With the recent announcement of a new Lufia game on the DS, I just can’t help but make a retrospective of the whole series. I’m a pretty big fan of it, and the second game is one of the most memorable RPGs I’ve played.

So let’s go right in and look at Lufia, an under-rated but really good RPG series despite the low number of games in the series 16(almost 17) years of its life, and relatively small fanbase.

Read on! (story spoilers ahead, though I try not to spoil too much)

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom

The first game in the Lufia franchise. It came out on the SNES in 1993. It starts out pretty weird. You get 4 pretty strong high-level characters: Maxim, Guy, Selan and Artea. You are on Doom Island, and about to fight god-like enemies called the Sinistrals. Not too long after, the Sinistrals are destroyed, Guy and Artea escaped Doom Island and Maxim and Selan die on the island.

That brings you to around 99 years later. You play as Maxim’s descendant (you name him, so I’ll call him Hero) who is trying to become a knight, and you quickly get joined by his childhood friend Lufia. After hearing about a nearby city getting attacked by an unknown force, Hero goes to check it out. It just so happens to be Gades, the Sinistral of Destruction. Knowing he’s a descendant of Maxim, Hero decides to go on a quest to find and kill the Sinistrals. On the way, joining Hero and Lufia, you meet up with Aguro, a powerful knight who can’t use magic, and Jerin, an half-elf who can use various multi-targeting weapon. On the way, they meet Guy and Artea, who are still alive (it’s fine for Artea to be alive, since he’s an elf and elves live for a long time, but Guy is probably around 130 years old by now, WTF?), and you go through various events to, in the end, fight and defeat the Sinistrals, as well as a super Sinistral which is a fusion of the four.

The story is pretty entertaining, with nice characters and all. Nothing incredibly original, but there’s some nice ideas in there. As for the gameplay, it was pretty basic as far as RPGs go. The fighting system is really simple. You can attack, defend, use spells, use items or try to run. When you target enemies, you almost always target groups. So if there’s, say, 2 slimes and 2 newts in a battle, you’ll target either the 2 slimes and the 2 newts, none of them individually. I think some spells bypass that, but I might be wrong. Another thing is that this game has the original Final Fantasy’s flaw. If one of your characters is targetting a group and that group dies, he won’t switch targets to another group. The leveling is really basic stuff so nothing to really explain here. The equipment is also really basic. The game really doesn’t do much in this aspect. You can get stronger equipment in dungeons and battles, but most of the time you’ll be updating your stuff in shops in the game’s various towns. Or in the Old Cave.

Dungeons are pretty simple stuff. Normally mazes, or just long trecks to the dungeon’s boss, but there is some variety. Sometimes there’s puzzles to do, mostly taking items from one place and putting them somewhere else. It definitely adds gameplay variety. One cool element here is the Old Cave. It’s basically a place you go for quests. Get a quest in Grenoble (the town next to it), go to the cave, find the requested item and get rewards. More quests become available as you level, and access to more floors in the cave.

Overall, Lufia and the Fortress of Doom is a pretty fun game on the SNES. Pretty simple, sure, but still shows a fun story and good gameplay. Not the best RPG on the SNES, but it’s worth checking out.

Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistral

This game is… AWESOME. Easily my favorite JRPG ever. Big graphical update, HUGE gameplay update, and a nice addition to the story. It came out on the SNES in 1995.

The story starts… a bit over 100 years before the first Lufia game. That’s right, the game features Maxim, Selan, Guy and Artea from the beginning of the first game. The beginning of the first game was pretty much random, but now we see everything that happened before the final confrontation.

Maxim starts out as a random hunter. After some weird event where the number of monsters started increasing in the world, Maxim goes to a cave north of his village, where he meets Iris, a woman who tells him about the Sinistrals, namely Gades, and about how he is the only one who can destroy them. So Maxim goes on a quest to find Gades and kill him. He is joined by his childhood friend, Tia, for a while, though she leaves when she realizes it’s too dangerous a quest for her. After saving a Guy’s sister, Guy joins the group as well. And Selan is pretty much forced to join Maxim to find a treasure and investigate on a mysterious person who single-handedly destroyed a village.

