Final Fantasy II (SNES): The Complete Guide to Square’s Misunderstood Masterpiece

Released in North America as Final Fantasy II in 1991, Square’s SNES classic is often overshadowed by its predecessors and successors, but players who dig into it discover one of the most innovative RPGs of the era. Unlike most JRPGs that follow a traditional experience point and leveling system, Final Fantasy II on SNES throws out the rulebook entirely. Instead of grinding to boost static stats, your characters grow based on what they actually do in battle. Weapons level up with use, magic becomes stronger the more you cast it, and your physical defense increases when you take damage. It’s a system that feels alien at first but becomes weirdly addictive once you understand it. This guide breaks down everything you need to know to master Final Fantasy II SNES, from its revolutionary progression mechanics to hidden characters and the best loadouts for every situation.

What Is Final Fantasy II on SNES?

Final Fantasy II SNES (known as Final Fantasy IV in Japan) is the fourth mainline entry in the Final Fantasy series, released on December 23, 1991 in North America. It introduced a massive shift in the franchise’s direction: a narrative-driven campaign with named protagonists, character-specific abilities, and emotional storytelling that set the template for modern JRPGs.

The game follows Cecil, a Dark Knight of Baron, as he discovers a conspiracy that forces him to become a Paladin and save the world from destruction. Unlike earlier Final Fantasy titles with interchangeable party members, each of the eight recruitable characters brings a distinct role, personality, and story arc to the party. Rydia’s black magic, Kain’s jump command, Tellah’s high magic damage, and Rosa’s healing define how you approach combat.

On SNES, Final Fantasy II runs at 60 frames per second (compared to the 30 FPS of some later ports) and features sprite-based visuals that still hold up remarkably well. The soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu is legendary, tracks like “Theme of Love” and “One-Winged Angel” (which would later define Final Fantasy VII) showcase Uematsu’s compositional genius. The game offers approximately 35-40 hours of content for a first playthrough, with plenty of side content and hidden elements to discover on subsequent runs.

This SNES version remains the ideal way to experience the game’s original intent, before the numerous remakes and ports altered balance and difficulty. The game is exclusive to SNES in its classic form, though remakes exist on PlayStation, Nintendo DS, mobile platforms, and even Steam, but the SNES original carries the purest experience of Square’s vision.

The Unique Progression System That Changed Everything

Final Fantasy II SNES doesn’t use traditional experience points or level-ups in the conventional sense. Instead, it employs a “level-free” system where character stats and abilities improve based on actions taken during combat. This mechanic was genuinely radical for 1991 and remains one of the game’s most debated features, some players find it brilliant, others find it obtuse. Understanding how it works transforms your entire approach to the game.

Your characters don’t have a visible “level” stat. Instead, they have base stats like HP, MP, Strength, Intellect, Speed, and Endurance. These increase through specific actions: taking damage boosts your HP and physical defense, dealing damage with weapons increases that weapon’s skill level, and casting magic raises that spell’s power and your MP pool. The system incentivizes engaging with all the game’s mechanics rather than spamming one powerful ability.

How the Level-Free Stat Growth Works

The stat growth in Final Fantasy II SNES operates on a simple principle: use it or lose it. Here’s how the major stats increase:

HP Growth: Every time you take damage, your maximum HP has a chance to increase (roughly 1-2% per hit). This means you can’t just grind by bumping into weak enemies, you need to actually tank meaningful damage to see growth. Boss fights are hence crucial for HP development.

Stat Increases: Strength grows when you deal physical damage, Intelligence grows when you cast spells or take magic damage, Speed increases gradually through combat, and Endurance grows when you survive damage. Unlike experience-based systems, these stats aren’t guaranteed to go up each fight. You might gain Strength in one battle and none in the next, adding an element of RNG to character development.

Vitality and Defense: Your physical defense rating increases passively over time and when you take physical damage. Magic defense grows similarly when exposed to magic attacks. This creates a subtle incentive to diversify your party’s attacks, if you only cast fire magic, your magic defense won’t improve as quickly.

One critical detail: characters who are dead at the end of a battle don’t participate in stat gains for that fight. This creates a risk-reward dynamic where you need everyone alive to maximize growth, but keeping a weak character in the party might handicap your damage output. Understanding this balance is key to efficient character development.

