Final Fantasy II is undoubtedly the black sheep of the series. It presents you with the ability to develop your characters however you like, much like a SaGa game. Your characters have no levels, they instead develop their stats as they go along. An acquaintance of mine was playing through the PSP version of the game with only magic. Since I was been looking for an excuse to play the NES version, I've decided to undertake the same challenge.Before you get into this, there are two pieces of reading that are highly recommended. The first of these is a sort of algorithms guide for FF2 , which is a highly useful resource for the game in-general and should help in navigating it should you dare play through it. The second is a particular Let's Play by Gabriel Pope , which basically makes up 80% reason why I wanted to play through the NES version.We have four characters to name here and need some kind of theme, so - even though the cast is not all female - I felt like, hey, why not name them after Touhou characters? Marisa is our main character. Danmaku is all about firepower with her. Ergo, we will be using that character as the name of as our character who will primarily focus on Black Magic.Here's Alice. She likes to use more strategy in her magic...so I guess that's our primarily White Magic user for lack of anyone else, because that involves a lot of buffing and such?Patchouli, aka Patchy, also known as the One Week Wizard. She can do a bit of everything, so we'll use this character as our hybrid.Then we have this character who we won't see for ages, and has associations with the demon realm, so we'll name her after Byakuren Hijiri. Actually, if we're naming after abilities in the games, she would technically best as white mage due to possessing skills to make herself stronger, but meh.One tutorial curbstomping battle and a couple cutscenes later, we gain control. Let's quickly go over the base statistics in this game.- Power represents the ability to do physical damage. It's raised by physical attacks, and occasionally lowered when you raise Soul. Obviously irrelevant for this playthrough.- Agility represents the ability to go faster in battle and evade attacks. It's raised by having high agility and evasion. Yes, you read that correctly.- Vitality represents defenses and the ability to gain HP. It's raised by taking hits in battle, and occasionally lowered when you raise Intelligence.- Intelligence represents the ability to cast black magic. It's raised by casting black magic, and occasionally lowered when you raise Power.- Soul represents the ability to cast white magic. It's raised by casting white magic.- Defense is the defense rating of your equipped armor.- Attack is weapon power.- Hit% is divided into two sections: number of hits and accuracy. It generally goes up as your weapon level goes up.- Evade is much the same: number of evasions and chance to evade. It goes up as you make successful evasions.- M.Pwr is...magic power. It increases as you use magic, and also represents the ability to gain MP.- MDef is just like the above: number of evasions for magical status and chance to do so. It goes up as you're targetted by magic.Our magicians begin with a mere 400 Gil. As it turns out, magic is...kind of expensive. No problem though, selling off all our equipment save for a Buckler and pair of Clothes gets us enough money to afford Cure for Alice, Bolt for Patchy, and Ice for Marisa.But why sell all our equipment? Well, there's two aspects of FF2 that often go unnoticed, but are very mechanically important. The first of these is the spellcasting penalty. The mechanics guide talks more about it, but in summary, almost all equipment in the game (particularly heavy weapons and armor) carries a penalty to Int. and Soul, that can really cripple a spellcaster - especially in the status department. This is particularly bad for anyone, but especially for our party.So we're going to just have to get wrecked by physical attacks, right? Not exactly.In Final Fantasy 2, characters in the back row are completely untargettable by physical attacks. At least one person must be up front though. The flipside of it is, they can only themselves physically attack if they have a bow. The tradeoff of only having one character up front is worth it in how they gain evade at a high rate. Evasion is a very important stat in FF2, and I'd say is actually more important than actual physical defense. Later on, we'll gain access to lightweight armor that will mitigate any potential problem with attacks that do get through for Alice.I'll be primarily using this opening post to go over some of the mechanics of the game, so it'll probably be a little more long-winded and descriptive than later installments in this report. So here's how stat levels work: the first time you select a spell or use a weapon in-battle, you gain some