Final Fantasy 2 Beginner Club W01
| Week 01 | 2026-01-02T15:00:00Z |
|---|---|
| Next week | 💍 Final Fantasy 2 - Week 2 |
| Home Threads | FFBC / FF2BC |
Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:
Our new adventures begin! This game will be fairly text-heavy at the start, so take you time. As we progress the ratio of text to gameplay will shift the other way around.
Remember that you can save at any time on the world map (even in the Famicom version, unlike FF1 that required the use of an inn/sleeping bag/tent/cottage).
Stopping point
Once you have finished the first quest. It involves bringing back an item (a ring) back to the quest giver (Hilda, the princess).
Be careful: the world map of FF2 is a lot more open and interconnected than that of FF1 from the very start. Talk to the various NPCs to understand where you have to go (or look at the map below). If you stray too far from your immediate objective you will probably end up murdered by overpowered monsters.
Or alternatively if you’re playing a version that lets you disable encounters you’ll be able to explore most of the world from the start including places that you’re not supposed to reach until much later in the game, which I wouldn’t recommend doing for pacing reasons.
More details
Prologue
The story begins with the Empire of Paramekia attacking the Kingdom of Finn using demonic magic. The Finnish (?) court must withdraw from the capital and find refuge in the border town of Altea.
Four young people are fleeing the carnage, their home destroyed, their parents dead. Dark Knights chase them and, eventually, kill them. Three of their bodies are brought back to life by princess Hilda and the white mage Min’u.
Yes, this game is going to be darker than FF1.
Altea
Anyway after being brought back and reunited with (some) of your companions, you can have a chat with Hilda where you’ll have the opportunity to learn the keyword 野薔薇 using the 覚える command. You’ll notice these keywords popping up from time to time throughout the game, don’t forget to use the 覚える command to memorize them (they’re always highlighted and come with a sound cue, so hard to miss).
Once learned you can select the word when conversing with some key NPC using the 尋ねる command and have them react to that. This is necessary for progressing through some quests, as we’ll soon see.
You’ll probably want to have a chat with Min’u who is standing next to the princess while you’re at it.
After that feel free to roam the rebellion’s アジト and the surrounding town of Altea to your heart’s content. By discussing with the various members of the rebellion you’ll learn all sorts of lore tidbits but as far as we’re concern the gist of it is that we’re supposed to return to the occupied town of Finn by ourselves to figure out what happened there and see if we can maybe save our missing friend.
Before leaving do have a look at the various shops. You may want to buy some magic in particular, heal, fire and blizzard are good starting points. Note that in this game you buy spells in books that you then have to use from the アイテム menu to teach it to one of your party members. You can also use the book directly in battle to cast a powerful, one time version of the spell.
Any one of your character can become a mage. You’ll probably want to move magic-oriented members to the back row however (read the combat mechanic entry below to learn more).
Gatea
Once you’re ready, venture outside of town. The nearby enemies aren’t too scary so you can use them to familiarize yourself with the combat. Your objective, Finn, is to the North. On your way there you’ll probably spot the town of Gatea where you can rest and go shopping. You can also talk with the locals to learn more about the situation in Finn. Apparently a bar is still operating there?
Finn
Well, time to see for ourselves. Walk around the lake and enter the town of Finn. There are imperial soldiers everywhere, attempting to talk with them will trigger a fight that will probably prove fatal, so avoid them.
You’ll find that there’s not much you can do in occupied Finn. Most houses are blocked and the rest are empty. On top of that you get random encounters! So what’s next? Well, remember that bar? It’s on the East side of town, you’ll have to find a path to reach the entrance.
The bar is crowded with imperial soldiers but the barkeep is friendly. Tell him のばら and he’ll give you access to a secret path behind him through the wall.
There you’ll find Scott, the prince of Kashuorn (and brother of Gordon which you may have met in Altea). He’ll tell you that the count Borghen has betrayed the kingdom and become a general of the empire. He’ll also give you a ring.
Altea
You can now return to Altea and report your findings. Show the ring to princess Hilda to complete this week’s assignment (use the 大事な物 menu option while talking to her). She’ll mention that the rebellion wants Mithril… But that’s for next week.
Map
Miscellaneous
The intro
Like with FF1, we have a short intro with fairly complicated text that can’t be paused (at least in the Pixel Remaster version). You can find the transcript in the spreadsheet of course but I’ll also put it here for convenience:
長く続いていた平和が、
今、終わりを告げた。
パラメキア帝国の皇帝が魔界から魔物を呼びだし、
世界征服に乗り出したのである。
これに対し反乱軍はフィン王国において立ち上がったが、
帝国の総攻撃にあい、城を奪われ、
辺境の町アルテアへと撤退をよぎなくされた。
ここフィン王国に住む４人の若者たちも、
敵の攻撃によって両親を失い、
執拗な敵の追っ手から逃げ続けていた⋯。
My attempt at a literal translation:
A long lasting peace
has come to an end.
