Describing my attempts to play Final Fantasy II as anything less than frustrating would be a disservice. All the nonsense I’ve had to put up with has been insurmountable. I have to admit, I almost just skipped this entry due to frustration. I persevered and got about 1/3rd of the way into the game. However, more issues cropped up and so I put it on hold. With the end of Final Fantasy VI, I decided I wanted to finish the 2D era of games before moving ahead. To explain this delay, I have chronicled my adventures here.
When I originally compiled my list of versions, I had decided to play the PSP release. Final Fantasy II 20th Anniversary Edition was heralded as the pinnacle release. Fixed all issues, introduced super-bosses and bonus dungeons, and included the pseudo-sequel. This was a mistake and it all rolled downhill from there.
20th Anniversary Edition
I was going to play this on my Playstation Classic, which was recently discovered to be able to run PSP games. This was a fantastic and timely discovery! The truth was it was almost capable of running them. Some higher-end titles wouldn’t be an option. I figured a JRPG would be a shoe-in for capability. I was wrong.
It booted up fine, the intro video played wonderfully, and the game was going great! I played through the intro, met the resistance, but then I got outside and the game began to chug. The music got awful and if one of the overhead clouds passed over the party, it got even worse. This wasn’t going to work. It was grating on the ears, and moved so slowly. Since we were still on my Playstation Classic, why not boot up Final Fantasy Origins? It was where we played Final Fantasy I, so I knew it worked. Or did it?
Origins Edition
The opening played, the sprites were perfect and adorable and we were on our way! Then we got into it and discovered a few things: each character could only carry two items into battle, skill decay was still present, and the translation was iffy at best. I figured I would deal with it if I had to and started on with the adventure. I was promptly put into an encounter I could neither defeat nor flee from. This led to a wipe, and me looking down the barrel of starting over. I was informed that Final Fantasy II introduces saving anywhere, which I wish I had known. I took this as a sign to move on and try the Dawn of Souls release on GBA instead.
Dawn of Souls Edition
So I had this on my SNES Classic already and could confirm it worked. This transition could have been much worse. So we loaded it up and watched the introduction (for a 3rd time). As soon as I left the first house in the game, it crashed. I debated stopping there, but I thought surely it was a small hiccup. Surely!
I hit reset, and got out of the first house and it worked! I managed to get through decent number of the games plot points before my next problem came. All of a sudden, approaching the next town I needed to get to led to a crash. This time it was consistent.
After having watched the beginning of Final Fantasy II four times now, I was tired of this, and so I put it on hold. Now we sit, at the end of Final Fantasy VI—at the time of posting this—and it is time to try Final Fantasy II again. While we have had some issues with the other GBA games, the crashing errors have been cleared up. But you never know, I have the worst luck.