Mastering Weapon Skills and Magic Levels

Weapons in Final Fantasy II SNES have individual experience meters separate from character stats. When you equip and use a sword, that sword’s “Sword” skill increases. When you cast Fire, the Fire spell’s level increases. This system is brilliantly intuitive but requires planning.

Weapon Skills: Each weapon type (Sword, Axe, Bow, Staff, Hammer, Spear, Claws) has its own skill level, capped at 16. Higher skill levels increase damage output with that weapon class. Interestingly, all sword users share the same sword skill pool, equipping a sword as Cecil, Kain, or Palom will level up “Sword” universally. This means you can’t customize weapon proficiencies per character: the game forces you to specialize weapons across your entire party.

Optimal loadouts typically involve giving each character a different weapon type to max out multiple skills. If Cecil and Kain both use swords, you’re wasting potential skill diversity. By the late game, having high skills across Sword, Axe, Bow, and Spear is essential for maximum damage.

Magic Levels: Spells rank from 1-16 just like weapons. Casting Fire repeatedly increases Fire’s level, boosting its damage and MP cost. Here’s the crucial part: your own spell damage scales with the spell’s level, not your Intelligence stat directly. A level-16 Fire cast by a low-Intelligence character deals nearly the same damage as a level-16 Fire cast by a high-Intelligence character. This means spamming your favorite spells early game is actually the right strategy, you’re investing in your magical arsenal.

Some spells are missable. If you don’t learn Quake early from Tellah, you won’t get another chance to level it significantly. Planning which spells your party members will use is hence crucial. Rydia with maxed Firaga, Tellah with maxed Quake, and Palom with maxed Thunder create a devastating magical backbone, but you need to commit to these spells from when you first obtain them.

Essential Combat Tips and Strategies

Combat in Final Fantasy II SNES isn’t just “attack and heal.” The ATB (Active Time Battle) system from Final Fantasy IV (the original Japanese title) returns here, meaning battles flow in real-time unless you pause to input commands. This creates a rhythm where faster characters act first, positioning becomes important, and knowing enemy patterns separates casual players from speedrunners.

Turns are resolved in order based on the Speed stat and weapon type. Faster weapons like claw weapons let you strike before heavier axes. Fast characters like Kain (naturally high Speed) get more turns per round. In later boss fights, turn order can determine victory or defeat, if the boss acts first and your entire party is slow, you’re taking unnecessary damage.

Enemies use AI patterns, not random moves. Bosses often alternate between physical attacks and specific abilities. The Mist Dragon spams Mist, reducing your ability to target it effectively. Antlion uses AoE earth-based attacks. Recognizing these patterns lets you prep specifically: bring high evasion characters against physical attackers, stack magic defense against spellcasters, and use status immunity abilities proactively.

Building Your Ideal Party Composition

Final Fantasy II SNES gives you eight recruitable characters across the 35-hour campaign, but you can only field four at a time. Party composition dramatically shifts your viability in different sections.

The Core Four:

• Cecil (Dark Knight → Paladin): Your protagonist. Transforms from Dark Knight (dark magic, darkness ability) to Paladin (holy attacks, healing) midway through. By endgame, he’s your tank and physical DPS.
• Kain (Dragoon): Complements Cecil with the Jump ability (deals 2x damage, lets him avoid damage on turn 1). High physical damage and Dragoon abilities make him essential for sustained DPS.
• Rydia (Caller/Black Mage): Black magic specialist with summon abilities. Firaga, Blizzaga, and Thundaga are your primary AoE tools. Her Summons (Chocobo, Titan, Leviathan, Bahamut) are game-changing in specific fights.
• Rosa (White Mage): Healing specialist, but also learns Bless (increases ally damage) and arrow-based physical attacks. Don’t sleep on her DPS potential, her bow skill can be leveled just like anyone else.

Flex Slots:

• Tellah (Sage): High magic stats, learns Quake (AoE earth magic). His Recall ability lets him randomly cast any spell he knows. Critical for Quake leveling early.
• Edward (Bard): Often overlooked, but Haste and Slow spells he learns are extremely valuable. His Hide ability lets him skip turns, useful for surviving specific AoE patterns.
• Yang (Monk): Punches fast with dual-wielding claws. Counterattack is gold, he hits enemies back when attacked. Weak to status effects but deals consistent damage.
• Palom (Black Mage): Similar magic role to Rydia but different spell availability. Thunder spells are his specialty. Useful if you want two mages for dual-casting strategies.

