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
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
Einer DER Spiele die mich in das ganze Schema des "Turn-based RPGs" brachte.
The biggest issue with Lufia I was how redundant is was past its 5 first hours, being stuck with its long chain of fetch quests which hardly related to the main story, which is a shame considering how nice the dialogues were when they were any.
Lufia II, its prequel, feels like it understood in more ways than one how monotonous the first game was. It feels like every improvements and changes made to this game was an answer to this, and I can't help but compare them.
A lot more dialogues, better characterization, dungeons with actual level design obviously borrowed from ALTTP and no more random encounters inside them, etc, etc.. This game screams "We don't want you, the player, to be bored".
And for the most part, it works. As I said, the dungeons are the obvious exemples of these changes. You have access to tools in order to progress in rooms filled with puzzles in contrast to the aimless roaming in Lufia 1, meaning surviving isn't the only goal now, you actually get rewarded for thinking hard enough, with better equipments or even Capsule Monsters, which are additionnal party members you can't control but can come handy. Thanksfully, no random encounters mean you can move around and solve these riddles without too much worries, a change that may seems obvious today but clearly shows hindsight for the time it was released. You still alternate between towns and dungeons to move the story forward, but now it feels less like a chore and more like " I'm looking forward to the next dungeon " for most of the time. In term of design, some of these puzzles can be tedious, but that's not the majority, especially considering how Lufia II is the first JRPG to my knowledge with dungeons like this.
Lufia I and II share the same structure too, but there's much more dialogues now, stuff I would consider boring fetch-quests in Lufia 1 are now funny little antics making me grow attached to the characters (it's always funny to see Guy and Dekar interact), balancing the more serious and touching bits of the story. Not to mention if you played Lufia 1, you know how the story will end, it's interesting to see how the game try to bait us with characters that come and go in your party, before the final confrontation against the Sinistrals mirroring the brilliant intro of Lufia 1.
With all that being said, man am I glad to have played the first Lufia before this one. In its quest to be a more pleasant experience than its predecessor, I can't help but think some things were lost. Take the battle system, I actually really liked how you had to think before acting in Lufia I because of the game choosing for you which ennemy you will hit when targeting a specific group, combined with the game not changing target when hitting a dead ennemy. Don't get me wrong, Fortress of Doom was a tedious grindfest 50% of the time, but when that was done, random encounters were actually dangerous and fun. In Lufia II, the battle system was streamlined to something more traditionnal, you can target ennemies precisely with no downsides whatsoever like most JRPGs at the time, and while the IP system giving special abilities depending on your equipment is an interesting idea, in practice, battles are far easier and somewhat more boring than in the first game. An other thing to consider is that the progression is way more linear than Lufia 1, you simply won't get lost most of the time. It's not like the first game wasn't linear too, but you could visit 2 or 3 towns simultaneously in some parts, which is just not the case in Rise of the Sinistrals. Personally, I like getting lost in JRPG, it gives a slower pace and feels like time is actually passing, making some relationship and events more credibles. Everything in Lufia 2 might happens a bit too quickly for my taste, such as how Selan fall in love with Maxim.
I don't want to spend too much time comparing the two games, but I wanted to give some response to the " skip Lufia 1 and play Rise of the Sinistrals ". In most parts, Lufia 2 is clearly the better game, but I feel like sometimes it lacks a bit of atmosphere in order to lives up to the " hidden gem" status i've read a lot. Maybe I wouldn't have minded spending a little less time in dungeons in exchange for more interesting events happening in towns or the worldmap.
Still, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals was a solid experience, and I was pleasantly surprised with how much the developpers really wanted the players to have a good time with this title, whever it's for its fun mecanics or its extremly charming writing. I didn't even mention the Ancient cave, a 99 randomly generated levels dungeon in which your party is reset to level 1 with no equipments in the beggining. Yes, a totally optionnal roguelike in your 1995 JRPG.