The emperor of Paramekia has summoned monsters from the demon world and
set out to conquer the world.
In opposition the rebel army rose up in the kingdom of Finn but
they were met by a full-on attack by the empire, their castle was stolen and
they were forced to retreat to the border town of Altea.
4 young people also living in this kingdom of Finn
having lost their parents in the attack
are fleeing the obstinate enemies who are pursuing them…
The PS1 version also has a glorious CGI intro that does a better job of setting the tone I think:
Let's party
You don’t get to pick your classes this time around, but you can name your party members. The canonical names are:
| Japanese | English |
|---|---|
| フリオニール | Firion |
| マリア | Maria |
| ガイ | Guy |
| レオンハルト | Leon |
FF2 combat mechanics: part 1 of X
No need to pick your classes this time around, you are given a pre-made party. None of your party members will know any spell, so I recommend buying heal tomes in Altea and teach the spell to one of them. Don’t overthink it, you can learn and forget spells at will if you’re unsatisfied with your choice later.
You may also notice that, surprisingly, your characters don’t have a level in Final Fantasy 2. Instead individual skills and attributes level up independently. That means that you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to training your party, anybody can become a mage or a tank fighter or some hybrid red mage type. Feel free to experiment, it’s not too difficult to “respec” a character later if you end up not liking their skillset.
I will explain the progression system in more details next week but for now I want to focus on the party formation. You may remember that, in FF1, your party order was very important because the top character would be targeted by enemies much more often than the others. FF2 uses a different system (that will become standard in many future entries): you can shuffle every member between two rows: the front row and the back row.
Party members in the back row cannot be targeted by the enemies’ physical attacks unless all of the front row fighters are incapacitated. The back row only be targeted by spells (but spell casting monsters and even bosses are fairly rare, especially in the early game) or bows (even rarer, and usually not too painful). EDIT: I just noticed that in the Pixel Remaster it works differently: back row members can still be targeted but attacks are less effective.
There are some drawbacks to placing a character on the back row however. One is simply that, given how FF2 character progression works, if a character is never attacked then their max HP and evasion will tend to fall behind other characters. Beyond that, you can’t use physical attacks while on the back row, unless you use a bow. In other words, you probably want to put mages there and fighters in the front row to protect them. EDIT: in the Pixel Remaster you can attack from the back row but you deal less damage.
A similar system exists for enemies: you can only target the first two rows of enemies with physical attacks. So in the screenshot above, the four enemies on the back row can only be targeted with magic, my fighter can’t reach them before I get rid of the enemies in front. If I kill the blue enemy all the way to the right, this row will become empty and I will be able to reach all 4 blue enemies with physical attack, but the last 2 red ones will remain out of range until I get rid of the 2nd row.
Note that it cuts both ways: back row enemies also can’t land physical attacks if there are two or more rows of enemies in front, so you can use this to your advantage if an enemy with powerful physical attacks is behind rows of weaker enemies.
Flyover country
The town of Gatea between Altea and Finn is notable for its complete lack of notability. It’s one of the rare towns in Final Fantasy (and RPGs in general) that’s entirely optional. You can finish the game without entering it even once. I don’t even think it has any unique items.
The peninsula of power redux
You may recall that I mentioned a “peninsula of power” in Final Fantasy 1 which was a small section of land near Pravoka that jutted out far enough north to generate high level encounters against enemies that you weren’t meant to face until much later in the game.
There is a location where the exact same thing happens in FF2, and it’s right at the start of the game! If you go south from the town of Altea and walk on the very extremity of the “cape” that is found there, you’ll get encounters from the Missidia region (which is only a couple of tile southwards from here). Missidia contains some of the strongest map encounters in the game.
Now it’s not quite as exploitable as FF1. It’s almost impossible to defeat these monsters at this point in the game and the progression system works very differently now so even if you do manage to win an encounter the reward probably won’t be worth the hassle.
Note that this peninsula of power has been patched out in the Pixel Remaster, like the one in FF1. But then again in the PR you can turn encounter off and just take the long way around to walk to the other side if you really want.
Participation
- I’m playing along
- I will catch up later
- I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this section yet
- I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion
- I have played this game before (in part or in full) in English
- I have played this game before (in part or in full) in Japanese
- I have never played this game before
- I have taken part in the FF1 book club
- I have not taken part in the FF1 book club