That person is Gades, the Sinistral of Destruction. You end up fighting him, and losing to him. After a few events, you finally kill him. At that moment, Maxim is trapped in the tower where Gades was hiding, and prevents a whole continent from sinking by deactivating a device. There, he is about to die, but Iris teleports inside the tower and saves him. Afterwards, Maxim and Selan confess their love to each other, get married, and get a kid. A few months later, Iris reappears and reveals that Maxim was supposed to die in that tower and the world would have been safe. But since he expanded his bloodline, this somehow brings other Sinistrals to life and Maxim must go back on his quest, find the remaining Sinistrals and rid them from the world before they destroy it. From there on(yeah, I’m skipping explaining the rest) there’s a bunch of events that lead to finding where the Sinistrals are, meeting up with Artea(somehow name “Arty” in battles… weird), finding the Dual Blade which can destroy them, getting a mode of transportation that can reach them, and finally get the final confrontation with the Sinistrals, which happens just a little bit differently from that part in the first game.

The story here is really good, there’s a lot of really fun characters and lots of really neat ideas and even humorous moments. Though the story is very basic, it features lots of really cool elements and twists. I simply love it.

The gameplay is an incredibly big update from the original. The battle system corrects every flaw in the original’s system, including letting you select individual targets and changing targets if the enemy a character was targetting was killed. Other additions include the IP attack. This interesting feature adds another bar, other than HP and MP, which increases as the characters get hit. Using the option below attack in the fighting menu, you bring up a menu which shows every piece of equipment on the character, and displays which ones have a special skill. Those can include strong attacks, multi-targetting attacks, strong magic spells, healing, buffs… Each equipment has its own  IP skill, or none at all. To get into fights, on the world map it’s random encounters, but in dungeons you actually see the enemies. They only move when you move, and have various movement patterns, so you can avoid them, or move in a way to get behind them and strike first. Great feature since you can avoid unnecessary fights.

Another new element is the Capsule Monsters. As you travel across the world, you’ll find creatures named Capsule Monsters, which will join your party as a fifth character, though you have no control over what they do. They level up just like your other characters do, but they have another method of leveling up. You can give them equipment, which they’ll eat and fill up a meter. When they eat enough (and not all items or equipment will boost the meter), the meter will be full, and they’ll evolve. Each monster has 4 main forms, and when they’re fully leveled, you have to change them to the right form and then give them the fruit they like to change them to their master form. There’s a few different monsters you can get, and  each of them have a different gimmick. Mostly different elements, but some can also heal and buff you. A nice addition to the game.

The puzzles are a huge improvement to the original as well. They require used of various tools, such as bombs, your sword, arrows, fire arrows, ball and chains and a hookshot. Many rooms in each dungeon or tower you go through require moving blocks on switches, blowing up walls, using the hookshot to go across holes, things like that. Most rooms with puzzles give you the basic goal of the puzzle, and you have to figure out how to do it. It’s really good and not only adds variety to the gameplay but makes it completely unique compared to other RPGs.

One of the more interesting elements of the game is the Ancient Cave. Around halfway through the game, you can choose to go on with the game, or go to Gruberik where the Ancient Cave in. This is… something I respect anyone who has done it all without using an emulator. The Ancient Cave has 99 floors. When you enter it, you’re stripped of your equipment and reduced to level 1. The floors are randomly generated, and filled with enemies, bushes and treasure chests. Starting at floor 20, you can find Providence, which enable you to leave the dungeon. The chests you have to look up for here are the blue ones. They usually contain really strong equipment, and one important thing with them is that, when you restart the Ancient Cave, you can start with them, and you keep them when you come out as well. The cave has some of the game’s best equipment, so it’s a good idea to go there in the beginning. Especially since Dekar is still in your party when you first go there and he’s quite strong. When you finish the cave, you fight the Ancient Slime. The goal here is to kill him before the battle end in around 5 turns, but the best way to win is to actually kill off all your characters, and it still counts as a win. The Ancient Cave is overall… almost a game in and of itself, and it gives some good stuff for the rest of the game.