Anyway, if you like JRPGs of this era, it's still a must play, but try to finish Lufia I before.
Lufia II, its prequel, feels like it understood in more ways than one how monotonous the first game was. It feels like every improvements and changes made to this game was an answer to this, and I can't help but compare them.
A lot more dialogues, better characterization, dungeons with actual level design obviously borrowed from ALTTP and no more random encounters inside them, etc, etc.. This game screams "We don't want you, the player, to be bored".
And for the most part, it works. As I said, the dungeons are the obvious exemples of these changes. You have access to tools in order to progress in rooms filled with puzzles in contrast to the aimless roaming in Lufia 1, meaning surviving isn't the only goal now, you actually get rewarded for thinking hard enough, with better equipments or even Capsule Monsters, which are additionnal party members you can't control but can come handy. Thanksfully, no random encounters mean you can move around and solve these riddles without too much worries, a change that may seems obvious today but clearly shows hindsight for the time it was released. You still alternate between towns and dungeons to move the story forward, but now it feels less like a chore and more like " I'm looking forward to the next dungeon " for most of the time. In term of design, some of these puzzles can be tedious, but that's not the majority, especially considering how Lufia II is the first JRPG to my knowledge with dungeons like this.
Lufia I and II share the same structure too, but there's much more dialogues now, stuff I would consider boring fetch-quests in Lufia 1 are now funny little antics making me grow attached to the characters (it's always funny to see Guy and Dekar interact), balancing the more serious and touching bits of the story. Not to mention if you played Lufia 1, you know how the story will end, it's interesting to see how the game try to bait us with characters that come and go in your party, before the final confrontation against the Sinistrals mirroring the brilliant intro of Lufia 1.
With all that being said, man am I glad to have played the first Lufia before this one. In its quest to be a more pleasant experience than its predecessor, I can't help but think some things were lost. Take the battle system, I actually really liked how you had to think before acting in Lufia I because of the game choosing for you which ennemy you will hit when targeting a specific group, combined with the game not changing target when hitting a dead ennemy. Don't get me wrong, Fortress of Doom was a tedious grindfest 50% of the time, but when that was done, random encounters were actually dangerous and fun. In Lufia II, the battle system was streamlined to something more traditionnal, you can target ennemies precisely with no downsides whatsoever like most JRPGs at the time, and while the IP system giving special abilities depending on your equipment is an interesting idea, in practice, battles are far easier and somewhat more boring than in the first game. An other thing to consider is that the progression is way more linear than Lufia 1, you simply won't get lost most of the time. It's not like the first game wasn't linear too, but you could visit 2 or 3 towns simultaneously in some parts, which is just not the case in Rise of the Sinistrals. Personally, I like getting lost in JRPG, it gives a slower pace and feels like time is actually passing, making some relationship and events more credibles. Everything in Lufia 2 might happens a bit too quickly for my taste, such as how Selan fall in love with Maxim.
I don't want to spend too much time comparing the two games, but I wanted to give some response to the " skip Lufia 1 and play Rise of the Sinistrals ". In most parts, Lufia 2 is clearly the better game, but I feel like sometimes it lacks a bit of atmosphere in order to lives up to the " hidden gem" status i've read a lot. Maybe I wouldn't have minded spending a little less time in dungeons in exchange for more interesting events happening in towns or the worldmap.
Still, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals was a solid experience, and I was pleasantly surprised with how much the developpers really wanted the players to have a good time with this title, whever it's for its fun mecanics or its extremly charming writing. I didn't even mention the Ancient cave, a 99 randomly generated levels dungeon in which your party is reset to level 1 with no equipments in the beggining. Yes, a totally optionnal roguelike in your 1995 JRPG.
Anyway, if you like JRPGs of this era, it's still a must play, but try to finish Lufia I before.
Rented this a lot as a kid before I really understood what RPGs were. Really need to go back to this because I remember enjoying the puzzles in the dungeons.
