Ordered this off of Amazon a few days ago. How well have these two games aged?

1 is still great.

2 is...2. No amount of polish is gonna fix that one.

Give me the rundown on 2.

Fuck off, II is based

They're complete shit just like the early DW games.
FFV is the best gba rerelease FF game. IV is ok, VI is overrated but also ok.

I played through that version like 15 years ago.
I remember it being pretty meh. FFII ain't that bad.
The new post-game content is fucking tough.

I think 1 is better than a lot of FF games. 2 is okay if you just play it but the "whoops this room is useless and you're teleported to the middle of it and the encounter rate is really high so you wasted your time" gets a little old.

>How well have these two games aged?
Poorly, the writing is incredibly basic and there's not enough going on mechanically to hold your interest. FF2 is just garbage.

>leveling system is retarded
>dungeons are terrible save for the final dungeon which is actually fucking good
>characters are okay at best
>main villain is based
>story is literally star wars
>password system is fucking stupid and pointless
>music is great
>encounter rate is through the roof
despite the pluses, the leveling system makes it unplayable. Either get a save file that maxes out stats or avoid.

Isn’t 2 the one that made beating up your own party members to gain stats a perfectly viable option?

1 has aged fine. It's very simplistic by modern standards but a good game overall. The major problems the NES version has that made it feel very outdated were fixed on the GBA version.
2 on the other hand was just always very heavily flawed they experimented quite a lot with the game and it just did not work. The GBA/PSP version are a bit more bearable but not by much

Also should have gotten or emulated the PSP version easily the definitive version of both games.

these games have a lot of useless spells, I think 2 especially. like toad, break, warp, and death are all just the same crappy instakill spells that rarely work. seriously, 4 of the same thing.

Yes

How come III in particular was the only pre-VII FF to not get a GBA port?

1 is best either on PSX or a patched NES ROM. The GBA one is neat and adds some postgame stuff, but it also changes mechanics around to be more like the FF games that came after it, like autotarget for party members who were selected to attack an enemy that died or an MP pool replacing the D&D styled spell charge system.

It was initially the only one not remade for the wonderswan which is what 1 and 2 (and 4?) were based. Square wasn't going to do all that extra work.
I think the DS remake is great in any event. The 4 DS remake felt very wrong. The chibi style was ok for a simple game like 3, but not at all for 4.

>password system is fucking stupid and pointless
FUCK YOU

>can't revive allies mid-battle
Fuck that.

LIFE and LIFE2

It was gonna, but SE pussied out.
unseen64.net/2012/10/11/final-fantasy-3-wonderswan-color-cancelled/

Best regretful purchase I ever made on a whim. I thought it was trash at first but man did I get hooked as a kid. I miss taking chances with video games like I did when I was younger. Now, I guess I have refined my senses to know when a game is going to be trash, cause I barely take chances anymore.

Shit don't work on Classic mode.

Nice

youtube.com/watch?v=rTfR0aKz6S0

PSP version is way better. The games are fine, if a bit short.

the way your characters grow is very odd. If you ape around by going in blind, you wind up over-generalizing your party to the extent that no one excels at anything...and it makes you feel hella weak. Obviously, if you study up prior to you can overcome this and become hugely OP. There really isn't an in-between, which is why I find it so unrewarding to play.

Chars/Locations/Music is also unremarkable. FF1 seems to have it beat in all those departments. The RPG mechanics in 2 are undoubtedly superior, but only if you know what the dicks you're doing.

Playing with max stats is too boring. It is really well designed for a playthrough without any grinding, but you will probably need a good stock of restorative items

Warp will warp you out of a dungeon. Death is garbage. Break is slightly better than death because less enemies are resistant. Nothing is resistant to toad and will hit everything at level 12 or so. Toad is the best.

I replayed them recently
>FF1
100% of the combat is pure filler to waste your time, the agility stat doesn't work and none of the bosses last more than a couple turns apart from the ones added for the remake, even if you don't abuse haste/temper/saber
>FF2
The combat is either pointless filler or utterly rapes you, there is nothing between. The levelling system is broken, the encounter rate is sky high and %hp damage is everywhere from the midgame onwards.

I honestly like FF4DS’ look as well. The original was a relatively early SNES game that barely had more detail than NES titles in many areas and would get absolutely demolished by the spritework in subsequent games like FF6 and Chrono Trigger. FF3DS and FF4DS’ low poly look is clean and nice in comparison... though I know that style has its detractors.

Final Fantasy 1 has aged fairly well
It has some really fun bonus dungeons with optional bosses from a variety Final Fantasy games.
FF2s fetch quests are awful though. It's like, to progress the story you need to get story item A, but to get that you need to clear a blocked path which requires story item B, but to get that item you need story item C which is in a dungeon. It makes it feel like a slog

Red pill me on how to level efficiently in FF2

I honestly want to play FF2 just for the OST alone.
youtu.be/iFDxRV7yYz8

4 looks like shit outside of DS res. 3 at least was smart enough to use simple outfits.

No WonderSwan port because the "game was to big" so they would have had to make everything from scratch for the GBA port.

What about the psp version of IV? I thought it was a decent way to play it if you didn't want to play the 3-D dsmake.

based and blind pilled

The most important thing is to start combat at full HP and not heal during it, since it will only roll your HP levelups if you end the battle with less than you started.
Almost 100% of your actual power comes from equipment and magic.

Just play through the game. Make sure someone practices cure and esuna. Make sure someone else practices toad and an element if you feel like it. Ultima is worthless. Getting too high hp will hurt you in the last few dungeons. Swords are probably the best weapon choice but it doesn't matter really. Take Maria to the front row. That should be a good start

The PSP version doesn't have the DS difficulty but it's still a nice looking version of the snes version. It also has TAY if you want more FFIV.

For starters, you will want to equip shields. Everyone. Shields. Shields increase Evasion, which helps grow Agility, which increases Evasion.

Outside of that, try to focus on specialization of magic and weapons. For the majority of the game, you have three party members with a revolving 4th door (many of those characters join up for the post-game bonus story Rebirth of Souls). Thus, your main focus should be trying to build a strong kit for your three mains. Magic is divided into Black and White only, and they use different stats for the damage algorithm, so its best to focus on just one type per character. For weapons, you will definitely want to have a sword user, since a lot of the best weapons at the end are swords (this is Final Fantasy, after all). Really, I would save its best to avoid bows, since they are two-handed (and thus prevent shield equipment).

There are semi-invisible tier levels for all monsters and characters. While it is most efficient to stay in the early area and have your characters beat each other up, eventually you will cap the invisible level. Your characters can only be one tier level above the most powerful foe that they have defeated, so you still have to progress through the game to "unlock" further caps. Fortunately (and hilariously), the game is semi-open world. Exploration is mostly kept in check by spikes in monster difficulty.

This ancient website is probably the most useful to understanding the various invisible stats and such:

scoff2j.com/mainmenu.html