Do the Final Fantasy 2 leveling tricks still work in the iPhone version?

Question

I just downloaded the iPhone version of Final Fantasy II (as in, the original NES Final Fantasy II, not Final Fantasy IV, which was sold in the US as "II").

As the answerers of this question will know, the game has a unique "strengthen what you use" leveling system. I remember that in the NES version, you could game this system to your advantage in the following ways:

• Beat the crap out of yourself to increase your max HP
• Spend MP senselessly to increase your max MP
• Select a command, then cancel it, and repeat, in order to boost the stats associated with selecting that command (e.g. repeatedly select "fight" to boost your weapon's hit rate).

Does anybody know if any of these tricks still work in the iPhone version? If so which ones? I haven't been able to test the most easily falsifiable trick of beating myself up, since my HP so far has been consistently lower than my attack power. Whenever I hit myself, I tend to just die. (I'm hoping this will change as I progress.)

Answer 1

From a bit of looking around, it appears that the iOS version of FF2 is a pretty much direct port of the PSP version with added touch controls, so if you can find any information related to the PSP version, that should apply here as well.

That being said, I looked at multiple walkthroughs and reviews for the PSP version, and many of them mentioned hitting yourself to increase HP, as well as spending lots of MP to increase your maximum. So both of those tricks should work.

However, the cancelling trick was removed from the GBA version of the game, and has not been present in any of the ports/remakes from that point onwards.