FINAL FANTASY II

Final Fantasy II was the first game in the series to take a genuine attempt at focusing on characters in an ever changing story. If you have ever heard of comparisons of Final Fantasy to Star Wars, this game was the start of that. The story focuses on a band of rebels fighting against an oppressive and technologically advanced Empire. The gameplay also features quite the departure, with a magic system featuring MP rather than the DnD style charge system, and abandoning character levels altogether in favor for a system where skills level up individually depending on how often they are used; for example a character would become more powerful wielding a sword the more that they attacked with one. There are only two versions of this game that I can really recommend: the PSP release, and the Pixel Remaster release. This is also one of the rare times that the original game will not be recommended at all due to its imbalance and brutal focus on grinding

The PSP

The PSP version of Final Fantasy II features a lot in common with the Final Fantasy I remake on PSP, featuring new bonus content and rebalanced combat. The PSP version is one of the few remakes where the bonus content is actually story related and gives slightly more backstory to the cast of characters you play as in the original game. The rebalancing also heavily reduces the need to grind that plagued the original release.

The Pixel Remaster

The Pixel Remaster of Final Fantasy II does ultimately try to stay true to the original intentions of the first release, removing any bonus content from the PSP version and tries to tell the story in a simpler way similar to that of the original. However, the changes to leveling skills from the PSP version are widely retained, making this version also much less grind-focused.