It did have pretty big spells like berserk/toad/flare/aspir which you didn't get until a decent ways in, unless you sequence broke and went to areas way before you're supposed to.

Also, nothing really stops you from just beating yourself up in the starting area and getting your stats so high that the game is made trivial. None of the game is really that difficult anyway; it's mostly about surviving dozens of battles and not running out of mp in a dungeon, which is hard to do with how low spell costs are and how much mp you can get. The bosses are never that hard compared to surviving a dungeon with all the stat ups you gain from the ridiculous encounter rate, and a lot of the random battles are way harder than the actual dungeon boss.

FF2 was a prototype for the SaGa series, which took FF2's learn-by-doing system and made it non-linear, with mobs that scaled based on how many battles you fight, so you can't just stat grind on starter mobs. FF2 was a really important game for SaGa, and for setting trends for the series like Cid, Chocobos, and character designs. It has great music and a decent story, just the gameplay is a little bland.