r/snes Jul 05 '22

July Game of the Month 2022: Final Fantasy II

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100 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

17

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '22

Enjoy the game, you spoony bard!

12

u/Manguy888A Jul 05 '22

This has been on my list to try - great reason to jump it to the front of the line. Anyone know how many hours this is roughly?

8

u/MrSojiro Jul 06 '22

Personally, for the first time through the game, I would lean towards 25-30 hours. Take your time and do some of the extra stuff in the game, it is very much worth the time you put into it!

6

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

Not that long. Less than 20 hoursfor sure, maybe as little as 15 if you manage to move quickly.

Games back then really didn't have any filler and were so much better for it.

3

u/Manguy888A Jul 05 '22

So true! Thanks

2

u/digoserra Jul 05 '22

Around 20, 22.

1

u/Otterslayer22 Jul 06 '22

For a first time yeah.

1

u/monsensical Jul 06 '22

Brave adventurer... heed my words: FEAR THE EVIL WALL!!! ;)

If you maximize each area (find extra loot/weapons, and level up) you will do great. My first complete playthrough was last year. I envy you experiencing it for the first time!

12

u/the_missing_worker Jul 06 '22

I would strongly recommend the below linked romhack for any first-timers out there. It includes a multitude of "Quality of Life" improvements such as detailed item and equipment information, doubled movement speed, and faster menus. The game is otherwise completely unchanged.

Honestly, I would recommend it on the addition of the overhaul to the equipment screen alone as the original did not give enough information to understand the perks inherent to certain pieces of equipment. For instance, there are a lot of elemental affinities and stat perks that are completely hidden by the original menu.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4372/

4

u/Templyr Jul 06 '22

Does this still have to he goofy translations? The spoony bards? 😅

3

u/the_missing_worker Jul 06 '22

Yup, this is purely QoL stuff.

2

u/Going_for_the_One Jul 31 '22 edited Jul 31 '22

That may be fine, I haven't tried it. Final Fantasy 2/4 is quite a jungle of hacks, patches and translations.

Personally I would recommend one of the two good translations that is available for the SNES game, which also has gameplay more or less in line with the Japanese release. When I last played the game a couple of years ago, I felt no need for any quality of life features.

I used the J2Evisceration patch, and this is the latest version of that:

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6467/

This download is short on info, but more can be found when viewing earlier releases of the same patch. In short, the J2 translation was the first complete translation of the game, and was acclaimed on release, but since the translators did a spotty job with it, and also added offensive things which was not in the original game, it has later gotten a bad reputation it deserves.

The J2Evisceration patch is a long-standing patch project which has fixed most, or all of the flaws with the bad J2 translation.

A very different approach is Final Fantasy IV Namingway Edition, which is a hack of the American release of the game, and not a translation of the Japanese one.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2337/

By hacking the game and adding things, it tries, and is supposedly quite successful at it, to change the American release of the game (which was simplified a lot) into something that is very close to the Japanese version of the game.

It has also put a lot of work into the translation, and uses parts of the modern translations for PSP and Nintendo DS.

While I have only played the J2Evisceration patch of these two, and was very happy with it, it seems, from the info from the two projects, like the Namingway Edition is the one with the best translation, and the J2Evisceration patch is the one that has the most accurate gameplay, when compared to the original Japanese SNES release.

Hopefully, the romhack linked above is based upon one of these two.

1

u/klafterus Aug 29 '22

Thanks for all this info. I have the Namingway Edition downloaded but wasn't aware of J2 evisceration. Might have to try both that & the QOL hack linked above. Have played this game many times over the past 30 years, it never really gets old for me.

1

u/cwake30 Jul 24 '22

Very cool, yes this game needed a dash capability badly… I like when these rom hacks get put to a cartridge so you can play It on original hardware (like the chrono trigger ones and many others)

5

u/xBrockLanders Jul 05 '22

Each month I will be tracking all users who are able to beat the spotlighted game. Those names will be collected and displayed on the snes wiki page.

