Final Fantasy II

The second installment in the Final Fantasy series gets a bad rap, and it isn't entirely undeserved, unless you consider it was only the second game and they were trying a few thigns to keep it fresh, so they made a few mistakes, they also introduced elements that practically define the series. Among the important innovations, This was the first game to have chocobos and Cid. Cid is mentioned in rereleases of FF1, but that was added after Cid became a thing, this was his first real appearance, and liek the chocobo, his role was a form of transportation, but much more useful. Cid's Airship is necessary a few times, but then becomes a convenient warp point, chocobo on the ther hand only appeared once and is only necessary once, and only useful once or twice after that, but of all of the modes of transportation in this game, it has had the biggest impact. Also, this game introduces the first dragoon, Ricard Highwind, also the first of many Highwinds, including Kain(IV) and Cid(VII). The biggest drawback is that they replaced the level system with a skill system which increases stats based on use, which was a good idea, but is easily abused. The way the system works, the more damage you take, the more your HP and defense stats increase, so you can let your characters get pummeled on purpose to boost HP and defense through the roof.  Another swing and a miss was the system for interactive conversation, which was a good idea to give you options to do more than wandering around and fighting, but it was implemented poorly. You have to collect keywords to say to people to get specific reactions, which seems overwhelmingly cmplicated as you think you won't know which words you'll need for any cnversation, but that is overcompensated for by the fact that any time you need a keyword, it's almost always, with a scant few exceptions if any, the last keyword you recieved and therefore the top of the list, making it more boring than it could have been. The story isn't spectacular either, but it was the first "evil empire forces youths to rebel" story, so the later games owe a lot to this trailblazer.

If you want to know the story it's fairly straight forward. Four characters that you can name (Default, Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon) try to fight for survival when their village is attacked. They lose and only three seem to walk away from the battle and they join a rebel group fighting against the empire. The party goes on a series of missions with a rotating cast characters filling the fourth slot, three of which die, dramatically sacrificing themselves to save the main three characters. What actually happens isn't compelling, it's just "go to the dungeon and get the thing we need" and honestly the dramatic deaths of party members are the most impressive parts of the story, that and when you are finally reunited with your original lost fourth party member who is revealed to be the Dark Knight in service of the evil Emperor who has been dogging you through most of the game.

What really kills this game for Americans is that it was lost in the shuffle when it first came out and didn't get to us until after FF7 came out and by then everything revolutionary about it was old hat and nobody really cared. However, if you can appreciate the classics for what they were, FFII is still a decent game. My most important recommendation, play this game honestly, do not bring your party to the brink of death to inflate their stats, you can but it takes all of the fun out of it.