"In a far off land... A long peace has ended. The Palamecia Empire has summoned Hellspawn in hopes to rule the world... The people of Fynn fought bravely for their kingdom... And lost. Now four of Fynn's youth must flee to Altair, with the enemy just behind..." (from the PlayStation version of the game).

These young people are Firion, Maria, Guy and LeonHeart (Maria's brother). They are quickly caught up by imperial soldiers and slaughtered. Firion later wakes up in Altea (Altair), where the Rebellion has fled. He is healed by Minh, a powerful wizard, and welcomed by Hilda, the King's daughter. After he wakes up, he finds Maria and Guy, but LeonHeart is nowhere to be found... No time for sorrow as the party must find a way to conquer back what the Empire conquered. 

They sneak inside Fynn and are able to find Scott, the prince from Kashuon. Before he dies, he gives the team his ring, which he would have used to marry Hilda. Back in Altea, Hilda sees the ring and feels sorrow for Scott's passing. But the fight against the Empire gives her hope for the future. She believes that the Rebellion stands no chance against the Empire without Mithril, a powerful metal that makes up the Empire's weaponry. Minh joins you on your quest and helps you with his canoe.

After a long trip to Semite Cave, you return to Altea with the Mithril Ore so the smith can start making stronger weapons. After that, Hilda tells you about rebels trying to sabotage the Empire's warship, whose completion would spell certain doom on the Rebellion. As you infiltrate Bofsk, you find yourself arriving too late! The Warship is ready to fly, and the Dark Knight taunts you about it. Fortunately, there seems to be a way to destroy the warship: the Sun Flame from Kashuon Castle. But to get there, you first need to get the Goddess' Bell.

Will you get it? Will you be able to stop the Warship before it destroys the Rebellion? Will you be able to find LeonHeart again?

Graphics: 9/10
What a difference can two years make! Final Fantasy II has done so much improvement over I in graphics: transition time between screens is minimal, towns have a rectangular shape rather than a parallelogramic one (making it easier to walk around them) and walls are "thinner" - in I, you could almost fit two characters wide when walking alongside walls. Also, the water is flowing (slightly) and magic has some effect rather than being a colored beam. Finally, shops have becoming gigantic compared to I. And nights at the Inn are so quick, it's sad that other Final Fantasies haven't followed suit.
The battles are also much better. Transition between characters is quicker, commands are more responsive and the "rotating" character has distinctive features (Minh looks like Final Fantasy V's sorcerer, Joseph's bald head is showing inside battles, etc.)

Music: 9/10
Although I have a bias towards the Final Fantasy Origins version, the NES music is still pretty good and another nice improvement from I. The battle music has become more elaborate (and there is more than one, although FFO used it better), there is more than one dungeon music (the main one sounds intriguing) and the Empire's theme sounds militaristic enough.

Addictiveness: 7/10
One of the main features of this game: there is no experience point. Rather, your stats increase depending on your fighting style. If you use a lot of magic, your magic stats will increase but your strength will decrease. If you lose a lot of HP, they will increase accordingly, etc. This leaves room for customizable characters to a very large degree. Oh, and your weapons also increase in strength as you fight with them.

Story: 8/10
Unlike I and III, Final Fantasy actually has a rich story line. Granted, it's only a fight between good an evil, but the plot is complex enough to be worth talking about. First, you look for survivors in Fynn; then you must get mithril, then you must try to stop the Warship, then you need to destroy it... 

Depth: 7/10
Alongside a good story, Final Fantasy II has characters dying at an alarming rate. I can't recall any other game that has so many playable characters dying. There is even an interesting plot twist that is more obvious on the NES than on the Playstation...

Difficulty : 8/10
This might discourage a few people. Leveling up is very tedious and can be summarized at attacking-yourself-to-near-death. Also, if you're not careful and talk to everyone, you will miss some triggers and passwords.

Nevertheless, I strongly recommend Final Fantasy II, be it on the NES on the Playstation/Game Boy Advance. It has a good story line, beautiful graphs and music for the time and lets you customize your characters.

Not bad for a review for a person with fewer posts. I liked your build up to the actual review, but when you talked about why you gave your ratings, you did not go into detail very much, which I think you could use some work on. 

Other than that, very good work here. Keep it up. 

This is a good review. Nothing great about it, but good. You put in a fair amount of detail for the categories. However, i feel the part at the beginning was word count buffer. There was way more "stuff" in that part than in the sections actually describing the game. I'm not saying an introduction is a bad idea, but it pays to keep it shorter than the game-describing section.

This is not bad for a game review.

I like that you put the intro sentences from the game to reach everyone's attention. It shows that you are really into the game. You have described some sections well and some sections aren't that well detailed. The depth and story sections could use more details. I played Final Fantasy: Dawn of the Souls from the Gameboy Advance but I have never played this version. I like how you described the main points of the game's plot and story and then add some suspense to it. Not many people put suspense to their questions.

You are off to a great start and you should put more details to your future game reviews next time! Keep up with the work though.

I agree with the posters above. But one really good thing you did that will get mentioned last.

I was loving this review, it was detailed, you left some to the imagination as far as plotting. But right after Addictiveness score for me it just seems to lose quality quickly. If you are going to talk a lot about say, graphics, try and make the other topics nearly as verbose. Player characters dying by the truckload does sound unusual, but it doesn't say depth to me. It tells me I'm losing options. I would have put that as a story aspect. 

I love seeing reviews of old-school games, and thank you for playing one I have not and telling us about it. The loss of player characters does sound intriguing, I've seen it work (much less often!) in FF games before.
Overall, to me, you did a good job setting up a 'teaser trailer' to get people interested in trying the game.  And that is a great thing for a reviewer to be able to do