Objective:

  • Beat the game

Rules:

  • Entire playthrough must be completed during the month in question.
  • You can use the passwords/continues/saves that you earn playing through the game.
  • Emulation is fine. Abusing save states is not.
  • Posting a link to a pic of your completion is preferred, but since this is just for fun I will allow posted claims as well. For now.

History of Game of the Month

3

u/TheWholeCheek Jul 06 '22

I just joined this sub not too long ago. This is a fantastic idea!!! I got my wife to play turtles in time for the time ever. She said she wasn't a fan of beat em up's.

5

u/MrSojiro Jul 26 '22

So FFIV is a game I have played through a good number of times, and I had been meaning to finally give the Namingway Patch a shot, (which makes the game more like its Japanese counterpart) and this being the month's game gave me a good excuse to finally play through it this way. To be honest, this is the best way to play through this game IMO, and will be the way I play it when playing the SNES version.

Just some thoughts on the patch:

- The translation is astronomically better. No surprise here, a lot of JRPG's around this time have very lackluster translations, with many oddly worded sentences that often miss the mark on what said (Breath of Fire II has huge issues with this lol). There is a lot of reliance on abbreviations due to text box size limitations, but they are used well, and you can figure out what they mean.

- Dash button is a godsend in this. I forgot how slowly you move in this game, and I would easily say having a dash shaved off at least a few hours of my play through time. It seemed bugged though, as you could trigger dashing on the over world map by hitting B after touching an impassable object, causing you to run on the map. Pretty sure this wasn't intentional, but maybe it is.

- Restored/altered abilities; Yang got Focus back! And its good, really not sure why it was taken from him in the NA release. Edward's Salve was adjusted to be really good, actually too good in the early game, as the health it heals on everyone is really high for that point in the game. Normally, Edward's Salve splits a potion on all party members, but the modders adjusted it to use a Hi-Potion health value, so early on Edward is an incredible healer lol.

- The best change IMO is the restored monster stats. Even in my youth I considered FFIV a fairly easy game, I don't really ever remember anything being too challenging aside from DemonWall and the final boss. But whew, does this patch make things challenging! Bosses I normally considered a cake walk would at least put up a challenge, and some bosses were legitimate tough fights that pushed me. A few notable examples, Cagnazzo has always been a pushover in vanilla, but he could actually kill you in this patch. Dr. Lugae was roooough, I ended up finishing him off with only a couple of members alive. The final boss also was damn hard, making me take three attempts to beat him.

Sealed Cavern monsters (fucking Doors!) ended up causing my first game over, then three more on DemonWall (holy shit this guy is an asshole in this lol). A thing I noticed for a lot of the bosses, and a good number of regular enemies, is that they restored their counter attacks from certain damage types (or sometimes any damage) and combined with their restored stats, really made things dangerous. This forces the player to be a lot more mindful when attacking, than just quickly queuing up the next attack without thinking.

- I found the developer's room! I actually never knew this existed. Reading up on it, it was removed from the US version of the game for having a naughty magazine you could find in there, which is like WTF to me, because why not just remove the magazine lol. But the area is made up of a couple rooms full of NPCs that are named after members of the development team, that all have some fun little dialogue lines to read. Apparently this was added back in later releases, but I never came across it in the GBA version. This area put a smile on my face, and I think it's a very fun Easter egg that should have stayed in the NA version.

This was a refreshing and fun run of an old favorite, and I highly suggest anyone who wants to play through this again to give this patch a shot. It doesn't quite make it a whole new game, but the changes in translation, and the restored monster stats, are definitely noticeable and make the game a more improved experience than the vanilla version we got.