A less generic medieval anime outing with some incredible puzzles and soundtrack
I would rather wait for an official remake that fixes the translation errors/typos (excluding the weird DS version, which I've heard bad things about).It's pretty jarring to see issues within the first fifteen minutes. I know that poor translations were par for the course at the time, but it's still dissapointing.
Graphically better than the first one Fortress of Doom.
Very good old school RPG, better than most. Has great puzzles.
Very good old school RPG, better than most. Has great puzzles.
blaze can you not run away from battle for one fucking second
HD2D PLZ
Lufia II was one of the later games released on the SNES. Despite the release date, it's graphically unimpressive and looks worse than a lot of SNES RPGs released the same year. It doesn't try to be a Chrono Trigger or an FF6, and it doesn't need to be.
The highlight of this game, especially for me, is its dungeons and puzzles. They're basically just better Zelda dungeons, to be honest. You're given tools throughout the game, and the game design will make great use of them throughout the whole journey. There are also a ton of branching pathways with treasure chests, which, for the most part, have very useful items for your party. I can't stress enough how incredible the head-scratchers are in this game, though. I've yet to find an RPG that even holds a torch to this game in that regard.
This game has an interesting equipment system. Not only do I have to decide which equipment has the best stat allocations for the characters, but there is an IP system in which some equipment pieces will have a special move that you can pick from when your IP meter is charged from taking damage in battle. There are many variables for equipment to take into account in the form of rings and rocks, which all raise different stats and have their own special move most of the time. This game also has shops to learn magic instead of getting spells from leveling up. I like this because I have to choose which character most needs certain spells to not waste all my money. In addition to party members, there is a new type of member called capsule monsters. There are 7 to collect in the game, and you can evolve all of them by feeding them equipment, items, or whatever they desire in the form of a menu telling you what to feed them. This was fun, as they could all help out a bit in their respective manners.
My only complaint about Lufia II is that the characters and story are really boring. The pacing is bad later on in the story, as it starts to get really repetitive and the characters are not interesting at all. They don't get any development for the most part, instead substituting for bad humor in the cutscenes. The gameplay more than makes up for it though!
My favorite SNES game, without a doubt. It's a shame that this series kind of gets neglected now, only getting a mid remake on the DS in 2010. The series as a whole isn't very good, to be honest, with this being the only one worth playing, and it is very much worth playing.
The highlight of this game, especially for me, is its dungeons and puzzles. They're basically just better Zelda dungeons, to be honest. You're given tools throughout the game, and the game design will make great use of them throughout the whole journey. There are also a ton of branching pathways with treasure chests, which, for the most part, have very useful items for your party. I can't stress enough how incredible the head-scratchers are in this game, though. I've yet to find an RPG that even holds a torch to this game in that regard.
This game has an interesting equipment system. Not only do I have to decide which equipment has the best stat allocations for the characters, but there is an IP system in which some equipment pieces will have a special move that you can pick from when your IP meter is charged from taking damage in battle. There are many variables for equipment to take into account in the form of rings and rocks, which all raise different stats and have their own special move most of the time. This game also has shops to learn magic instead of getting spells from leveling up. I like this because I have to choose which character most needs certain spells to not waste all my money. In addition to party members, there is a new type of member called capsule monsters. There are 7 to collect in the game, and you can evolve all of them by feeding them equipment, items, or whatever they desire in the form of a menu telling you what to feed them. This was fun, as they could all help out a bit in their respective manners.
My only complaint about Lufia II is that the characters and story are really boring. The pacing is bad later on in the story, as it starts to get really repetitive and the characters are not interesting at all. They don't get any development for the most part, instead substituting for bad humor in the cutscenes. The gameplay more than makes up for it though!
My favorite SNES game, without a doubt. It's a shame that this series kind of gets neglected now, only getting a mid remake on the DS in 2010. The series as a whole isn't very good, to be honest, with this being the only one worth playing, and it is very much worth playing.
The holy grail of my youth