If
this is the future of role-playing, I may have to quit my day job - I'll
never get enough sleep to function there. It's Final Fantasy II,
another in the popular series, and it's a real gem. I would go as far as
to say that it's the best RPG I've ever played on a cart-based system. If
you own a Super Nintendo, get it. Get it now.
You're Cecil (Intimidating, eh?), a Dark Knight and leader of the Red Wings (a sort of royal air force). When you decide to rebel against the King's tyranny, you set out on your own to protect the innocent. While the storyline doesn't seem incredibly unique at the outset, you will find that as the game wears on, the plot unfolds, and you'll find yourself actually enjoying the storyline! There is a constant change in personnel within your party to keep your battle strategies fresh, too. Bottom line: this is a very involving RPG.
The graphics are hit-and-miss, with tiny cartoon-like characters and 8-bit landscapes. The monsters you fight are very detailed but not very animated. In combat, the attacking monster will usually just flash. The good stuff comes in the well-detailed towns and castles as well as in the airship scenes, when the SNES "mode 7" scaling gets shown off.
I would have to say the music in this cart is the best I've ever heard in any videogame. I thought the orchestral effort put into Enix' Actraiser could never be topped, but it looks like the SNES has one heck of an audio chip (thanks, Sony!). Final Fantasy II sounds like a movie soundtrack, with rich violins, harps, cymbals, and trumpets cranking out CD quality tunes that go from upbeat combat themes to somber dirges. I would have bought a CD with these songs on them. It's that good.
To
top it off, Square included a battery backup that stores 4 games,
character name change options (very handy when your main character is
named Cecil), and places to save the game in special rooms within
dungeons. They went all out on Final Fantasy II, and it shows.
TIP: Before going to battle against any of the bosses, be sure to set the battle speed to slow. This insures that you will get the most attacks in.
TIP: The white magic spell WHITE works very well against the boss in the final battle. Don't be misled by the ALL MAGICS BECAME INVALID message, that just means that any spells cast that have a lasting effect (i.e., FAST, HOLD, etc.) have been negated.
