the characters actually talk like characters in a story now, much more compelling than the dialogue in most of the other rpg’s from this era. the music moved me. the sleeping jingle sounds like it couldve been a sample in that terrible soundcloud era from 6-7 years ago but i don’t mean taht in a bad way. my fav songs are the boss battle song, the overworld song, narvick song, ship song, underwater song, the song for the gades fight , the final dungeon song, and town song. no order. the ending song is a goddamn rnb babymaking hit.

arriving at the city of aguero was genuinely shocking and i felt more strongly than i ever expected to feel from a random snes rpg i picked up absentmindedly.

the puzzles were for the most part easy enough to solve and they made me feel smart for solving them but sometimes there were those that i had to look up solutions for. but tbh i actually had a lot of fun figuring out the solutions to these puzzles. way more fun doing that than anything else. can’t believe im saying that.

i also always love a rpg without random encounters. i mean there’s random encounters in th overworld but not that many. in the dungeons you can strategically avoid battles if you just don’t feel like fighting.

i also love how the capsule monsters work in combat. a lot like the pets in adventure quest in that you can’t control them, although they can be attacked and killed, but it’s good bc it distracts the enemy and they always respawn. i had jelze the entire time and he ended up getting a crazy attack that dealt 1k damage and a shitty ass attack that did 9 damage. guess which one he used every single time.

unfortunately, as with most rpg’s of this era, not a lot of thought is put into the towns. they all basically have the same culture and architecture and talk the same and conveniently every next stop on your adventure has a shop that sells weapons slightly better than the ones you have now. stuff like that kinda breaks my immersion. dragon quest does similar things but i am more forgiving of those games bc of how much i love them and also how storybookish the whole thing is.

lufia 2 is not the same. it, like pretty much every snes rpg, overstays its welcome several stops before the end. by the time you’ve done the same thing a hundred billion times, you get kind of tired.

it’s weird, i found myself relishing the time spent solving puzzles and dreading the grinding and combat. usually it’s the opposite. i hate puzzles and i love grinding cuz i love to see numbers go up but i guess my relationship to both have changed. i think dark souls broke me. ever since playing that game, grinding and combat in games has felt so different to me. it sucks cuz in lufia 2 the last few dungeons are all combat no puzzles. in a zelda game i would be jumping for joy.

i also started to dread talking to villagers and npc’s towards the end. that’s usually my favourite thing to do in an rpg game and in lufia it’s very good about giving characters personalities that stick in your mind and in your heart. the 2 guys who have a crush on selan in parcelyte. the 2 boys who bully the girl. the old lady who’s mad she didn’t get abducted by the villain. but even still, the fatigue this game put on me made me dread even those interactions i cherished at the beginning