you cast a lot of magic, your MP will rise etc. I like that kind of natural character progresssion the most in games. In practice, it doesn't always work perfectly and for some spells (like the debuff clearing spells) you'll have to spend some time grinding and casting it at thin air to make them even a bit useful. Same for leveling up weapons.

The biggest sin is the 4th character slot. It gets filled with different temporary characters as you advance the plot and with the exception of the first one, who acts as a bit of a crutch due to his high level magics at this stage of the game, none of them are worth investing into and it really goes agaist the natural character progression of the game and they feel more like a hindrance than a boon. Especially when it comes to the final party member, the moment he joins he's a scrub with poor weapons skills, around 1000 health, 5 measly MP and knowledge of no magic. With WHO and WHAT he is they could've at least made him as strong as the first temporary character. He'd still lag behind your main 3 at that point in the game but the gap wouldn't be as wide.

The switch from blank slates to named characters made it so that they have actual characterization. It's nothing too special but I'll forgive a game that came out half a decade before I was born for not having an overly complex plot or characterization. The plot is much better than the first game and I personally liked the dungeons more too.

Overall, I think it's worth playing but wait for a sale, I wouldn't pay more than $10 for FF2.

FF 2 isn't as bad as I had heard, but I'm not sure I'd call it that good either. The dungeons are kind of irritating to get through unless you use a guide to cut down on the tedium of checking every single door often leading to an empty room with nothing of note inside it. The boosters are also vital to the experience due to the high encounter rate, I don't think I would have enjoyed this game at all if I couldn't turn off enemy encounters sometimes. The boosts to spell and attribute leveling are also nice bonuses.

After finally falling in love with a SaGa game for the first time after trying multiple times to break into the series (Romancing SaGA 2: Revenge of the Seven is amazing), it was kind of fun seeing where several of the systems originated from. They're very barebones and lacking in depth here, but you can see where the SaGa series flourished where this game crawled. If you buy this in the bundle of 6 games, at least give it a try!

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