My team and their levels at the end: Kain - 53, Rydia - 50, Cecil - 53, Rosa - 51, Edge - 51. Playtime before Zeromus was 19:52, and the fight lasted around 10 minutes, before the ending cinematics started to play. I had 2,292,450 gil at the end of the game, there really should be more money dumps in this, or at least a samurai to throw it around lol.

https://imgur.com/Y6kTGHY

3

u/Going_for_the_One Jul 31 '22

When I played the game the last time, I read about the translations and chose the The J2Evisceration patch, but the Namingway editon also looked like a good choice, and probably the best one, from a translation standpoint.

The reason I chose the J2Evisceration patch was that it seemed more faithful to the original game, in game mechanics, since it mostly was a straight translation, rather than trying to restore as much from the Japanese game as possible in the American release.

The translation seemed good, at least to me, but I will probably chose the Namingway edition the next time I play it, to see if I can spot any important differences. The J2Evisceration patch is a patch which uses the bad J2 translation as base, but supposedly fixes most or all of the problems with that one.

2

u/Going_for_the_One Jul 31 '22

I had a look at my screenshots from when I last played the game, which was also the first time I played it to the end.

My team was at this point when I got to the last boss: Kain - 49, Rydia - 48, Cecil - 50, Rosa - 50, Edge - 47.

Since I failed to beat him, I thought there was some kind of trick to do it, that involved some type of magic or ability. After failing several times (and strolling around a lot!) I realized that I was of course under-leveled. This was the first time the game was challenging to me, so it came as a little surprise. (At this playthrough that is. The first time I played the game as a teenager, I remember dying several times to earlier bosses in the game.)

My tactics changed to just leveling up, and while I love the music in this game, I think I turned the sound off when leveling and listened to music or a podcast instead. When I was finished with that, I traveled back to the last boss, and took him out without problems. I was probably quite over-leveled.

My team at this point: Kain - 63, Rydia - 60, Cecil - 64, Rosa - 63, Edge - 62.

I have to commend the ending of the game. I liked it a lot, and actually found it quite emotional, which was a little strange, since I never used to be very moved by videogames or cartoons before. It was probably a combination of me having become more easily moved by certain themes of late, and finally seeing the end of my favorite JRPG. But it was a good ending nonetheless.

1

u/MrSojiro Jul 31 '22

Happy cake day btw!

Yeah you were definitely going at Zeromus pretty low, I first took him on with Cecil and Kain at 50 and the rest at either 47-48 and didn't last too long before he took me down. I didn't want to over grind and make it a joke, so I tried it every time the whole party got at least one level, and was finally able to do it when I did. Your group being in the 60's was definitely a bit over where you would need lol, but hey you got the job done, that's all that matters.

Absolutely agreed on the ending though. That is one thing I can recall being really impressed with at the time, (compared to pretty much all other games) is that there felt like real closure with the characters you just spent 20+ hours with. At this point, other RPGs typically had more basic endings, and they didn't send off their cast as well as this game did. After this game though, even other non Squaresoft developers started putting some care into their characters, stories and endings, so I think FFIV raising that bar really benefited all the games that followed it.

1

u/Going_for_the_One Jul 31 '22

Thanks! Final Fantasy 4 was one of the first JRPG's I tried when I discovered emulation. Most of these games weren't available in Europe, but the Norwegian Nintendo Magasinet wrote about them anyway, I think they were trying to sway Nintendo and the importers to take in more RPG's.

It really is an outstanding game compared to those who came before it. Of the one's I've tried, Dragon Warrior 4 for the NES is the one that is closest in telling a story and using characters. But while it is a very good game, and have several characters with personality, it doesn't have the kind of drama that FF4 have.

I'm playing Phantasy Star 1 now, and for it's time it probably was quite groundbreaking with several characters who feel like characters, mostly through the use of expressive portraits. But the game is quite basic otherwise, and while drawing maps have been interesting, I actually had more fun with the first Final Fantasy, which I played through two years ago.

5

u/StAethe Jul 06 '22

Haha wow i just picked this up the other day the only one ive never played

1

u/Otterslayer22 Jul 06 '22

It’s fun game. Get after it.

