An evil emperor takes over a kingdom and attempts to rule the entire world. A group of rebels must stop him.
One of the brothers, Firion, awakes at a safehouse in a small village south of a castle. He finds his sister and friend there and meets the royalty of the castle from the north also in the safehouse. The ill-stricken king and his daughter tell the three that an evil emperor has taken control of their kingdom and captured the castle, and that they have taken refuge in this safe place to avoid being attacked. Firion, his sister and their friend search out for the missing brother and assist the king and princess in liberating their world from the Emperor Mateus.
Good: A great sequel * Better soundtrack than the first * Bigger world to travel * More sidequests allow for longer play * Likeable characters
Bad: New level-up system does not work well * Grinding is more irritating
Graphics: A definite improvement since the first Final Fantasy, there is quite a bit more to see. The world seems bigger and the environment looks prettier. Detail on characters, enemies and the like have a bit more detail put into them.
Sound/Music: Again, just like the first, the sound mostly involves button-pushing, lever-pulling, fighting and the casual sounds of a retro RPG. The music, however, is also like the first, but better. The music doesn't seem as repetitive but still as catchy, especially the overworld theme. It's something you'd enjoy listening to while playing this.
Difficulty: The leveling system, which will be discussed soon, really pulls the difficulty higher. The rest of the difficulty is still applied from the first, such as the puzzles and getting lost. It's a common element that makes an RPG longer, but it's just a matter of learning your way around.
Gameplay: Alright.. The level-up system. There is, in fact, no leveling up, but rather training certain skills. Even weapons. You use certain weapons and the more you use that type of weapon (axes, swords, daggers, bows, etc) the more the skill for it goes up. Sounds like it'd be a good thing, right? While it can be nice at first, it can be very irritating to maintain each and every type of weapon you plan to use. You may pick up an axe that has a very high attack power to it, but your axe skill is very low, that means you have to keep training the axe skill on that character you want to use the axe until it's satisfactory. Strength is gained by simply fighting and making kills, maximum HP is increased by taking damage, maximum MP is raised from using spells. The worst of it though is leveling up magic itself. In the first Final Fantasy, you could buy magic spells according to their stength (Cure3 and such). Once you get a spell in Final Fantasy II, you must use it constantly to raise its strength. It's unnecessary extra time that could be used to simply level up rather than training each individual stat. Thankfully, this wasn't seen ever again. The rest of the gameplay is basically the same as the first, nothing really new to explain.
Control: Practically the same yet again, they're very simple to grow used to.
Overall: As I said before in the review for Final Fantasy, this game usually comes compiled with the first game, so getting it is unavoidable. I didn't like this game as much as the first, but it was still enjoyable as far as storyline and simply experiencing it. The main setback is the "leveling" system that I ranted about, but if you grow used to it and even learn how to take advantage of it, this can be an actually enjoyable game. It's worth a playthrough, it isn't bad, just could've been better.