Recommended Endgame Party: Cecil (tank/DPS), Kain (physical DPS), Rydia (magical DPS/support), and Rosa (healing/support). This composition covers all bases: physical damage, magical damage, healing, and survivability.

Boss Battles and Preparation Tactics

Boss fights in Final Fantasy II SNES punish unprepared parties hard. Unlike random encounters, bosses have millions of HP compared to regular enemies’ thousands, forcing you to optimize damage output and survivability.

Phase-Based Mechanics: Many bosses have multiple attack patterns that trigger at health thresholds. The Four Elemental Archfiends each use specific element attacks, the Fire Archfiend uses Firaga repeatedly, so having Fire resistance gear is mandatory. Identifying which threshold triggers which pattern lets you preemptively heal or debuff.

Status Effects as Strategy: Poison, Sleep, Paralysis, and Petrify can cripple bosses. Early bosses might be vulnerable to Sleep (your mages can cast it), eliminating turns they’d normally attack. Later bosses resist status effects, but some remain exploitable. Always check if a boss is vulnerable before wasting MP on status moves.

Preparation Checklist:

• Level up relevant weapon skills to at least 8-10 before major bosses
• Equip resistance gear matching the boss’s element type
• Ensure at least two characters can heal (dual healing is often safer than single healer)
• Pre-buff with Haste before the fight starts
• Bring Ethers and Potions (not Hi-Potions, regular Potions still heal 30 HP, enough for regular damage)
• Use summons during opening turns to establish dominance (Bahamut and Leviathan deal massive damage)

The Mist Dragon fight (early mandatory boss) is a DPS race where you can’t target him until party members purge Mist status, this teaches you status management before harder encounters. The Four Archfiends introduce elemental strategy around midgame. The final dungeon bosses, like Zeromus, require survivability and sustained DPS rather than burst damage strategies.

Character Development and Story Progression

Final Fantasy II SNES tells a deeply personal story where character development intertwines with gameplay. Your party members aren’t silent mercenaries, they have arcs, motivations, and moments that define the narrative. Understanding story beats helps you appreciate why certain characters join and leave your party at specific points.

The overarching plot follows Cecil’s journey from unwitting villain (the King of Baron orders him to destroy villages) to hero (realizing the manipulation, he defects and discovers the true threat). Along the way, he recruits allies with their own reasons for joining: Rydia seeks revenge for her murdered mother, Kain struggles with mind control, Tellah pursues a murderer, Edward searches for his kidnapped fiancée. These aren’t generic “save the world” motivations, they’re personal, which elevates emotional stakes when each character’s arc resolves.

Key Story Beats and Missable Content

Final Fantasy II SNES contains missable story content and characters that permanently disappear if you don’t act at specific moments. Unlike modern games with quest logs and checkpoints, this game punishes inattention.

Missable Characters:

• Edward joins early but leaves after a plot event. He returns later, but if you don’t properly develop him during his first segment, he’ll be underpowered on his return. Invest in leveling his weapons early.
• Tellah has a narrow window of availability. His Recall ability is unique, and his damage output as a Sage is underrated, but he exits the party after a major story moment. Max his key spells (especially Quake) before he leaves.
• Palom and Porom join together but leave if you don’t use them in specific battles. New players often bench them, missing a crucial story moment. Having them in your active party forces you to develop their skills.

Story Branching:

Two key decisions affect dialogue and minor story flavor (though not major plot outcomes). Whether you choose to fight or talk to certain NPCs changes their responses later. These don’t create alternate endings, but they flavor your experience and reward paying attention to dialogue.

Mandatory Boss Pattern:

The game has five major story bosses (the Mist Dragon, Baron’s officers, the four Archfiends, the Lunarians, and Zeromus) spaced throughout the campaign. Each requires different strategies, and losing to one resets you to the last save, the game has no “retry” option. This creates genuine tension, especially on the first run.

Hidden Characters and Secret Locations

Beyond the eight recruitable characters, Final Fantasy II SNES hides additional content for players who explore thoroughly.