experience for the spell proportionate to its level and the strength of the enemies you're facing. All subsequent, you gain just a little. Casting a spell outside of battle, if possible, always gives 2 experience. The same applies to weapon skills, although this will only be relevant to shields for this variant.There's a famous trick called the select-cancel glitch, based on the fact that it's _selecting_ the command the brings experience, not executing it. I may make use of this for this playthrough, but won't be relying on it.Since our characters only begin with 5MP apiece, the early going is a bit on the grindy side. Kill some enemies, return to the inn, repeat. The cost of inns is based off your missing HP and MP, so it's generally more prudent to heal up with Cure before heading in.The first quest is to head to the occupied city of Phin. I do enough training near Altea to get Patchy a Cure Book before proceeding. Along the way, Marisa levels Ice to 2. As spells grow in power and level, so do they increase in MP cost. I had to make a retreat to Gatea before heading to the town, to fill up everyone's MP.Random encounters continue inside Phin. Patchy gets Bolt to level 2 in the town. On the way back, Alice would get her Cure and Shield skills to level 2. Shields are an important part of evasion and agility gains, despite their spellcasting penalty, so for the early game, Alice and Patchy (for now) have two each.Returning with the Ring we get from a dying rebel soldier in Phin allows us to proceed with the story. We also gain our first fourth party member in the process.Minh, as he's known in this translation, is the series' first named White Mage. He fits right in with our party of magicians, and has a ludicrous list of spells at his disposal. A spelllist like this, even a party that heavily abuses the select-cancel bug will be hard-pressed to achieve. Though, most of the list is of questionable use...he's still incredibly overpowered.With the Canoe he brings, we can cross the lake and reach Palm. The magic shop here has a selection of White Magic. These all do what would would expect them to do - Blink increases evasion, Safe increases physical defense, and Shell increases magic defense. The first of these is the most important, so we get a bit of money to purchase it before moving on.But hm. Is there any faster way to make money? Well, yes. Wandering off-course in Final Fantasy 2 is easy to do. For example, if you head north if Phin...Oh dear. The Soldiers are enemies we'll be seeing shortly. The Mages we'll have to wait a few dungeons for normally. This is certainly one of the less drastic ways to run astray, but it's quite manageable at this point. Marisa and Patchy are able to down the soldier, but the Mages' spells wipe all but Minh off the map. What can we do? His only means of attack is the wildly inaccurate Exit.Well, enemies actually have MP in FF2. Their stocks eventually run dry. So a Blink spell to raise evasion and some stalling later, and the Mages can only fail to attack physically. Minh is able to rebuild the party from here. So why go through this trouble?FF2 is the first game in the series where enemies can drop items, and in fact, is quite generous with it at times. The Mages dropped a Berserk spell and an Aero spell. The latter is a poison-elemental attacking spell in the vein of Fire, Ice, and Bolt. It has less applications, but is useful anyway. The former is one of the most notable spells in the game. It's quite rare unless it's dropped, but a few castings can turn a physical attacker into a powerhouse. It's sadly of only one use to us.Cha-ching!!With this lump of cash, I'm able to buy Bronze Shields for Alice and Patchouli, as well as Safe and Shell for Alice. Moving onto the snowy town of Salamando, there's another selection. Life does what it says on the can. Anti is what some games refer to as Rasp. Not particularly helpful for anything other than building our MP. Warp and Exit function much like in FF4; however, they can also be cast in-battle to (potentially) instantly get rid of enemies.I pick up Life for Alice and Warp for Marisa for now. We don't need Exit, as Minh has it, and we'll be getting a freebie soon enough. We don't need Anti either, at least not yet.A short trip later, and we arrive at Semitt Falls, the game's first real dungeon. I made sure to grind a bit of MP with Minh's Anti before heading inside.A few enemies do have long-range physical attacks, such as the Soldiers or these Green Goblins. But even armorless, it still doesn't really hurt Marisa that much.At roughly the halfway point, Patchy is nearly out of MP. Marisa was able to use some weaker spells to keep things under control, but her compatriot I only bothered to get Bolt for. I have a single Ether in stock that Minh brought, but I'd rather not use it.Still, not all is lost. You get a free