Final Fantasy Legend II: Consumables

Lots of games have consumable items in them. Final Fantasy III actually had a really wide variety of consumable items in it. You had items you could use in combat to cast an attack spell on an enemy. You had items you could use in combat to cast a buff spell on yourself. Bows permanently used arrows. If you had a ninja you could turn all of your weapons into consumable attack spells. Then you had the standard suite of restorative items. Potions to restore health. Antidotes to cure poison. Eyedrops for blind. There were individual items to cure stone, cursed, mini, and frog. There were elixirs to restore health and mana. Phoenix downs to bring people back to life. Some of these items could be purchased in town but most you had to find in treasure chests and there were a limited number of them in the game.

I hated it! Having a limited number of phoenix downs put a lot of pressure on me to not lose people in combat in the early game since I was only going to be able to bring them back to life 43 times over the course of the entire game. (Well, eventually you learn a raise spell so you only need to burn a phoenix down on the healer or in a rough boss fight.) I used a few of the attack spell items on the first couple bosses (until I was able to change jobs) and I used a bunch of buff items on the final boss fight but for the most part they went completely unused. Why? Because maybe there was going to be a better time to use them later! If I could find a way to win without using them I should do that instead of using up a permanently limited resource.

As another example, Rikku from Final Fantasy X should have been my favourite character. I've always loved thieves and she had the steal command. She plays with machines. She's hot. And yet I never really put her in my party. Why? Because her ultimate revolved around using consumables. In many cases mix was stupidly overpowered but I didn't want to use it because it might 'waste' precious consumable resources. (And besides, Khimari needed experience.)


Final Fantasy Legend II is unfortunately annoying me in a similar way. Practically everything a human can do is consumable! With monsters I had a limited number of uses for each ability but if I rested in an inn they all came back. With robots I can equip items which have their number of uses halved but then get refreshed when I rest in an inn. My mutant can learn abilities and they come back when I rest just like monsters abilities did. But if I use weapons, spellbooks, or shields on either the human or the mutant the use is permanent. I was so annoyed when I found out that sleeping in the inn didn't refresh the number of uses on my cure spell.

Ok, fine... I should just buy lots of spare weapons and spells then. Unfortunately both gold and inventory space are very limited. I have 2 robots in my party and they aren't equipped in the best stuff I can buy from the store so I can turn cash into power there.

I don't know... I feel like if I just had to pay to repair my weapons when I slept at the inn I'd be happier. Then I wouldn't have to micromanage my inventory to make sure I had enough swords to keep fighting. I know this would remove the limited use nature of loot found in dungeons so it would be a power level change to the game but I'm pretty sure I'd be ok with that. (You could also assign a huge repair cost to end game loot.)

At one point I had to go back down to the starting world in order to save an NPC friend. And then my good sword broke. I could buy a new one from the item shop... On the previous world. If I wanted to buy something from my current world I had to downgrade. Now, my character ended up still killing enemies in one attack with the worse sword so it wasn't actually a big deal but it was a little annoying.


I have found one way to cheese the system a little. If I wear a sword down to almost broken I can then equip it on one of my robots. Then when I sleep in the inn it gets restored! The designers of the game thought of this and added in a penalty to make this hurt a little... When your robot unequips an item it immediately loses half of its current uses. Coupled with the fact that the number of maximum uses is cut in half when the robot puts it on and you're only able to recharge an item to 25% of its normal base. 12 uses of my good sword is better than nothing though, so I've been doing it. And feeling a little dirty in the process.

The only exception to the whole halving thing is with martial arts attacks which actually get more powerful the fewer charges remain on them. (My first thought was to have a robot put on and take off a punch to power it up for my human but it turns out that doesn't work.)