Final Fantasy Legend II (Game Boy) Review
Release Date: 14 December 1990
Date Played: 8 August 2022
Introduction:
Final Fantasy Legend II is actually the 2nd game in the SaGa series. In Japan, it’s known as SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu, but was given the Final Fantasy name in the West to drum up extra sales despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the series. It was critically praised when it was released, and has gone down in history as one of the best RPGs on the Gameboy. Known for its high difficulty and odd gameplay choices, it nevertheless captured the hearts of countless gamers out there and is not only on many top 10 best Game Boy games lists, but has even been included in some 100 greatest games of all time lists.
Personally, I feel that the people who rank the game this highly are looking at it through rose tinted glasses. As someone who never played the game when they were a child, I found the game to be frustrating, unfair, and rather grindy. To me, it has some huge flaws that keep it from being a very fun experience.
Story:
There’s really not much of a story here, despite what the peanut gallery of the internet would have you believe. After your father abandons you as a child, you set out to find him and to seek out the 77 MAGI stones. These stones, if all gathered together, will spell armageddon for the world. It’s your job to collect them all before the bad guys do.
The plot feels rather pedestrian, as of 2022. I’m not sure how well it stood out back in 1990, when most RPGs centered around gathering a bunch of crystals, or stones, or what have you, but it certainly doesn’t inspire much imagination. In addition to this, you also have to restore Isis back to her former glory… Something else that didn’t really hold up over time…
Just to clarify, you restore Isis, the goddess, back to her former glory… not the terrorist group.
Gameplay:
It’s a standard 8-bit JRPG. If you’ve played one from back then, you know what you’re in for. Gameplay consists of you wandering around an overworld and entering towns where you can talk to townsfolk, buy items, rest at inns, and get information about where to go next. Out on the overworld and in dungeons, you experience random combat encounters. These take place in turn based fashion just like you would expect. You select your weapon of choice, beit a sword or a spell, deck out your character with armor, and micromanage stat increases. With a few exceptions, that I’ll mention next, it feels pretty much like any standard RPG from the time period… and that’s totally fine. It’s a good formula that still holds up.
What the game does differently, is introduce several new systems that both improve… and ruin an otherwise standard fare. Firstly, when you start the game, you pick your party of 4 from several different races/classes. There are humans, mutants, robots, and monsters. Humans are good with combat, mutants excell at magic, robots use guns, and monsters evolve into different(sometimes better, sometimes worse) monsters when you give them food. It’s a cool idea, and you’re free to build your party however you’d like. Want to be a group of 4 robots, go for it. Secondly, the game does away with XP and instead implements the most incredibly frustrating system for leveling up I’ve ever seen. Essentially, your characters just level up their health and stats randomly based on what weapons they use. If you want to level up strength, use a strength weapon, and then grind for a few hours hoping that your strength will randomly go up. It’s mind numbing, and I hate it. Considering the game is very difficult, you’re going to be spending a huge amount of your time grinding… and with no guarantee that you’ll make progress, that can be a motivation killer. Your health points increase at random intervals as well. At one point, I played for over an hour without gaining any additional health for my team. Lastly, all of the weapons in the game have a limited number of uses before they break. These usually range from 15-50 attacks worth. But, even at the top end of the scale, that won’t last you too long. So, you need to equip your characters with several backup weapons so they aren’t left in a helpless state when their main weapon breaks. To top this off, weapons are expensive, and replenishing them constantly eats away at your money. So, you’ll need to do additional grinding to keep a full stock of weapons at the ready. These 2 choices the developers made are baffling to me. I really, really, hate it and I can’t imagine what was going through their minds when they greenlit the ideas. Also, as an added jab to the ribs, the game loves to hide the entrance to most dungeons in a secret location. An NPC will say something like, “it’s 5 squares south and 7 squares east from the giant cactus in the desert to the south.” That’s fine for a location or two, but it seems to be the order of the day for this game. Get out of here with that esoteric garbage. It’s just another way to pad out the game and waste everybody’s time.
As for the random combat encounters, they are ample. Very ample. Perhaps the most I’ve ever seen in a game. Oftentimes, you can’t take even a single step without getting into another fight. Many of the combat encounters will have 6-15 enemies in them. The enemies will come in stacks of the same type that are all queued up and blocking each other. Say you run into a spider, skeleton, and a ninja. Well, there may be 5 spiders, 5 skeletons, and 5 ninjas all in a row that you have to defeat. It can be overwhelming and they all tend to attack your main character. There’s nothing like being hit 6 or 7 times in a row before you really have a chance to act. Even if you can 1-shot an enemy, he’ll be blocking the enemy behind him from your attacks. So, even if you’re super overpowered for the area you’re in, you’ll still be taking hits from the enemies because of them essentially being meat shields for each other.
Luckily, you can save your game at any time from the menu. This is really helpful for gaming on the go, and mitigating any draconian garbage that the game throws at you. It’s one of the few saving graces of the game.
Presentation:
The game has some pretty great music, and I’ve seen some reviews where people say it’s their favorite RPG music of all time. Now, I’m not sure I would go that far, but it’s certainly catchy and fits well with the general atmosphere the developers were going for. The overworld music and combat music are standouts and honestly deserve to be in a better game. At least you’ll get to hear them a lot with all of the grinding you’ll be doing.
The game looks like a standard 8-bit RPG on the Game Boy. I’m not really sure what else to say. The enemy sprites are well done and can be interesting to look at, and the character models are cute and look a lot like Final Fantasy on the NES. The overworld isn’t much to look at, and can be rather barren and empty at times, but the dungeons have some interesting detail here and there.
Conclusion:
If this game eliminated the frustrating leveling system and weapon breaking mechanics, it would be much better. But even then, it would only be a fairly average RPG in my eyes. Maybe I’m being a little hard on it because I don’t have any nostalgia for it, but it really didn’t do anything for me… This is very disappointing, because everyone says that it’s the best in the Final Fantasy Legend series. Considering I still have the 3rd game in the series left to play, it’s imposing a sense of dread in me that I’m not at all thrilled about.
I watched a review where the guy said that there was about 6 hours of story in this game, and around 9 hours of grinding. I’m not sure how a modern gamer would consider this acceptable, nor am I sure how someone in 1990 would consider it either. It’s just such a waste of your precious time. Not being able to consistently level your characters when you grind, having to constantly spend all of your money to replenish your breaking weapons, running out of weapons in the middle of a dungeon and not being able to damage the overly unfair enemies, and the hidden dungeon entrances that require to to decipher coordinates are all a bit too much and really hurt the whole experience. This leaves me not only in a position where I wouldn’t recommend the game, but I will come right out and tell you to avoid it if you don’t have a strong sense of nostalgia for it.
Final Status: Played
Final Score: 4/10 (Bad)
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