Final Fantasy II: Smooth sailing

Since I fully embraced cheating, I've been enjoying the sweetest routine with FFII. I first check where I'm supposed to go in the walkthrough I selected; then I walk there while vanquishing every living thing that crosses my path; then I do what I'm supposed to do — rinse and repeat for the last 8 hours. Délicieux! I've progressed nicely since my first post, as you may see:

— Each character now has their dedicated weapon: the sword for Firion, the dagger for Maria, the axe for Guy, the mace for the guest party member. This specialization brings back lovely memories of my Octopath Traveler run, and makes me wanna dive right into it again.

— Everybody is fully decked out in Mythril gear — weapon, armour, accessories, the whole pimping shebang. I even went as far as to purchase an extra set of Mythril for the guest party member.

— I raised my party's stats so ridiculously much that their Defense capped, meaning that it's not affected anymore by Shields. I can thus remove the latter and give the crew two weapons, which will certainly come in handy in tougher fights.

— Everybody learnt the Fire, Blizzard, Thunder and Cure spells, and I'm busy making those spells deadlier — or livelier — through focused grinding.

Talking about this, did I mention that grinding is smooth as heck in FFII, and pleasurable to the extreme? And it's far from being the only thing I love in that game, oooh yes precious. I love the possibility to take the long or short way when travelling; I love the vastitude of the game world, which awakens sweet feelings of gaming fernweh; I love the charmingly intricate graphics, which are the most exquisitely detailed ones I've seen this side of Nihon Falcom's RPGs; I love the whole atmosphere, which feels pleasantly familiar yet catchingly unique. All that love doesn't prevent me from nursing a couple of pet peeves, which go as such:

— The map is too darn hard to reach. Seriously, Squeenix: ○ + select? Why? The map should totally have been on the □ button, instead of the laughingly useless bestiary.

— No instant travel between places. Given the scales at work in FFII, that would definitely have been a nice touch. Granted, I love roaming all over the world map; but an instant travel option would have been appreciated, for the rare times I want to speed things up.

— Guest party members leaving the party and taking loaned equipement with them. You bloody thieves, you! I have to save and strip them before they take their leave in order to keep my Mythril set for the next guest.

— Too many darn 'Ambushed!' occurrences, especially in dungeons. This keeps going even though my party is overleveled and doesn't take any damage; a utter and complete loss of time, that's what it is.

 — Too much of what I'd dub 'trap rooms' in dungeons. They're dead-ends that don't contain the slightest bit of treasure; the only thing they have to offer is a higher encounter rate, just like those infuriating one-step-one-encounter patches in Final Fantasy I. Did anyone say 'fake longevity'?

— The HP depletion when using the Teleport spell: now that's plain mean and unfair, game. To add insult to injury, that spell doesn't work in several locations because reasons, and there's no teleporting item that can replace it.

That's a lot of pet peeves alright, but don't worry: they hardly mar my experience of FFII, which is overwhelmingly positive. And talking about this: back to da grind! I'll see you soon with another grinding progress report, dear fellow gamers; in the meantime, take care of yourself and keep gaming!