Shining Force II

- It's not a really difficult game, but I would recommend ganging up on every monster you can, because killing one straight up is better than having an additional damage on one of your characters.

- Additionally, your main character gets a spell called Egress. If you need to level up you can kill monsters, and then cast Egress to warp back to town and start the fight over again.

- I'd check a guide since there are a lot of times you can miss characters or important items and never get them again. A few characters seem weak, such as Slade and Peter, but they become the best in the game after their promotions. Oh, other than the mage girls who can become Master Monks with the use of an item at promotion, who can basically solo the entire game.

- Characters that you find later in the game could have better growth when they join you than when you look at their starting stats and scoff at the bad numbers.

- Aura 4 heals everyone on your team on the whole field.

- One easy thing to do is have your priests use up all their MP every battle casting heals regardless of whether they're actually healing anything. They get 9-11 EXP every single time they cast, whereas when defeating enemies it can dwindle down to 1 EXP when you get strong enough. Since it's 100 EXP to level no matter what, healers can rack up the levels in no time. This is amazingly helpful if you promote them to Master Monks as someone already mentioned.

- This is a great site and your first resource for anything SFII related (I'm surprised it's still around!): http://sf2.shiningforcecentral.com/shining_force_ii.html

- Your main character is the most powerful character you have. Make sure to keep him leveled, and use every stat boosting item on him. Many people try to keep him out of combat since you lose the game if he dies, and then bitch about it when he gets one-shotted in later battles.

- Spend an hour at the beginning of the game cheesing up your level (kill almost everything, cast return/egress, repeat), it'll make later battles much easier.

- Spam heals in easy battles. If you wait until they're actually needed, your healers won't get any XP.

- Use Slade (the rat thief). He is terribly weak when you get him, but he promotes to a ninja and ends up one of your most useful characters. Also, use Master Monks if you can (promote a priest with a vigor ball).