Final Fantasy II/Gameplay

Characters

Main characters

Firion

He is adopted by Leon's parents as a child and grows up with Leon and Maria as part of their family. They lose their parents when the imperial army of Palamecia attacks the kingdom of Fynn. Firion decides to avenge their deaths by joining the rebel movement against the empire.

Guy

He possesses enormous discipline and physical strength. Despite appearances, he is very gentle and occasionally naive. He is also capable of communicating with animals.

Maria

She worries constantly about her brother Leon when he disappears. Even so, she remains steadfast in her fight against the empire.

Temporary characters

Minwu

A powerful white mage.

Josef

A villager from the northern town of Salamand.

Gordon

The exiled prince of Kashuan.

Leila

A female pirate.

Ricard

The last of the Dragoons.

Leon

He is Maria's brother, and Firion's adopted brother and best friend. Leon loses his parents when the empire attacks Fynn. He escapes with Firion, Maria, and Guy, but imperial soldiers soon catch up to them and attack. He has been missing ever since.

Leveling basics

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

• Strength is raised by attacking physically
• Accuracy is raised by attacking with weapons
• Endurance is raised by losing HP by taking damage in combat
• Agility is raised by being a target of a physical attack
• Evasion is raised by being a target of a physical attack
• Magic is 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

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 (NES/Famicom only)

If you played the NES version of the video game for a while, you probably concluded that it's pretty tough to raise your attributes quick enough to not get bored. There are ways to raise your attributes quicker, a few of them unintentional, I would think, and others that are legitimate. If you're a straight-laced by-the-book type of person you'll probably want to ignore this part.

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.

Magic basics

Learning magic

You can purchase spell scrolls from magic shops or find them in treasure chests. Use them in the "Items" menu to learn magic spells. Every character can learn up to sixteen spells at a time. If their spells slots are full and they want to learn another spell, they must first drop a spell via the "Discard" command.

Use

Use to select a caster, a spell, and a target if applicable. Press to confirm each selection. Note that not all spells can be used via the Magic menu.

Discard

Spells that cannot be discarded are darkened in the menu.

Drop

If you want to drop a spell, select it with and press , then select the "Discard" command and press to confirm.