Secret Access Areas:

• The Sealed Cave requires specific items and unlock conditions (not story-mandated). It contains powerful equipment and rare monsters. This is where you grind endgame weapons to high levels.
• The Lunar Subterrane is a hidden post-game dungeon accessible after the main story. It contains the game’s ultimate summons (Neo Bahamut, Typhon) and brutal enemy encounters. Few players find this on a first playthrough.
• The Alternate Underground Waterway has a different path if you approach from certain directions, leading to optional rare encounters.

Hidden Bosses:

• Omega appears in the Lunar Subterrane and is arguably harder than the final boss. It has millions of HP and can one-shot unprepared parties.
• Shinryu is an optional superboss with adaptive AI, it changes strategies based on your party composition.

Treasure Locations:

The most valuable hidden treasure is the Ribbon armor, which grants immunity to all status effects. It’s found in the Lunar Subterrane and becomes a game-changer for survivability in post-game content. Other secrets include rare weapon upgrades (like the Excalibur, which requires rarer metal than normal swords) and high-level spells you can only find in specific treasure chests, not from leveling or enemies.

Exploring every nook of towns and dungeons rewards you with items that save thousands of Gil (in-game currency) compared to buying from shops. Thorough players can skip several weapon store purchases entirely by looting aggressively.

Items, Equipment, and Treasure Hunting

Equipment in Final Fantasy II SNES doesn’t follow a simple “higher number = better” progression. Armor and weapons have specific advantages against certain enemy types, and elemental resistances become critical in later dungeons. Building an equipment loadout requires understanding what each character needs for upcoming challenges.

The economy is front-loaded: early game, equipment purchases cost thousands of Gil and feel expensive. By midgame, you’ll have enough Gil to buy anything, making money largely irrelevant. This means strategic early purchases matter more than optimizing endgame spending.

Best Gear for Each Character Class

Tanks (Cecil, Kain):

• Plate Armor → Mythril Armor → Diamond Armor (physical defense progression)
• Shields stack defense multiplicatively. A shield and armor combination reduces incoming damage far more than armor alone.
• Elemental Armor (Fire Armor, Ice Armor) becomes essential against elemental bosses. Equip them selectively, they reduce physical defense but grant elemental immunity.
• Ribbon (endgame) grants status immunity, making tanks actually invincible to Petrify/Poison strategies.

Mages (Rydia, Tellah, Palom):

• Cloth or Robe for low physical defense but reduced MP costs (some robes grant -10% MP usage)
• Magic defense becomes a priority, Silk Robe and Wizard’s Hat provide magic resistance
• Elemental Armor is less critical than physical defenses since mages are fragile
• Summoner’s Robes (found, not bought) boost summon effectiveness by ~20%

Healers (Rosa):

• White Robes and White Hats enhance healing output by 10-15% and provide decent magic defense
• Dancer’s Outfit (found in postgame) adds evasion, letting Rosa dodge physical attacks
• Unlike pure mages, Rosa can equip lighter armor, her heals don’t scale with defense anyway

Monks (Yang):

• Ninja Outfit → Kung Fu Suit enhances unarmed damage and counterattack frequency
• Claw weapons (Bronze Claws, Mythril Claws, Adamantite Claws) are Yang’s primary damage tools
• Two-handed claw setups don’t exist, but dual-wielding claws is viable with specific equipment

Weapons Progression:

Weapons tier up: Iron → Steel → Mythril → Adamantite → Excalibur/Sage’s Staff. The jump from Mythril to Adamantite is significant (~30% damage increase). Excalibur is locked behind specific conditions and is arguably the best physical weapon available. Sage’s Staff is pure magic with no physical attack bonus, only useful for mages who want to attack physically without wasting MP.

Rare Items and Where to Find Them

Final Fantasy II SNES hides endgame items that dramatically shift what’s viable in postgame content.

The Ribbon: Found in the Lunar Subterrane, this armor piece grants immunity to Sleep, Petrify, Paralysis, Poison, Darkness, and Silence. Equipping one character with the Ribbon makes them unkillable by status effects. Having two Ribbons is overkill, but many speedrunners suggest securing it early in postgame content.

Excalibur: Obtained in the Tower of Zot after the midgame time-skip. It requires completing specific conditions (visiting towns in a certain order) and is one of the last weapons you can acquire. By that point, weapon skills are high, so equipping Excalibur pays off immediately with massive damage scaling.

