Final Fantasy Legend II

When news of a sequel to Final Fantasy Legend broke almost a decade ago, RPG fans waited with eager anticipation. Final Fantasy Legend wasn't flawless but it was quite an RPG for a handheld gaming console. Final Fantasy Legend II looked to emulate the original's success and succeeds not only in matching its predecessor but quite clearly improves on it.

Features:

• Three Character Classes
• Battery Back-Up
• For Game Boy (black and white)

This game is part of the Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa series in Japan), and it unrelated to the home console installments of Final Fantasy. The class system, which held much of the original's game-play depth returns, but with new classes. Of the three classes found in the original (Humans, Mutants, and Monsters), only Humans and Monsters make a return. The Mutant Class has been replaced by Robots, and like the original, players are given the choice of hand picking their party at the beginning of the game from the three classes of characters, making for some very interesting and customized party combinations.

In terms of gameplay, Final Fantasy Legend II remains faithful to its predecessor but with a few new twists. In addition to the four-character party, side-characters would join the party as guests throughout the game. The presence helps immensely as battles become noticeably easier to fight, but when they leave, there's always the dread of fighting long and costly battles once more. The designers of the game also turned the experience point system on its head. Instead of the usual leveling up system where characters in the game "level-up" all their attributes across the board once a new level is reached, Final Fantasy Legend II forces more strategy by awarding characters new attributes for defeating enemies in a certain way. Using magic to kill enemies will increase a character's "Mana" power while using equipped weapons such as swords would increase a character's "strength".

Graphically, the game is ahead of Final Fantasy Legend. The monsters are more detailed and the game's towns are varied and have a lot more detail, but one glaring problem still remains. Much of the ground in the game is simply left untextured, giving the impression that the characters are walking on transparent glass floors.

The strength of any Square game has always been in the telling of the story. Filling a much needed hole on the Game Boy and topping its predecessor's sparse storyline, the game is packed full of emotional energy. Unlike the wooden performances of the characters in the original, the game lives up to Square's much deserved reputation as the master storyteller. Characters in Final Fantasy Legend II express emotions and react accordingly as the quest moves through its many twists and turns. Side quests and tasks are explained not as tasks and objectives but as part of an unfolding story, an approach that helps the characters immensely as it allows them to develop as characters in a story, not a moving sprite with a goal. As with most Square titles, FF Legend II comes packed with an amazing soundtrack. Once again, the famed Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu performs miracles on the Game Boy's sound hardware and pulls off nineteen breathtakingly beautiful tracks that is befitting of a Square epic as it conveys mood and emotion with great success. The sound quality still isn't up to par with Square's music on the other consoles, but the game's nineteen tracks remain some of best on the Game Boy.

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