Final Fantasy II/Gameplay

Character improvement
Improving the strength and abilities of the characters in this game isn't as straightforward as in the more mainstream Final Fantasy video games. There are no experience points in this game, but when you fight enemies and satisfy any of the conditions below, you will gain points in that attribute.


 * Physical attributes:
 * Strength and accuracy are raised by attacking with weapons
 * Endurance and max HP are raised by losing HP by taking damage in combat
 * Agility and evasion are raised by being a target of a physical attack
 * Magic attributes:
 * Magic and max MP are raised by casting spells, or losing MP
 * Spirit is raised by using white magic
 * Intelligence is raised by using black magic
 * Magic Defense is raised by being the target of spells and special abilities

In the NES and PS1 versions, when an attribute increases several times, another one will decrease.


 * When Spirit increases, Strength decreases
 * When Strength increases, Intelligence decreases
 * When Intelligence increases, Endurance decreases

Abusing the leveling system (Famicom/PSX only)
In Final Fantasy II, there are legitimate ways of increasing the level of your stats. However, in the Famicom and PlayStation versions of the game, there are also a few bugs which can be exploited to increase the likelihood that a stat increase will occur. The following are a list of actions that you can take to increase stats which may be unintuitive or unintentional.


 * Swap spell: Here's a great spell and it's available early in the game. Use it on a weak enemy and defeat it and you'll gain quite a bit.


 * Attacking party members: An unintentional but quick and dirty way to raise certain stats. This will raise the beaten up character's HP. Simply attack your other party members until they are in critical status. You can do this with magic as well to raise attributes associated with this as well, but there's an easier way. This was fixed in later versions of the video game.


 * Select/Cancel: Another unintentional cheat but excellent for raising your weapon level. Select a target, confirm, and then cancel when the next character's turn comes around. You can also do this for magic. This was fixed in later versions of the video game.

Formation

 * Formation is the order in which characters line up, and the chances of a character being targeted is determined by their position. The lead character will be targeted the most often, so it should be a character with high defense and endurance. Weaker characters should be put in the rear. Note that moving a character further back does not reduce the amount of damage taken or increase evasion, it only reduces the chance that an enemy will target them.

Battle

 * Attack: This is pretty obvious. Characters attack enemies with the weapon they have equipped. Characters without weapons will attack with their bare hands.
 * Magic: Characters can use spells that have been purchased from a magic shop. Select a spell and a target (if applicable) for the spell.
 * Items: Uses items in battle. Some items can't be used unless you have the Battle Support option enabled in the System Menu. Spells that can be cast from equipment can be cast by using the equipment like a normal item. At the top of the item menu, press up to select an equipped item.
 * Equip: Allows characters to change their equipment in battle. Multiple pieces can be switched in one round and changing equipment does not forfeit the character's turn.
 * Flee: The character that chooses this command will attempt to run away. If he succeeds, the whole party will escape. If he fails they cannot attack during that round.