So that’s it for this game. It’s probably my favorite RPG ever, and it’s just really fun. There’s a few challenges to be had as well, like trying to win against Gades the first time you meet him (THIS is damn hard unless you grind like crazy). After you finish the game, there’s a special mode where you replay the game but you get four times the experience and money from battle. This is one of the few games where I actually don’t have much to complain about.

Lufia: The Legend Returns

The third game in the Lufia series, this one is the first game to be portable. It came out on the GameBoy Color in 2000. I never finished it, but I did play a good part of it.

The story here starts 100 years after the first game. So Maxim and his gang killed the Sinistrals once, Hero and his group killed them a second time, and now they revive once again. And there’s thankfully another descendant of Maxim’s to take care of the job. Here it’s the wise-cracking(and kinda stupid) Wain, who learns about the Sinistrals when Seela, a fortune-teller, tells him about them. So Wain and Seela go on a quest to recruit strong warriors and to find the Dual Blade to destroy the Sinistals AGAIN and save the world from destruction. I don’t remember much of the story here, but it’s standard Lufia stuff. Warring nations, strong enemies destroying villages, blah blah blah. The story isn’t great, but it’s supported by really good characters.

The gameplay is a big change from the other 2. Now, instead of being limited to 4 characters in your party (and a fifth if you count the Capsule Monsters in Lufia 2), you can have up to NINE active characters in your party. They are placed in a 3×3 grid. Each turn, you choose one of the characters in each column to do an attack, the rest just… do nothing. So you have a LOT of choice when it comes to what to do each turn. You lose if the 3 front-line characters die. IP attacks are back as well. Though here you learn them from scrolls instead of them being inside weapons.

Another change is the way the characters learn the IP attacks and such. Each character represents a color(which represents the type of Spiritual Force), and the value it gives can be upgraded. Each scroll has a requirement of colors to be able to learn the attack. A character gets S.F. depenging on what color and value characters in the same lines as him has. So the way you layout your characters change their Spiritual Force and affects what skills they can learn. The Spiritual Force also gives various stat boosts. For example, red boosts Attack Power.

Navigating dungeons also changed. Instead of puzzles and pre-made dungeon, each dungeon has randomly-generated floors, with tunnels and rooms. As well as destructible walls that reveal secret rooms and such. All the enemies can be seen in the dungeon so you can avoid them if needed. As for puzzles, there are none. You can still swing your sword to destroy bushes and things on walls, and if you hold the A button you can charge a wave that can stun enemies. But this is what made me to like this game as much. Eventually dungeons were just way too long and not very interesting. The Ancient Cave is back, though I know nothing about it here since I never visited it.

Overall this was an okay game. It didn’t do much to advance the series’ story, but it had a really fun battle system and skills system and all. It became really annoying to play after a while, but it was still a really fun game if you don’t get annoyed by the rather boring dungeon navigating.

Lufia: The Ruins of Lore

The final Lufia game to be released. It came out in 2005 in the US on the GameBoy Advance. It’s actually a completely un-related side-story. It features similar geography to Lufia 2, and it talks about the events with Maxim and his crew.

The story takes place about 20 years after the events of Lufia 2, so around 80 years before Hero and company killed the Sinistrals a second time. Here… well the Sinistrals aren’t back, and you’re not playing as a descendant of Maxim, just some random kid. Though Dekar from Lufia 2 makes a return.

You play as Eldin, a silent protagonist who wants to become a hunter… and… I really have no idea because I never got very far. Looking at summaries, you end up fighting a strong warrior who is corrupting nations and forcing wars or something like that. The characters, from what I’ve seen, weren’t too great.