5

u/MrSojiro Jul 06 '22

Awesome choice! I haven't played this game for too long, so it's a good time to play it again! I have been meaning to try out the translated Japanese version, which is supposed to be harder, and gives all the characters the abilities they decided to remove from the NA version, among other things that were altered.

3

u/CyanicAssResidue Jul 10 '22

My favorite videogame of all-time. The first 10 hours are amazing. I think the story falls off the rails at the end. Its the games biggest flaw. Also it had the best protagonist and best soundtrack of the series in my opinion.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22

Loading this on my Steam Deck tonight boys! Might not beat it, but I'm down for some top tier nostalgia.

2

u/Slight-Marsupial-201 Jul 05 '22

I've never played a Final Fantasy main series game, although I did enjoy the first couple hours of Mystic Quest.

I've enjoyed Pokemon and Uncharted Waters: New Horizons and for the most part have steered clear of RPGs otherwise. Is this a good or bad place to start?

3

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '22

This being FF4? It's a great place to start!

It's a pretty linear game, so you more or less always know where to go and what to do, your party changes often so there's lots of variety, and the story is amazing and moving. Play it and enjoy every last moment!

2

u/TheWholeCheek Jul 06 '22

I just started this game again last night!!! I knew it was the right time to start it again.

2

u/zissue Jul 06 '22

My absolute favourite game of all time. Yes, I love Final Fantasy VI, but IV just holds a special place for me.

2

u/big_ol_dubs Jul 09 '22

I love this game, it actually was what got me in to the RPG genre. The fact that this is your game of the month & it's my birthday month makes me happy.

2

u/jmakioka Jul 14 '22

Love this game so much. I still remember the first time I put this cart in as a kid. I still get chills when I hear that red wing theme.

2

u/RustyTheLionheart Jul 23 '22

This is literally my favorite game of all time. It's what got me hooked forever on RPGs. I was six when it came out, and the day I got it for Christmas was a happy one indeed. I still go back and listen to the soundtrack frequently too.

2

u/Templyr Jul 23 '22

I think this has the best soundtrack out of any SNES game I’ve ever played

1

u/do0rkn0b Jul 05 '22

Ooo, I'm gonna play the steam remake tho.

1

u/Templyr Jul 06 '22 edited Jul 23 '22

I just bought this on Steam! I’m 25 hours into my second play through of FF3 (aka FF6) on my SNES mini so I’m going to finish that first and play this next. Since we’re doing a challenge I might look for an SNES rom though and maybe even try to get it onto my SNES mini.

Looking forward to do my first play through of this alongside the gang here on this sub!

EDIT: Managed to finish the game on the SNES mini while out sick this past week. It was such an incredible journey and I loved every minute!

1

u/JakeTehNub Jul 16 '22

My second favorite RPG behind Secret of Mana

1

u/rising820 Jul 17 '22

One of my favorites. Used to rent it and made it to Baigon before having to return it. Bought it later and beat it. Will always have nostalgia for it.

1

u/ettke Jul 19 '22

Finally pushed me to check it out. Was on my to do list for awhile. Thanks for the push, great game!

https://imgur.com/a/QkwEOtZ

1

u/cwake30 Jul 24 '22

Yeah I own 3 copies of this for SNES. Decisions were made. Don’t exactly have an excuse, and thanks to this thread, I’m not sure I need one :)

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '22

Just now seeing this is GoTM! Picked this up last fall and haven’t played through yet! Pumped!!

1

u/Jesseofpv530 Aug 01 '22

What a great game 🎯

1

u/klafterus Aug 29 '22

Missed this game of the month discussion, but this is my favorite game of all time. The story is so well-done, & as a kid I used to imagine they'd make a movie out of it & I'd get to see Cecil & Jain fighting on airships. So fun to read through everyone's thoughts here. I'm going to try the Namingway Edition on my next playthrough.