FINAL FANTASY II Pixel Remaster

Ending 101
Final Fantasy II
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Steam
2021
Man, I am a sucker for Final Fantasy games. I believe there are more of those on this channel than any other series out there. Regardless of that, this is the first time Final Fantasy II has shown up here. My wife loves this game, but I've always had a hard time getting over the levelling system. She started this one while I played FFI and as she went, would tell me about how streamline the leveling is in this one. Since I had planned to play all six games in the pixel remaster edition, it came that time to finally get over my awkward feelings about the leveling in this.
I hate running from a battle. I would make my last stand on some desperate hill of Marlboro breath and dead allies before retreat. I hated how the older versions required running as a pre-requisite for increasing, I think, evasion? Also the older version, increasing one stat would lower another and I wasn't having that. With this version of FFII, you increase a stat, you keep it...and no more running. I was finally down to play this game.
It felt odd at first, Seeing a strength point here, some HP there, maybe a weapon every now and then, but after a few hours of story and grinding, the whole system clicked into place for me and I was really enjoying it. Magic and weapons can be used by anyone, so you could go all out with everyone, but it was better to specialize a bit. Firion was my white mage learning all white magic, Maria was my black mage, and guy was my beater who ended up learning the spells I liked the most from white and black.
I'm a completionism at heart, but since there was no end lvl goal, I didn't feel the need to max out my characters. Doing so would have been herculean. Towards the end it takes nearly a thousand cast of Ultima to level it up from say twelve to thirteen, and even more to get it maxed to 16. Leveling all the weapons would have been crazy too since the higher they go, only stronger monsters give points to them, I imagine by lvl 14 or so, I would have to grind nothing but Iron Giants to get them maxed. There may be an easier way I am overlooking, but I got all the steam achievements, that's what really matters nowadays.
Like the first Final Fantasy, the pixel graphics are beautiful, crisp and HD. Also like the first, the music is an awesome mix of Uematsu re-masters, renditions, re-makes and clearly some Black Mages influence in there. The soundtrack is awesome and the I love many of the pieces from this game. One of my favorites is the boss music with the stilted electric guitar and the ghostly choral singing...too bad I didn't hear it long enough as most boss battles in this version are a joke. literally one to three rounds of auto attack and the majority are done. That is really my only complaint about this game, you can easily overpower since nearly every battle awards some kind of stat increase. Honestly, the complaint is small since it's still an enjoyable experience. My only regret is that I waited so long to finally go through Final Fantasy II, but it took this version of the game to get me around to playing it.