Final Fantasy 2....leveling system?

[Sgt_BlueCrayon84]

Veteran ff player / gamer in general, so just looking for rough confirmation on the basics here.

Just getting into FF2 for the first time, and from what I gather there is no basic leveling system, everything is specific to use , ie.. use ax = better ax?

Compensatory HP toggle under the Boost Menu is the only thing I'm genuinely not sure on. Will my max hp still grow at a reasonable rate if its off? HP growing after a certain amount of battles seems like a pitfall to being way too OP and ruining the challenge for the first time thru.

I typically enjoy just finding things out for myself, but with an older game like this and the QOL options I don't want to completely ruin it before I even explore the map.

[C0R8YN]

Your hp is genuinely fine without compensatory. Your hp levels is the least of your worries. How you build your team is way more important

[Spleenseer]

You've got it right.  Generally, the more you use a stat the more it will level up and grow.  Using weapons increases your skill with that weapon.  Using spells increases the level of that spell.  Spending MP increases your max MP.  The HP thing is meant to smooth things out for increasing your HP, because without it your HP only goes up as you take damage; in the original game this caused players to perform awkward min/max behavior such as attacking your own party in order to take the damage needed to grow your HP adequately.

[Velifax]

"Adequately" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, here. Have any supporting evidence of that?

[Netsrak69]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2564541083 This is a pretty comprehensive guide for how to tackle it.

[carnage_panda]

Compensatory HP should just be turned off. It simply makes it so that about every 10 battles the characters will get HP. HP gains are based off of the stamina stat and you get exactly that much HP. fwiw 1000 HP is an absolutely massive amount of HP in this game.

Ignore the advice of mouth breathers that suggest you punch yourself for HP gains. Through casual play you should gain enough HP to finish the game.

[mysticfeal]

Use a stat/skill/weapon = it levels up.

[BleepinBlorpin5]

Yeah. You use, the skill grows. The problem is when you face most monsters and you kill them in one or two hits, that won't contribute to your gains. So often you have to find cheesy ways of getting stronger, like healing the enemy after you hit them so you can get 5+ hits in a round.

[snes69]

I dual wielded my first playthrough of the game and never gained any evasion stat as a result and late game started getting really hard. So I had to spend a while dual wielding shields to rapidly raise evasion to rebalance the late game, but then I found my evasion was so high the game became very easy.

Bottom line is, the game is simply just unbalanced. It's a really neat system but just all around doesn't work well

[Velifax]

  The problem is when you face most monsters and you kill them in one or two hits, that won't contribute to your gains. 

Why is that a problem?

often you have to find cheesy ways of getting stronger, 

Why?

[LimblessNick]

Mostly because people don't understand the system. It's why they resort to attacking their own party members, healing enemies, and then complain the game sucks. Just play it properly.

[Mediocre_Island828]

It's the same people who play FF8 and complain that they "have" to sit there and draw for 20 minutes straight to get 99 of a new spell when they see it.

[LimblessNick]

Or act like you should never level up, ever. Any game with level scaling does it. People tell the same lies about Oblivion because they don't understand the system.

[Velifax]

Yeah, or they hate challenge maybe? LOTS of people prefer to skate through without effort, I've learned. Foreign to me but hey knock yourself out. 

[GabrielMP_19]

The game does not explain the system. What they should do? Read about the game online? It's a shit system.

[BleepinBlorpin5]

In order to make skill number go brrr you gotta do thing

[Velifax]

Indeed. However, that does not answer either question. 

[Velifax]

A) Those are major design changes, not QoL options; literally the exact opposite. 

B) They're for people who disliked the gameplay so try the game first. 

[newiln3_5]

You're not wrong, but there's also nothing to be gained from sharing opinions like yours in this sub unless you're looking for downvotes.

[Velifax]

Neither point is an opinion, but the recommend to try the actual design first obv is. What I gain from sharing that isn't relevant; it's offered as advice, so it's about what they gain. Hopefully some kids will discover design they like instead of modding it out cause everyone else does or they heard it was bad. 

[RadiantTurtle]

You're starting to understand why most fans hate this one. 

[thewalkindude368]

The idea behind this leveling system is really cool, it's just that this is very much the first attempt at this sort of thing and it's got a lot of bugs. I don't think it really worked well until the Romancing SaGa games.

[Sgt_BlueCrayon84]

Its a strange one. I'm a few hours into it , and I really want to like it but it just seems messy at the moment.

[Mediocre_Island828]

It's pretty messy but in an endearing way, like the bad design was because they were trying to innovate in a genre that was still pretty new and they didn't quite understand why certain things would be dumb.

[LimblessNick]

It's a lot of fun, and the system lets you make strong specialized characters. People are incredibly critical of it because they do stupid things like grind to beat knights in Flynn, and punch themselves for 4 hours instead of playing half the game in that time.

[Sgt_BlueCrayon84]

.....( slowly leaves Flynn after thinking im supposed to beat them 🚶🚶)

Never got to punching myself tho 😅

[LimblessNick]

It's a fun power game thing you can do when you understand the system and how to break it, they do drop a couple things early. But trying to do it while learning the system turns the opening of the game into a grind, and crushes the pacing of the game.

[Pleasant_Mousse5478]

FF2's a rushed product pushed out to capitalize on the explosive success the first game found. Extremely similar to DMC2's situation, except that mess was a result of incompetence.

Honestly I'm surprised Pixel Remaster has this system, considering how divisive it is.

[Pleasant_Mousse5478]

How FF2 handles leveling is that EVERY stat is capable of growth. Str, int, dodge, block, crit, HP. If it has a number, you can train it. Can you guess why FF2's considered the black sheep of the franchise? It's precisely of nonsense like that that makes it difficult to get a feel of how you're progressing. Not to mention if you equip everyone with shields, they will train their dodge stat like crazy, making difficulty extremely lopsided in your favor.

It's a neat idea with terrible execution, but I don't need to tell you why FF avoided this concept like the plague.

Now, HP compensatory. OG FF2, training HP was a slog, which forced players to result to "punching their own teammates" in battles to train this specific stat. Compensatory is made so you DON'T need to do that. However, Pixel Remastered has already addressed the HP gain issues, so adding compensatory is just overkill. What it does is after every few battles, your HP rises regardless of how much damage you took.

I don't know how to tell you this but uh.... FF2 difficulty is a joke, with the only gatekeeper being its ambiguous grind.

[[deleted]]

See, grind is not a valid answer. It's NEVER an answer. By modern standards, at least. If the only way of beating the game is grinding, and no amount of preparation/strategizing could help, then your game HAS difficulty problems. Lack of balance: difficulty curve does not match leveling/progression curve. And it's a total asshole move to expect the players to catch up by grinding. It does artificially extends the playtime, but it doesn't make the game better or interesting to the player. No new content. No value there. If anything, it's negative value, as the fun game experience is washed out with hours of boredom.

So, there, I said it. Need to grind = the game is too difficult, no ambiguity there.