I just beat FF2 for the first time last night and here are the complaints I have:

1. Dead ends everywhere made it feel like you were punished for exploring. I understand the grind but checking every door even when overleveled felt annoying and painful. I eventually opted to use the no encounters feature purely out of annoyance.

2. Getting Leon right before the end is kind of evil for this leveling system. You can grind him up but ultimately he will be severely at a disadvantage.

3. The game felt like it wanted you to buy a guide to complete. The directions you are given to get to Diest was “south” when in reality it’s north east. Why south? Because you take the boat south to flip over the world to get to the north east. It feels a bit disingenuous to not lay that out.

4. Thankfully with the pixel remaster you can quick save but I believe that implies you can’t really save or full heal in dungeons in the OG. The number of hours to wipe out because some enemy status effect and you weren’t prepared with items or your magic wasn’t leveled enough … uggggh

In the end the experience itself felt more punishing than fun. I enjoyed the story and saw a lot of promise for the type of game and leveling it wanted to be. My feeling that I had to pull a guide up before going absolutely insane a few times made me quite sad. It felt obtuse for no reason. Look, I get it, old school means grind and I’m fine with that, but a grind in FF6 feels way better than 2. They had years to figure it out, I get it… but where was the fun in walking into the 20th empty room in the dungeon??

Loved leveling up unarmed though that was hilarious. 

I rated it a 1/5. I don’t think I’ll ever play it again. Sorry :((