Starting FF2

FF2 is every bit as weird as I had been led to believe. For those of you who don't know, the battle system in this game is different than in most other installments of the series: rather than levelling up, or gaining experience points from monsters, your stats, weapons, and magic all increase based on how much you use them. If you dodge an attack, your agility goes up. If you take damage, your HP goes up. If you cast a cure spell enough, it gets stronger. Etc. What this translates to, in gameplay terms, is this:

Let me reiterate. THIS IS HOW YOU LEVEL UP IN FF2. And by God, do you need to level up. Early on in this game, I died a horrible death when I strayed two tiles or so away from imp-inhabited lands and was slaughtered by a pack of land turtles that did about four times my total HP in damage.

Strangely, however, I really like this game. Notice how my guys aren't named stupid things like Bowie-lookalike, Poor Man's Faris, Beefcake, and SARS-mask? That's because they actually come with names. And more than that, they TALK. That's right, your guys TALK in this game. They're fighting an evil empire that is on the verge of building a terrifying aerial juggernaut capable of mass destruction, and you're working for the rebel princess whose home was destroyed by the invaders. Certainly I have never seen this plot before in Star Wars. But even if I had, this game's plot is ahead of its time. Let me explain.

Standard 8-bit plot: The princess has been kidnapped. Rescue her!

Variant: You are the chosen hero. Save the world!

Standard 16-bit plot: You used to work for the evil empire, but now you don't. Stop them!

Variant: Hey, look, a strange girl with a magical pendant. Now, go save the world!

Standard 32-bit plot: The big, monotheistic, suspiciously Catholic-like church is actually the root of all evil! Stop them!

Variant: You have amnesia and a great hair stylist. Now go brood for 3 disks.

Standard 64-bit plot: Dude, who cares! Let's put on mini-shorts and sing J-pop!

As you can see, the plot of FF2, with its Evil Empire, is stepping into SNES territory. So far, the game is kind of dark and a little depressing. And not just because easily encounter-able monsters can kill you in one hit-- word of advice, don't try to say hello to the helmeted guards patrolling Fynn-- but because people are OMG dying.

Like the king, who is "recovering" in FF2A, but who is "dying" in the fan translated NES rom that I happened to have lying around. I'm not sure which one is more definitive, since fan translators tend to overdramatize things. For example:

But whatever's going on with the King of Fynn, this guy is definitely dead:

Then he makes you promise not to tell Princess Hilda that he loves her, which is actually kind of touching. Then she's all like, "Did he say anything about me before he died?" and my dumbass Bowie lookalike is all, "Um.. no." and Hilda's all like, "Oh." Geez, this game is as emo as NES games can get. I guess that's why the Evil Empire town seems to be populated entirely by Cloud Strife:

It's kind of nice that Nintendo of America isn't as big on censoring story-related death and stuff like they did back in the day with FF4 and its ilk. Remember all those silly phrases that got used so that they didn't have any swear words in the--- oh.