Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

"A great RPG, but only when you've pretty much played all of the really good ones."

Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom is the first game of the series. It was released for the SNES. It's a fairly underrated game, but it's not a absolute masterpiece. Anyways, onto the review.

Graphics:8/10:The Graphics in Lufia Fortress Of Doom are pretty good. The area designs are pretty decent, but sometimes get too boring and repeat often. Character sprites look good though and I love the character designs. Enemy designs are good, but not fantastic as well. The boss designs particularly the sinistirals are just epic. Overall pretty good Graphics, but could use some more work. Specifically in the area designs and enemy designs.

Gameplay:8/10:Lufia The Fortress Of Doom is a interesting RPG. It's pretty old-schoolish to be honest, but a lot of fun. In the game you have a four man party. The party is composed of people who join you as you progress through the game. Battles are randomly initiated in Lufia just like most RPG's. Now, let's discuss the battles.

Battles in Lufia are unique. The enemies are gigantic which does make battles feel more epic. Your characters are then shown standing a box representing their current stats. When a character is inputting their command they do so with a simple to use menu. Represented by icons and descriptions for the icons. Aside, from that nothing too special though. The attack and spell animations are good, but nothing amazing. Lufia has a decent difficulty, but in a not so good way at times. The game has fairly challenging random battles and usually very challenging bosses. Bosses take a decent strategy to usually win against. Now, my problem with the Gameplay...

Is the leveling. Normally, I don't mind leveling in RPG's, but in Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom leveling was boring. Worse is, you have to do quite the amount of leveling as you go throughout the game. If you don't level enough you can sometimes just get flat out owned at the next dungeon. If you do level enough, buy better equipment you'll have a much easier time. The main problem with the difficulty is that just Lufia doesn't have the strategic options for attacks and spells. You just have standard attack spells and healing spells. Oh, and maybe a buff/debuff or two. I don't mind difficulty either way though if the game is fun. Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom is a pretty fun, but not amazingly fun game though. I've beaten it twice and both times were fun. The main problem with the game to me is that just the leveling brought the fun down dramatically at times. Overall though, Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom is a fun game, but it could have admittedly been more fun.

Storyline:6/10:The Storyline is basically Maxim and his group begin the game at the end of Lufia II. The prequel to Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom, but a game that was later made after Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom. Let's not get off topic though. So, Maxim's group defeats the four evil sinistirals who are trying to wreak havoc throughout the world from Doom Island. The game kind of tricks you into thinking your getting into a good Storyline at the beginning. Admittedly the dialogue could have been a lot better. At times, and in the beginning Lufia suffers from the extremely optimistic dialogue syndrome that hurts Storylines. Now, the main problem and the plot's weakest point...

The Storyline seems to go further and further away towards the middle. In the middle the Storyline literally disappears. Character development in the game is to only be found in the very beginning and end. Now, the second problem with the Storyline as stated before was the dialogue. At times, characters just sound too optimistic and it makes the scene lose all sense of atmosphere. Which then results in failing to immerse the player into the Storyline. So, overall the Storyline in Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom is mediocre. It starts off decently, but gets worse and worse. The dialogue is okay at best and character development is hardly to be found. So, the Storyline gets a 6.5/10 which then brings me to the Music category next.

Music:10/10:The Music in Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom is fantastic. I love the songs in the game and thought they were done well. The sound effects could have been better, but hey it's a SNES game and even the best RPG's on that system didn't have terrifically good sound effects. Oh, wait Chrono Trigger did.... Oh, well. The Music in the game is fantastic and I give it a 10/10 as a result. So, now then how is Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom overall?

Overall:8/10:Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom is a decent RPG. It's fun, but the leveling brings it down at times. The Graphics are pretty good, but have some room for improvement. I do like the style of the character sprites though. The Storyline is certainly the game's weakest point though. Okay dialogue, poor character development and a overall weak main plot hurts the Storyline a lot though. Last is the Music when I can quite frankly say is fantastic. The Music is certainly one of Lufia And The Fortress Of Doom's strongest points. Overall Lufia Of The Fortress Of Doom is a decent RPG, but not amazing in my opinion. So, it gets a 8/10 from Lord_Kefka.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/08

Game Release: Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (US, 12/04/93)