Final Fantasy II is a game that eschews the normal gain experience to go up in levels system. Instead you have levels for everything you can possibly do and you get better at something by doing it. Want to get better with a sword? Attack with a sword. Want to get better with Ultima? Cast Ultima. Want to get more maximum health? Take a bunch of damage.
Unfortunately the system is wide open to abuse. Want to get better with swords, and with shields, and get more strength, and more vitality, and more maximum health? Try hitting yourself in the head with a sword over and over and over again. The poor imp you're engaged with won't know what's going on but you don't care!
I looked around a bit and couldn't find any challenges to do in this game. In fact, it just seems plain hard and no one really seems to like it very much. I've only beaten it once so just playing through normally could be the right plan... But how to define normally? Normally for me where I'll hit myself with a sword for 15 hours and then cakewalk through the game or normally in the sense that my characters will only take actions I normally would in a different game. No hitting yourself with a sword. No cast life on people who aren't dead. Etc. I worry this will make the game practically impossible though since I simply won't get to level up spells like life to the point where they're useful.
This game was savagely difficult without hitting yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that in order to get a health up, you generally need to lose a really good fraction of your health in a single fight. Similarly, I could only get my MP up by spending around 3/4 of my max MP in one fight.
Without intentionally prolonging fighter to achieve these results, you'll basically hit a wall where you can beat random encounters by losing a third of your health and MP. You'll stop getting tougher at this point, but you won't be able to win anything because you can't live through three consecutive encounters.
When I beat this game I stayed around the starting area and beat myself up until it got to the point that the monsters would run away before I could do enough damage to myself to get a health up.
I got around halfway through the game and I wasn't quite tough enough to cakewalk over everything anymore, but I never got stronger by fighting them, so I ended up beating myself up again for a bit.
Of course once you get the MP stealing spell and the Berserk spell everything is s joke.