Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

"An Oustanding Game... to say the least."

Graphics - 10/10
In my opinion, this game as outstanding graphics. All pictures are full of color and are bright and easy to see. They are wonderful to look at when playing the game, and they are sharp and interesting. Although all character movement is either up/down, left/right, and without any top-right and that kind of stuff, it is still good. The world environment is not a boring array of pixel green like some other games, though it is not absolutely perfect. There is not a great amount of animation in this game. Battle scenes have the usual Fire and slash stuff, but overall, nothing new and great about it. Overall, the graphics rule, and other than the usual flaws here and there, it was great.

Music/Sound - 10/10
The Music in this game is wonderfully made, and I loved listening to it. It easily set a happy or evil mood to the game and made cut-scenes in the game actually mean something, unlike many other game out there. For example, when you're up in the 3 towers at the end of the game, and you start to to say your good-byes at the top of the tower, it wouldn't be as dramatic and thrilling as it was, without the music track of the world-coming-to-an-end put together with a dramatic-good-bye, to create a wonderfully entertaining and tension grabbing song. Most of the music in the game was composed expertly and I loved it. Having it so well done, I went on the net to download some of its tunes in midi format to listen to them.

Gameplay - 9/10
This game had a different kind of way for special abilities. Instead of a skill point, ability charts, or job class lists like other games, this game, moved away from all that kind of stuff, and instead had something totally different, called IP Attacks.

When a certain character gets attacked in battle, your IP amount (a bar like HP) goes up, almost like the Limit Break system of Final Fantasy VII. After being attacked enough times, your IP will gradually grow more, and more, until you have a full bar. When you have enough IP, you can use different attacks/abilities/spells, that your armor or weapons have. These IP attacks, are usually always stronger than just plain normal attacks, and even magic spells. So essentially, the strength of a weapon, doesn't necessarily make it the best weapon. If you find a weapon with a bit less strength than it, but has a super strong IP attack, it will obviously be a WHOLE lot better, even though it's strength is less. Strong IP attacks, can make a very strong character, elite-like.
The whole game, is based around puzzle solving in dungeons, caves, or towers. So basically, you'll either like this game a lot, or hate it. I happen to LOVE this puzzle solving style of it, even though this is the ONLY game I've played of this type. Therefore, I found this game to be one of my all-time favourite games. Every dungeon you go to, or tower to enter, will be filled with a huge range of puzzles ranging from shooting an arrow to hit a switch, or even finding your way through a huge maze of wind-blowing statues, that blow you to a new place if you go the wrong way. Each puzzle was done with care, and were fun and exciting, as easy as some may be. This was the part that either made the game shine, or be bad to ones' opinion. It's mainly up to the player.

Storyline - 10/10
Lufia 2, is actually a prequel to the original game: Lufia. In Lufia, (the first one) the heros of the game are the descendants of the 4 heros in this game (In other words, Lufia came AFTER Lufia 2). In Lufia 2, you are Maxim, a monster-hunter. Maxim kills monsters that appear around his hometown of Elcid. One night, balls of light shoot through the sky, of course, no one knows what its about, until news comes that monsters are appearing rapidly everywhere. Because lots monsters appear in a cave to Elcid's neighbouring town of Sundletan, Maxim has to do his job, and he goes to the cave to kill them all. As he kills them all and retreaves the key for the cave, he meets someone... someone mysterious, thats sets him on a journey never thought of, to save the world from destruction. Maxims destiny, as is yours, is to stop the evil that's happening.... before chaos begins.

OVERALL - 10
For me, this game was unquestionably an all-time favourite of mine. The puzzle's is what made this game the great game it is. If you absolutely HATE puzzles, then this game might not be for you, though everything else of the game is still extremely well done, you might like it! Find the game and play it now, I say!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/03, Updated 02/11/03