The dungeons are back similar to Lufia 2, with puzzles and different tools. The tools you have access to change depending on your party members, and switching them on the map changes what tool you’ll use. The puzzles aren’t as good, but they’re not bad. The Ancient Cave is back here, and it’s completely different. It still has randomly generated floors, except that each floor has a boss before getting to the next. You can also get jobs in the Ancient Cave to find certain items for rewards. Also, here you don’t become level 1 or lose your equipment when you go in, so you can use the Ancient Cave for training. Oh, and only Eldin and his currently assigned monster can enter it.

The battle system is pretty similar to the one in Lufia 2, except IP attacks are gone. Instead of IP attacks, you can capture monsters in the game using discs, and when the level enough you can give them fruit to evolve them. When they’re evolved enough, you can actually fuse the monster’s “owner” with the monster. It becomes the monster’s next evolution for a while, unless you are on that monster’s final evolution, where your character will just become really strong. And like in Lufia 2 you have no control over the monsters, and no control over them when you fuse togheter. Here though, monsters can get equipment.

The game also has a class system. In Gruberik, there’s a building where you can choose the class for each characters. Also hidden through the world there are a few master classes, which you can only learn after mastering a certain basic class. The system is simple enough, and oyu get skills only by becoming certain classes.

Overall, this game is okay, but it’s the dark sheep of the Lufia series. Barely any relation to the actual story, boring characters, and for some reason it just didn’t get me as much as the previous 3 games. Also, the game wasn’t developed by the same team who made the 3 previous games which might have made it lose its magic or something.

Estpolis: The Land Cursed by the Gods (my hopes for the new game)

Finally, Square Enix revealed that Neverland would be developing a new Estpolis (the japanese name for Lufia). Neverland, just for reference, is the company that developed the first 3 games in the series. After a short while, it was revealed that the game would be a remake of Lufia 2, which is great because it was the best game in the series. It was also revealed to be in 3D, and transitioned into an Action RPG. Talk about a remake… more like a re-imagining.

From what we’ve seen in the gameplay trailer, the fighting looks like a mix between Kingdom Hearts and the Tales series.  It looks fast-paced, though it seems you only control one character at a time (might just be the way it looked in the trailer) instead of having a full team fighting at once.

The graphics look really good, and some parts in the trailer were recognizable from the original game. The dungeons and puzzles seem to have changed to be a bit more action oriented. And the characters all got a design change, though they all look pretty good from what I’ve seen. Though Tia got a MAJOR overhaul from her original design.

My hopes for the game? Well I’d like it to keep the spirit of the original, so not too many changes to the story-line. Keep the humor too, I loved it in the original. I’m really hoping the battle system won’t be too bad. The puzzles look pretty good from what I’ve seen in the trailer, but I hope there’s a good variety in them. The puzzles were one of the strong points in the original, and I’d like this to be shown here as well.

Overall, I’m really happy to see a new entry to the series, and I just hope we get it here so I can try it out.

Series overall
The Lufia series has been a consistantly good series. A nice story that follows through from the first to the third really well, entertaining characters, fun gameplay, fun battle systems. Sure, Ruins of Lore wasn’t too great and didn’t have anything to do with the other 3, but it was exactly a BAD game either. A great series, still respected by a few retro RPG gamers. Some prefer the first games, others prefer the second one, but one thing for sure is that the original 2 were great (though I MUCH prefer the second one), and the third was fun and original too. It will never reach the height of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, but to me it should be held with high regards when compared to both of those.

There are a few un-released games in the series, though one was transformed into the GBC titles. There was also one that took place before Lufia 2, which featured Maxim before the Sinistrals attacked. It never saw the light of day though.

(wow, my biggest post, just over 6400 words)

jobocan Console, GameBoy, Games, Handheld, Retrospective, SNES, ds, impressions, retro