First Reality II

Not to be confused with First Reality IV, which was renamed into First Reality II in its initial South American release.

First Reality II is a reality play-roleing video game developed and published by Circle (now Circle Xine) in 1988 BC for the Enemy Computer as the second installment of the First Reality series.

Plot
A long lived peace is over. The Emperor of Palamecia has summoned monsters from Hell to begin his conquest for world domination. A rebel army arose in the kingdom of Fynn to stop the Empire. However, Castle Fynn has fallen, and the rebels escaped to the town of Altair. Four youths from Fynn named Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon, their parents killed by the Empire, flee from Imperial forces.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The NES version has a substantial amount of graphics and sound effects recycled from Final Fantasy I. Firion's sprite is the Fighter's sprite from the first game.
 * 2) Boring and repetitive dungeons.
 * 3) Extremely high encounter rate, which is really annoying.
 * 4) The dungeons contain several "trap rooms" full of fixed encounters, which are inescapable.
 * 5) Escaping from battle requires a character to dual-wield shields, thus making them only able to attack with magic.
 * 6) The game uses a bizarre, though experimental leveling system where you must perform an action related to the stat to increase that stat (for example dealing damage increases a character's Attack stat), instead of earning experience points to level up and have stats boosted all at once, which ends up causing the most efficient way to make your characters stronger to be to have them attack themselves during battles. This may be to the detriment of players accustomed to traditional RPG growth mechanics.
 * 7) *To make matters worse, to raise your character's HP you need to get hit by enemies' attacks without healing making a big risk to raise you characters' HP.
 * 8) Unbalanced difficulty: the game can be stupidly easy or insanely hard depending on how much you level up magic and weapons.
 * 9) *This may end up resulting in your character being stuck in certain places where you either have to beat very strong enemies or die and restart the game all over again.
 * 10) Even at a very high level, magic spells may miss a lot.
 * 11) *Also, even at a very high level, physical attacks may miss or cause little to no damage.
 * 12) The later dungeons feature enemies that use max leveled spells and attacks that never miss and always hit, which is very unfair.
 * 13) Inns have a cumulative cost, meaning their prices go up the more HP and MP that you’ll need to restore.
 * 14) Very expensive items and equipment.
 * 15) In the GBA and PSP ports there is only one Blood Sword, while in the original NES and PS1 ports there were two.
 * 16) The English NES version was only sold to industry insiders at the Winter 1991 CES. This makes it rarer than Cheetahmen 2.
 * 17) *Due to how rare the game is, the game can easily be more expensive than a grey cart copy of Nintendo World Championships.
 * 18) *If you successfully track down and purchase an English NES copy, you will have to suffer through a translation worse than Breath of Fire II.
 * 19) This is one of the only three mainline Final Fantasy games to not have the franchise's theme song, the other two are mh:awesomegames:Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The game introduces Malboros, Bombs, Chocobos, Leviathan and the character Cid, which would later become recurring characters in the series.
 * 2) An actual plot instead of the clichéd story from the first game with characters having actual personalities and backstories.
 * 3) The Ultima spell, one of the most powerful spells in all of Final Fantasy debuts here.
 * 4) A group of characters fighting against a tyrannous empire, which would be later seen again in Final Fantasy IV, VI, IX, X and XII.
 * 5) Good soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu, as well as the rearragements by Tsuyoshi Sekito in the following rereleases.
 * 6) The Blood Sword, one of the most powerful Final Fantasy weapons, makes its debut.
 * 7) The game's leveling system helped lay the groundwork for one of the core mechanics of the SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend series, in a more refined approach.
 * 8) The remakes smooth out the leveling curve somewhat, making the difficulty far less lopsided against you.
 * 9) The new level up system is a good concept but it was poorly executed.
 * 10) The sprites on the Pixel Remaster release are a nice recreation of the original release.

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