@Rudie asked recently if anyone wanted to join him in playing Lufia II this summer, and I definitely do. But I am also me, which means I was of course going to play Lufia I first, even thought Rudie specifically told me I didn’t have to. This only made it more likely that I would.
So hey, anyone want to play Lufia II this summer?
But also, so you don’t have to do it, I finished Lufia and the Tower of Doom a couple days ago, so enjoy reading about that and then do not play Lufia I. It’s OK; you can save yourself. Don’t be me. You don’t need to play this game. No, really. I played it because Lufia II has gotten a lot of love and I wanted to be able to appreciate the evolution from the first game to that one; also, I played it because I am not smart about my limited time on this Earth. But really, this is just a super grindy relatively mediocre JRPG, with a few cool things that are worth seeing, but not enough to justify the whole thing.
The Good
Despite my general tone of ambivalence, there was some good shit in this game. The general presentation of the battle system was pretty cool, in that the map just kinda fades to darkness, and the characters appear with their basic stats at the bottom and the menu is relegated to a d-pad of icons on the middle, while the enemies just show up over the map. It’s an interesting presentation that seems kinda budget-y, but is also charming on its own.
The icons are, thankfully, pretty self-explanatory with some basic JRPG knowledge. The game does feel like you would want a manual and a map, neither of which I have with it being on a flash cart, but thanks Internet. The game does include, in a away that feels pretty novel for 1993, the ability to bring up a description of the spells by pressing X when in the magic menu. The only problem is that sometimes the descriptions are…not very informative. For example, late in the game, the MC gets a spell called Rally, which has a description that says something about bringing a character back to fighting shape. So I thought this just meant “removes all debuffs” or something, which seemed ridiculous given the high MP cost; turns out, it actually revives a character with full HP though, which turned out to be super helpful. Again, maybe a manual would have explained this.
It would have also been really helpful to be able to use the X function for like…everything else. There are a lot of items, and specifically equippable rings, that the game gives you no idea what they actually do, aside from sometimes showing if they modify a character’s stats. Some of the most useful rings (for example ones that increase damage against specific enemy types, protect against some curses/debuffs, or even alter the encounter rate) give no indication at all as to what they do. Seems like a big oversight, but whatever.
The story of the game is pretty standard JRPG fare, an ancient evil is coming back, our MC is gonna fight it. There are some cool minor twists. The biggest early one is that the game starts with you playing as the party that, a hundred years ago, beat the big bads (the Sinistrals). The game just threw me in the deep end here, with characters with a ton of abilities and such that I had no idea about, but I stumbled through well enough. It felt a little rigged to be beaten, but that is OK. It sets up the main storyline nicely, and so when one of the Sinistrals shows up fairly early in the game, I already had a sense of dread for them. It is kinda funny in that the prologue here is actually the ending of Lufia II, in which you play as that party off to fight the Sinistrals initially, but whatever. It’s not like you wouldn’t know what was the ending of II even without this.
The other notable minor difference from normal JRPG stuff is that, as you might have seen above, one of the people in your party is who the game is named after. Lufia is a 16 year old girl from the same village as the MC (who is also 16, IIRC) who has been his friend since forever, and she wants to go with him to fight the SInistrals. Notably, she has a high magic proficiency, which the game says is pretty abnormal. So it turns out later in the game that she is actually the reincarnated version of one of the four Sinistrals, and the Sinistral leader Daos eventually makes her recall this, and this is why she has magic and eventually stabs the party in the back for a bit before her memories win out and she joins you all for the last battle. And you kinda seem to have to kill her, until in the end it turns out she just loses all her memory and magic ability, but is still alive much to the relief of the MC. It’s a nice but not revolutionary plot twist that goes well with the slight-but-definitely-there romance between the MC and Lufia that, in older JRPG style, is not really gone too in-depth on.
The Grind
OK, so here’s the big bad part of this game: it’s a grind. There is some major JRPG grind going on here, made only worse that, outside of towns, your characters move SLOW AS FUCK. Annoyingly slow. I kind wanted to yell at them to run sometimes. And this is exacerbated by an at times ridiculous encounter rate. Because of the slow speed and the high number of encounters, my personal play style started to veer towards efficiency, which the game accommodates pretty well. What’s amusing is how so many of the people who wrote FAQs and such for this game just didn’t seem to get that, and so grinded so much. One of them I was looking at had grinded their party up to lvl 99 for the final boss; in comparison, my highest level party member at the end of the game was lvl 48, with the lowest being at 42. I’m sure this fight would be “easier” if I doubled my levels, but the battle was definitely doable without that, and I am glad I tried to do it, because there is no way I was going to grind that much.
The Bestiary
At least when I did grind, the bestiary in this game was hilarious. It gave me this guy:
Who you might think, based on the name, is a wrestler or a character from a Beatles cartoon, but no, he is this guy, and he is a pain in my butt, casting a “hits everyone” spell at a time when I absolutely did not have a “heals everyone” spell.
The bestiary also had this amazing trio. I don’t even know what the fuck a “trap harp” is supposed to be, but there it is. Apparently a plant?!?! Even though it is flanked by harpies, called harpies in the game. How are these related? I don’t know, but check them out.
Somehow, the next one was supposed to be a gargoyle. No, I don’t know how either, and I appreciate the overall gender ambiguity of the monster. I would have probably thought this was some kind of Gorgon or Naga or something, but this game also follows D&D rules, so the Gorgon is a big metal bull.
Though they were minimally animated a lot of the time, the enemy sprites in general were pretty good, and a lot of the bosses were great. I really liked this guy from near the end of the game (he guards the access to the Sinistrals, basically), but I also love his name because what the hell kinda British royal guard ass name is Nazeby.
Sometimes though, there were some monster design misfires. You have seen, above, the Oil Dragon, but just as a reminder, look at this pretty good dragon design right here:
Look at him! Just a solid design for a basic ass Euro style red dragon. Cool. Great. But then…what led to…this…?
Look at that doofus! I kinda love him, not gonna lie, but he is such a doofus. His face makes me giggle. Thanks, Lufia. I giggled at a dragon. You were not a great game, but you did give me that. And a really slow walking speed.
I have already started Lufia II: The Rise of the Sinistrals, and it is so much better, so yeah, don't play part I. It's OK!
