OK so I started this around the end of July and managed to beat it yesterday at time of writing the 20th of August. Not that it was ever in doubt as I had the walkthrough the whole time but my will to soldier on and finish this game as fast as I did FF1 wasn't quite there. It was both comforting and painful to see it was basically just FF1 again in a lot of ways. Then it was kind of sadistically pleasing that it was allegedly a much tougher game than FF1 due to various changes. Interesting. But that died down a bit when I saw how user friendly they made it.
All in all there is a bit more character, dialogue and plot to this one but not much else has changed. The appearance is the same. The music remaster is great, like FF1, some bangers. I did mute it at times and listen to other stuff as there are a lot of grind-y sections and its hard to listen to dungeon theme and battle them over and over. No minigames really.
The gooey
The mechanics are different: notably no Black Mage>Black Wizard job upgrade and no Vancian spell slot magic, which is a shame. You start with Fire 1 and Cure 1 etc and level them up by using them to a maximum of Cure XVI etc. Notably you level up your weapons as well - Swords, Axes, Spears etc start at 1 and end at 16th level.
This was perversely exciting as I said as there were various ways to game the system from the old SNES days BUT they had largely refined and fixed a lot of the old broken stuff and now everything works as intended so it was not particularly difficult and I was very conservative as I type below in my party composition and strategy.
My party:
Firion - I read various guides that stated either make him an 'evasion fighter' or a 'heavy armour fighter' with the other role going to Guy but instead I made him sort of my dedicated fighter and just equipped him as best as I could. I taught him some spells like Cure later to act as sort of a Knight but he only used those outside battle. Small aside but I liked this guy as a protagonist, he got shit done. Oh and he was sword and shield the whole game, or sometimes sword and sword.
Maria - they all start with similar intellect which governs magic but her one is slightly higher so black mage and done. She initially helped out with casting spells either at one target or several and then for bosses she would dole out the Haste and the Berserk to the others but she spent the latter 50% of the game casting Flare over and over. She spent 99% of the game Unarmed as well, even though I never saw a spell 'fail' due to armour or weapons so maybe they removed that old mechanic.
Guy - though I at times regretted my decision I made him the dedicated White Mage. I gave him a club or staff or whatever and heavy armour but he spent most of the game casting healing spells. You could tell he was a good warrior but feck it. I did spent the latter half of the game casting Ultima with him, as it was White Magic and empowered by his stats. There was a glitch in the old versions where Guy would be targeted more and due to being hit more his HP would go up but they changed all that so it is moot.
4th person - This was the real anchor half the game, not having a dedicated party member. I actually really liked some of them but sadly they would leave me. After seeing Leila carve stuff up with dual wielding weapons I just had the 4th member the guest character cut stuff up with dual wielding all the time and nothing else. They were often too far behind in one field or another and temporary to put too much investment into. When I finally did get the dedicated 4th party member he was relegated to dual wielding a spear and dagger and clothed in heavy armour and nothing else. Attack only!
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So in conclusion not all that much to think about or plan for. Firion hit stuff with swords all game and occasionally cast Cure outside battles, which he got to like level 11 by the end but his MP never rose much as he never really used it in battle so he had like 50MP. Maria blasted stuff all game and would buff during boss battles but sometimes that was not necessary. Guy healed and sometimes casted defensive buffs but also, not necessary. He also used Ultima a lot. 4th person just attacked because fudge it.
Plot
Without spoiling the whole thing my gods what a miserable plot for a good portion of the game, which I liked it was refreshing. You seem to stumble from one failure to another while the Empire hound you constantly. Was great! Things kind of pick up near the end but yeah it always seems to be mired in failure and defeat. So that makes final victory all the better!
Villain
The Emperor is the real bad guy and he is delightfully prickish. And yes I used the Blood Sword on him at the end I threw it on the final 4th character so he could do like 3000 damage a pop.
Music
Those who know, know. What was apparently a good soundtrack from the SNES and GBA remaster is now even better. I really enjoyed listening to it. The overworld theme, the Middle-Eastern esque Boss theme, the battle theme itself, some of the dungeons and towns... good stuff.
Achievements
Many of them were the same as FF1, complete the Bestiary, get all treasurer chests, several plot milestones and so on. The only awkward ones were the mastering a weapon to level 16 and mastering a spell to level 16.
I stopped right before the point of no return and made sure to clear the bestiary to the point where everything was ahead of me and I wouldn't miss anything later. The only annoying one was the Iron Giant which has a tiny chance of appearing in the final dungeon so a lot of grinding and a party death or two.
The treasure chests were fine with a guide and there is a great simple one on Steam but without it there is no way I would have gotten all almost 300 chests some are just Super Nintendo level hard to figure out, invisible walls and stuff, missables.
This reminds me: there is a concept in FF2 of 'trap rooms' doors in dungeons that go into empty rooms with super high encounter rates and you're a few steps in when you enter them so you're bound to fight a few monsters before getting out. The walkthrough kills that dead you don't have to do any.
I cleared the game and got the bestiary and whatnot but was still missing weapon tactics and spell tactics so would need to do them after the game ended on the overworld:
The spell to 16th level was fine I actually rigged up a system for myself which I was proud of. I would go into a battle, have everyone dead except Guy and have the auto battle on versus 1 monster and just cast Cure over and over until he ran out of MP, then he would usually whale on the enemy until they were dead. I would then use Ethers, Cottages or Elixirs to get my MP back and repeat. I tried very hard to get Flare or Ultima to 16 through the course of the game but the highest they got was around 11.
The sword to 16th was tougher but I figured out something myself. Firions had like sword 12 by the end of the game with the Masamune and Excalibur equipped. In FF2 there is the Blood Sword, which has terrible stats but takes 1/16th of the enemies health and gives it to you if you attack them. The guides were like use the Blood Sword and attack yourself or something but NO I read that Undead enemies don't get hurt by Blood Sword when attacked and instead you lose HP and they gain it. So I got into fights with Ghasts and Vampire Girls and had Firion attack them and Guy cast Cure and just auto battled for maybe 30 minutes to an hour and after maybe half a dozen battles sword was at 16 and the achievement popped and the achievement for having every achievement popped as well. Done!
