Final Fantasy Legend II

Original Release: Gameboy, 1990. Version Reviewed: Gameboy, 1991.


THE PLOT:

One night, during your childhood, your father leaves on a long journey. Before he goes, he entrusts you with a shard of MAGI, telling you never to lose it. Then he departs through your open window.

Many years later, you decide to track down your father. You leave your village with three friends. The four of you soon discover the Pillar in the Sky, an enormous tower that connects your world to many others. As you travel from world to world, you learn that many individuals have found MAGI shards and used them to rise to power as self-proclaimed gods. A group called The Guardians has dedicated itself to recovering the shards first. As you begin to confront the evil deities and collect their shards, it occurs to you that your group might just be able to collect all of them. But the Guardians warn that if all the shards are brought together, it could cause the end of all the worlds!


CHARACTERS:

As the synopsis reflects, Final Fantasy Legend II isn't a mere step above its predecessor - It might as well be on a whole other planet! The game opens as the your character is abandoned by your father, with minimal explanation. You meet your father multiple times as the game progresses - each time learning a little more about why he left, which becomes as much of a goal as simply collecting shards. This makes the main character relatable in a way that the previous game's uncharacterized party wasn't. The companions are more generic, but the prologue does force you to walk to each of their homes to pick them up from their families, and you speak with the parents of each of them. This helps to establish the rest of the party as people with their own lives and relationships, which makes it feel like you're going off with a group of friends and not just sets of pixels that will help you win random battles.

Facing enemies in a random battle.

GAMEPLAY:

Much like the first Final Fantasy Legend, in that gameplay revolves around exploration, and combat around a mix of boss battles and random encounters. A nice addition to this game is that you travel between the game worlds via the Pillar of Sky, an almost tree-like tower that allows you to journey back and forth. The visual element of this game is very strong compared to its blandly-produced predecessor. If Legend I is one of the plainest-looking Gameboy games I've encountered, then this is one of the most detailed.

Graphics are substantially more detailed than its predecessor's...

THOUGHTS:

Jaw... dropped.

The Final Fantasy Legend was an enjoyable guilty pleasure.  It wasn't actually a good game, but it was fun to play thanks to easy, intuitive gameplay and a cheerful willingness to be as bizarre as possible.

Final Fantasy Legend II (or SaGa II, if you prefer) is a routine fixture on lists of the best Original Gameboy games ever made. It lives up to that. The actual gameplay mechanics are very similar to its predecessor, but it improves on that first game on every level, and not just by a little. The graphic detail is, for the Gameboy, absolutely astonishing. The game looks good, and I don't even feel the need to add "for the Gameboy" to that sentence. There's a coherent story, and it's surprisingly involving - moreso even than Final Fantasy Adventure's plot, which I praised in my review of that game. There's a strong variety of quests and locations, and each of the game's many "worlds" feels fleshed-out and unique.

I'll say it flat-out: Of the Final Fantasy-related games I've reviewed to date, this is the best. The story is more complex than any of the first three main range Final Fantasy titles. The graphics are not only better than those of the other Gameboy games I've reviewed... They are, in my opinion, more artistic than the graphics of the Gameboy Advance versions of Final Fantasy I and II. I started playing this as a background game to pick at in short bursts. I ended up playing for hours on end, simply because it held me so completely.

In a game brimming with nice touches, one I would single out is a late game return by the various characters you've helped across the game. This creates an effective dramatic scene, one that leads directly into the story's climax.

The game is longer than its predecessor, but it took me less time to play through it because I simply didn't want to put it down - and when it was clear I was nearing its end, a part of me was sad that it didn't extend just a little bit longer. At various points while playing, I caught myself marveling aloud that this was a Gameboy game.

 Within the limits of its system, Final Fantasy Legend II is an out-and-out triumph, and I can't find it in myself to do anything but rave about the sheer joy I got from playing it.


Overall Rating: 10/10. Retro-gaming at its finest.

Preceded by: The Final Fantasy Legend
Followed by: Final Fantasy Legend III

Previous Main Series Game: Final Fantasy III
Next Main Series Game: Final Fantasy IV

Previous Release: Final Fantasy III
Next Release: Final Fantasy Adventure



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