Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

"Lufia in an older RPG that is average in almost every way."

Lufia & The Fortress of Doom is a RPG for the Super Nintendo, and one of the lesser-known ones at that (compared to Final Fantasy or Breath of Fire). It also didn't spawn too many sequels, like the aforementioned games did, but it did have a few. This fact alone made me assume that it was probably an ok game, but not spectacular, so after completing the game, here's what I thought of it.

Story: 6/10

To be honest, the story is pretty dry. It starts out with a bang though, first giving the player a bit of a history lesson. It explains that a mysterious Island was floating around and four evil beings later named the Sinistrals occupied it, terrorizing the land (they had control over some evil powers see, like chaos and death). After battling against them for a time, four heroes emerged and battled their way to the floating fortress to stop them.

This is where you pick up, as those four warrior battling that ancient evil almost 100 years ago, letting you kill the evil off and giving you some awesome back story. Unfortunately it's all downhill from there. After you pick up the story in the real game (after naming your main character) and meeting your childhood friend Lufia, you will have to endure 20+ hours of some of the driest rpg story I've ever seen. There are a few good moments, with some entertaining dialog, but your main objectives will be blurred by so many fetching quests that Lufia feels like a case study in how NOT to do a story. Eventually these quests will lead you to the end of the game, where the story seems to pick up again, so Lufia has a good ending at least (a very touching one). So overall, you have a DRY story sandwiched between a good beginning and a good ending.

Gameplay: 7/10

The gameplay is fairly standard for an rpg. The world is set in a medieval times, so magic and swordplay are commonplace (as is waiting your turn to attack, of course!). You can attack, use items, use magic, or try to run (some characters can't use magic by the way). As you fight, you will gain experience and gold, and eventually level up. Leveling up will increase your HP/MP and stats, though for attack and defense strengths you will still be relying on equipping the latest and greatest weapons and armors. In a fight, your characters will be shown on screen from a top down perspective, while the enemies are shown above. Instead of using a menu screen to fight, you use a directional interface (so pressing "A" attacks a selected enemy, while pressing "UP+A" leads you to the magic screen, etc.). You also have to select a particular enemy to attack, meaning that you can have everyone attack one enemy and even though your second attack may kill it, your other characters will still try to kill the non-existent enemy (similar to the first Final Fantasy).

As you can see, the gameplay is about as average as you can get. You will do this while traveling from town to town, or from town to dungeon on one of your fetch quests until you beat the game. While you will eventually get stronger and stronger it is still a very gradual change. There really isn't anything special about the gameplay at all besides a couple (seriously , only two) side quests and a couple of new transportation methods here and there.

Is the game fun? Well, that depends on how patient you are, I suppose. Lufia's enemy encounter rate is through the roof, and later in the game you'll be forced to heal your party after almost every single battle. These two facts can really try one's patience, so you have been warned (this is a rather long game as well, it took me around 22 hours to defeat).

Graphics: 7/10

The graphics are also fairly standard in Lufia, and come packaged with the list of usual detracting suspects: repeated animations, reused enemy sprites, and almost every npc in the game looks alike. The graphics themselves are sharp and look good, but after an hour into the game you'll have seen around 90% of the entire games selection of world-map background, town graphics, and dungeon graphics. The enemies are spread out a bit more, but they definitely re-use enemy designs! The townsfolk come in a few variety's (male, female, child, cook, sailor, etc...) but are essentially forgettable. In all, the graphics look good, but Lufia suffers from the same things most of the games of it's era suffered from, while not adding in some of the cooler affects that made other SNES titles great. Of course, I'm talking about that extra bit of flair that made classic games classic (think of Tales of Phantasia's weapon skills/summons, FFII/IV's myriad of skills and summons, and heck, even Breath of Fire's dragon transformations gave it some flair). The one thing I can complement is the little victory poses after a fight, which are pretty cool, but can't pull Lufia out of being average.

Music / Sound Effects: 8/10

One thing that got me hooked in the beginning of Lufia was the story; the other was the music. Some of the beginning tracks are amazing, they had some very catchy tunes, stuff similar to Zelda: A Link to the Past. Once you get into the game, the tracks dip back into being average, although with enough listening they are still somewhat catchy (the world map music and town music are well above average). Overall, Lufia's music is above average, and catchy enough for me to see if there were any tracks/remixes available on the web. The sound effects are standard, but effective. You'll hear your share of slashing and magic casting as you play through the game, and while none of it sounds horrible or makes the game unplayable, none of it will be remembered.

Re-playability: 7/10

As I stated earlier, there are only two side quests to do in the entire game: explore a dungeon level by level (levels open up when you are a certain level) and find treasure which people will pay you for, or collect dragon eggs across the world to gain special items from a collector. Now, rpg's, especially older ones, aren't exactly known for their re-playability, but Lufia did impress me with one fact: at the end of the game you are told how well you did. This includes how long you took, how many battles you won, ran from, died in, etc.. including how many treasure chests and items you found. While this doesn't mean a lot nowadays, back when Lufia came out I could see it being a reason to play through again: to do better.

Overall: 7/10

Overall, an average SNES-era rpg with a sadly lacking story and some memorable music tracks. Nowadays, of course, there are many better rpg's available, but for the rpg fan Lufia may be worth a shot if you haven't played it already. While you can never truly die, the increased rate of random battles may test your patience. Have fun and keep playing.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/18/08

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