Fire spell on the fourth floor. So Patchy is able to keep on fighting for a bit. I chose to run from a few encounters, though.So here's the first boss of the game, the Sargeant. He has incredible physical defenses, which is a non-issue for our party. Except we're nearly out of magic. Oops? Minh casts Fog on him to disable his Bow attack, while Alice buffs herself.Bolt 3, a Fire 2, and an Ice 3 are still enough to take him down.Before leaving, I go and grab this goodie. It's guarded by a monster-in-a-box, the Land Turtle (which has already been vaporized in the second screenshot) With Minh the only one with any remaining MP, however, he has to use his Exit spell to get rid of the turtle._________________So a quick checkup on our magicks. Marisa has mostly been focusing on Ice magic, and through various use and mild select-cancel abuse (selecting only once in a battle) has managed to get the other elements to Level 2 at least. Patchy's Bolt has a bit more experience due to focused use; Cure is Level 2, and Fire is barely broken in. Alice's skills are a bit more spread around.Patchy's spellbook is a bit empty, so I fight Mages until another Aero spellbook drops. Note the Dark status here. It's actually about as effective as in FF5 when it comes to crippling a physical attacker, but also stops skill points from going up. I had to remove the status eventually.South of out destination after our next destination, Kashuon, is a Chocobo Forest. We can use this, along with some ingenuity, to reach the village of Mysidia. While a powergaming tactic for most parties, this is a _mandatory_ trip for this party of mages, for reasons we'll get to in a while.So we're here, and this Holy spell is what we're looking for. This gives Alice an offensive option, beyond her Exit spell. It does decent non-elemental damage. The other spells are out of our price-range for the time being.We also pick up two Thief Gauntlets while we're here, for 1000G apiece. These give a +10 to Agility. Recall that you gain Agility by having Agility, so their importance cannot be understated.Now, the random encounters around Mysidia are highly dangerous for an early party. These Bombs are an exception. They mostly attempt an explosive attack, but if they're at full HP, it doesn't work. The solution is to use Minh's Exit spell until it procs and kills them instantly. Marisa and Patchy can do heavy damage with their Bolt spells, but not enough. I deal with the rest via save abuse. Save the game, get into an encounter, reset, move some more steps, repeat.To Bofsk, now. It has more spells for us. Fear is much the same as it is in FF1, that is to say, completely useless. "Peep", heals temporary status ailments in battle. Not very useful, since they can wear off by themselves. Heal heals permanent status ailments. I picked this up at Mysidia for Alice, but I get it for Patchy here as well for redundancy purposes. Mute is a temporary version of the Fog spell.The Bofsk Sewers are the next dungeon. Unlike most sewers in video games, this one is short and straightforward! The resistance mostly consists of enemies from outside and a few imperial soldiers. Also some undead, which are highly flammable. Not very interesting.We lose Minh after this dungeon. Bah. Oh well, we're strong enough now anyway. The next quest is to go to the Snow Cave to retrieve the Goddess' Bell. A character named Josef in Salamando joins us for this, who has no natural magic of his own. No problem, I give him some spare Fire and Bolts I got as drops from Mages. He proceeds to play no significant role in the dungeon that follows.We need to make a quick detour to Semitt to pick up the Ice Sled, which we use to enter the cold dungeon.The cave is half ice-themed enemies, half undead. Alice can break out her Cure spell as an offensive weapon on the latter, whereas Marisa and Patchy set to work burning everything.There's a free Ice spellbook here, which goes to Patchouli. The guardian of the Bell is the Adamantoise. As you can see, hitting an elemental weakness is quite painful. The turtle only has 450HP to begin with, so this was essentially a one-hit KO.There's another boss to deal with before leaving, if you want to call it that. Borgan is a complete nonthreat. A Holy and Bolt spell drop him.On the trip back, now Josefless, we use our last drop of MP just before we reach Salamando. Phew. Any more fights, I would've had to run from.All that use of Fire has gotten Marisa Fire to 4.18, and Patchy to 3.41. The former's other offensive spells have gone up one level. Alice's Holy is sitting at 3, and every spell but Peep - which is really only there to put Holy two spaces below in the battle menu making it easier to access - is at least at 2. At this point the first casting of a level 4 spell only gives one point of experience for a spell, so I've been spreading out the castings a bit.