Rune Armor: Offers the highest magic defense in the game (~30% magic resistance). Only one piece exists, making it valuable for your most magic-exposed character. It’s found in a postgame dungeon, not buyable.

Best-in-Slot Accessories:

• Silver Glasses: Increase Intellect by 2 points (small but stacks across characters)
• Protect Ring: Adds physical defense, functionally similar to upgrading armor
• Aura Ring: Boosts magic damage by 10% and heals 10 HP per turn

Money-Saving Treasure:

Looting the treasure in the Sealed Castle and Lunar Subterrane yields approximately 200,000+ Gil (more than double the cost of buying everything from shops). Thorough treasure hunting makes the late-game economy trivial, you’ll have so much Gil that weapon purchases feel free.

The Ice Rod, Fire Rod, and Lightning Rod are found (not bought) and grant infinite castings of their respective spells at 0 MP cost. Finding these early eliminates magic MP concerns for those spells permanently, making them critical upgrades even though being easily missed.

According to guides on role-playing game builds, optimizing gear setups for character roles is standard JRPG strategy, and Final Fantasy II SNES’s system rewards planning ahead. Experienced players often skip several shop purchases entirely through smart looting and prioritize rare armor like the Ribbon and Rune Armor.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

New players routinely sabotage their Final Fantasy II SNES experience through a few avoidable pitfalls. Understanding these mistakes prevents frustrating mandatory grinds and locked-out strategies.

Mistake 1: Not Understanding the Level-Free System

The biggest mistake is treating Final Fantasy II SNES like a traditional RPG. Players grind random encounters expecting automatic stat growth, get frustrated at the slow pace, then wonder why their party feels weak. The truth: you don’t grind in FF2. You fight story battles and bosses, which provide faster, more reliable stat growth. Side grinding is inefficient and boring, the game is designed to pace character development through narrative progression.

The Fix: Accept that your characters will grow slower than traditional JRPGs. Don’t try to “outlevel” bosses by grinding random encounters for hours. Instead, equip optimized gear, learn the boss’s attack pattern, and execute a clean strategy. Most early game bosses become trivial once you realize you’re supposed to tank damage (for HP/Defense growth) rather than avoid it.

Mistake 2: Spreading Weapon Skills Too Thin

Givable every character different weapons sounds smart for balanced growth. In reality, it weakens everyone. If Cecil uses Sword, Kain uses Axe, Rydia uses Staff, and Tellah uses Mace, you’re developing four weapon types slowly rather than two types quickly. By the final boss, you’ll have Sword at level 10 and Axe at level 10, both weak.

The Fix: Designate two characters to physical damage and commit them to one weapon type each. Let Cecil and Kain both use Swords, pushing it to level 16 by endgame. Give Tellah and Rydia complementary magic instead. Palom can use Black Magic, Edward uses Bow. Specializing creates damage scaling that scales exponentially in the late game.

Mistake 3: Ignoring Status Effects and Elemental Weaknesses

Players often barrel through dungeons with generic armor, then wonder why a boss’s Petrify spell eliminates them instantly. Bosses like Milon use Petrify as a one-shot mechanic, if three party members are turned to stone, you’ve lost.

The Fix: Check enemy abilities before entering boss arenas. If a boss uses Petrify, equip Petrify-resistant armor or the Ribbon. If it uses Fire attacks, equip Fire Armor. If it uses Paralysis, bring Paralysis-curing spells (Full Life cures most status effects). This small preparation step eliminates half of boss difficulty.

Mistake 4: Letting Your Healer Die

This sounds obvious, but new players routinely leave Rosa with 5 HP while attacking. In a game without turn-based time to breathe, one enemy attack kills your healer, and suddenly you’re taking 200 damage per turn with no recovery. It spirals fast.

The Fix: Healing is a priority action, not a “when convenient” action. If any character drops below 40% HP and the boss is still alive, cast Cure/Heal immediately. Dual healing (Rosa + Cecil casting Cure) is safer than relying on one healer. Keep at least one character with cure abilities alive at all costs, it’s harder than it sounds, but critical.

Mistake 5: Not Leveling Magic Early

Spells are only leveled by casting them. If you save Cure for emergencies and rarely cast it, your healing will be weak. If you never cast Fire because you’re hoarding MP, Fire stays at level 1 (dealing 5 damage instead of 50+).

