Final Fantasy II Conclusions

Well, I finished off Final Fantasy II last night. It turns out there are only 3 dungeons left in the game after getting flare and ultima so those spells really are terrible. There's simply not enough time to level them up unless you cheat or grind for hours and hours. I feel like they needed to either start those spells at a higher level, make them so powerful that even at level 1 or 2 they're good, or really ramp up the leveling formula so low level spells would improve quickly in the end game. Oh well.

The final dungeon was both a let down and rather scary. I never really felt like I could get wiped out, or even like I could lose a party member (other than the new 4th guy). But it really seemed like just a little bit less twinkage and I wouldn't have stood a chance. As it was I had to use all of my elixirs to get to the end. The final boss didn't even land an attack (I think he tried to blind someone) before he fell over dead to the might of my berserk spell.

Some final thoughts:

• Leila didn't actually die when we got swallowed by Leviathan. I guess she fell overboard and drifted to the capital or something? My party seemed about as interested in her being alive again as they were when she went missing: not at all.
• You start the game by naming four characters, and then you immediately lose the fourth one. (The four people are main male character, his girlfriend, their dimwitted friend, and the girl's brother.) In the third last dungeon of the game you end up killing the evil emperor and it seems like all is well... Until your fourth guy suddenly reappears and picks up where the emperor left off. The second last dungeon has you invade his castle to kill him... But when you get to the end the evil emperor comes back from hell to conquer the world. Your random jobber commits suicide to stall the undead emperor (pretty sure I could have just killed him there, but whatever...) while the rest run away. Fourth guy decides he has nothing better to do so he tags along to kill the undead emperor. And then after you do? His sister wants to be friends again but the fourth guy is all "everything has changed, screw you guys" and walks off. And you don't try to stop him! He tried to conquer the world, of his own volition, and it's clear he hasn't repented... But you let him leave to scheme a new plot to conquer the world? Kain in FFIV turns evil for a while but at least he had the excuse of being 'mind controlled'.
• In order to get into the emperor's castle you need an airship. You go to visit Pavel who has been taking care of Cid. As soon as you walk up to talk to Cid he falls into bed, gives you his airship, and dies. I guess Pavel is a lazy jerk and was feeding him the slow fish.
• I was trying to hit for 9999 damage but it looks like berserk actually has a cap. I'm guessing attack is limited (maybe at 99 or 256?) since it didn't seem to matter how often I cast berserk on my guy, I was stuck doing around 3300 max. I bet if I cared I could come close to 9999 though, by maxing weapon skill and haste. 
• Mental note: get osmose for all of your characters, not just the black mage. I was stuck chugging elixirs to restore my healer's mana.
• All told it took 15 hours and 44 minutes to complete. Before the final dungeon I was thinking I'd wasted a lot of time and would really be able to shave time off next time around. I'm not so sure anymore, since I think the final dungeon might actually be a problem. Though maybe with multiple copies of osmose it won't be...