Final Fantasy II/Gameplay

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.

• 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 (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.