The Fix: Spam low-cost spells against random encounters to level them. Cast Fire on weak enemies repeatedly, building it toward level 10+ before major bosses. Your MP pool (which scales with magic usage) grows from casting spells, creating a positive feedback loop, more casting = stronger spells = more MP to cast more spells.

Mistake 6: Benching Characters You Don’t “Like”

Edward seems weak, so players leave him benched. Then he rejoins late-game underpowered and useless. Palom and Porom seem fragile, so they’re ignored until a story moment requires them. This creates artificial difficulty spikes.

The Fix: Rotate characters through your party regularly. Even if you prefer Cecil and Kain, spending battles with Edward, Yang, and Palom develops them for later use. A well-rounded roster adapts to late-game challenges better than a “power four” carried through the entire game.

According to Final Fantasy guides on gaming sites, common JRPG mistakes often stem from misunderstanding a game’s unique mechanics, and Final Fantasy II SNES’s unconventional system is especially prone to player mismanagement. Taking time to learn the system prevents these repeated pitfalls.

Why Final Fantasy II SNES Deserves Recognition

Final Fantasy II SNES arrived in 1991 at a strange moment: after the massive success of the original Final Fantasy and the admirable Dragon Quest series, but before the SNES RPG boom (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III) fully materialized. It was ahead of its time in ways that critics didn’t immediately recognize.

The game’s progression system is often dismissed as “broken” or “confusing” by players unfamiliar with it. But calling it broken misses the point. It’s intentionally alien to traditional RPG design, which makes it bold. Yes, it’s slower than experience-based growth. Yes, it requires understanding a new paradigm. But within that paradigm, it’s elegant: characters grow from their actions, making character development feel earned rather than automatic. Spamming Fire 500 times feels productive in Final Fantasy II because Fire is actually getting stronger.

The narrative quality was genuinely exceptional for 1991. Tellah’s death scene, sacrificing himself to stop Zeromus, carries weight. Rydia’s character arc from vengeful child to mature summoner is genuine development. Kain’s mind control struggle introduces moral complexity unusual for early 90s RPGs. These characters aren’t tokens collecting experience: they’re people with agency and consequence. When they leave your party, it hurts because you’ve spent 10+ hours with them.

The music deserves mention. Nobuo Uematsu’s score is genuinely moving, “Theme of Love” is haunting, “Airship” is adventurous, and “Zeromus-ELT” (the final boss theme) builds tension perfectly. It’s a soundtrack that stands alongside later classics, yet often gets overlooked in SNES RPG discussions. Meanwhile, Japanese gaming coverage from major outlets often highlights FF2’s innovative systems and narrative as underrated elements of JRPG history.

The game respects player intelligence. It doesn’t hold your hand with tutorials or questmarkers. Hidden content feels genuinely hidden, rewarding exploration and curiosity. Secret bosses like Omega and Shinryu exist purely for players who want a challenge beyond the story, they’re optional, meaningful endgame goals.

Modern remakes (especially the DS version) tried to “balance” the system, nerfing the level-free mechanics and adding traditional experience. They made the game easier to understand but lost what made it distinctive. The SNES original’s system, weirdness and all, is what makes Final Fantasy II worth playing. It’s a game that trusts players to figure things out.

Conclusion

Final Fantasy II SNES remains a masterpiece hiding in plain sight. Its level-free progression system, emotionally resonant narrative, and carefully designed challenge create an experience that’s still engaging 35 years after release. Yes, it’s unconventional and demands patience. Yes, it punishes inattention. But it also rewards thorough players with depth most JRPGs never achieve.

Understanding the stat growth mechanics transforms frustration into strategy. Committing to weapon specialization and spell leveling creates satisfying character progression arcs. Recognizing boss patterns and preparing specifically defeats them cleanly. Exploring thoroughly finds hidden treasures and secret bosses that extend endgame content for dozens of hours. This is a game with real substance, not filler, not padding, just well-designed RPG mechanics that hold up decades later.

Whether you’re a series veteran trying the SNES original or a newcomer curious about JRPG history, Final Fantasy II SNES is worth your time. It shaped everything that came after it, and playing it reveals why. Approach it with patience, respect its systems, and you’ll discover why players still call it one of the greatest RPGs ever made.