Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

"A hugely flawed hugely improved disappointingly cool prequel."

The first Lufia, called Lufia & The Fortress of Doom in occident, was an overrated but nice and promising rpg that even with its flaws left a lasting impression on most people, and so expectations for this second part that is actually the first part were very high, but the result is extremely disappointing.

Story 7/10:
The story is pretty hard to rate, it`s better than the first`s but in the end nothing has really changed. First of all we have the fact that the game`s development is again terrible, terrible because it features the classical Nes rpg development (from town to dungeon to town and so on until the end). This is the way the game progresses from the beginning to the end, it`s very sad, then if we add that there is very little variety when it comes to towns and dungeons (because this is one of the biggest flaws, there are like twenty towns in the whole game, and all of them excepting for only one or two have exactly the same designs for the houses, people, and absolutely everything), as I was saying, if we add that, it truly feels like playing a 24 megabyte Nes game; but in the other hand even if the development is so bad the story has a fair amount of good moments, which are what save this prequel, otherwise this could have been an extremely lame game, just like what happens in the first game.

Graphics 8/10:
Again like with the first game, the big problem with the graphics is the lack of variety we`ll find during the whole game, like I said before there are like twenty cities and there are only two or three designs for all of them, and what is more, those three designs are all extremely similar, and this makes the graphics and the overall look of the game enormously monotonous and dull even if the towns and quite beautiful, because this not only happens with the towns, everything in terms of graphics is done is an extremely lazy way, excepting for the enemies after the first hour you`ll have already seen basically everything Lufia 2 has to offer visually speaking.

As an example, here you have a moment which I found specially disappointing: in a certain part when you are in a town, seasons begin to change, but the town remains the same in summer than in winter, not even single snow drop nor a leaf falling from a tree in autumn, not even rain or wind or anything, the sun always shines in the same way.

During the combats everything is SD style, but the characters designs, specially male characters, could have been greatly improved, they look odd, like a fatter and bigger version of the ones we see during the game but in SD style. Then the combats also lack animations in my opinion, the spells are lame and so our character`s movements while attacking or doing anything. But well, esthetical problems aside, the combats are very good as I will try to explain later.

Something that I found particularly ugly is the way the characters walk and run, specially when they are facing you, with those little legs that move extremely fast they look terrible, why they don`t look the way they look while we are choosing commands in battle or while shopping?, they sure look good there and not while battling or in any other places aside from those.

For a 24 megabyte cartridge anyway, Lufia II`s graphics should have been way better, it is still a very nice looking game, but with more stylized characters, better magical effects for the spells, and more and different backgrounds for the cities and dungeons the visual aspect could have been top notch, what a pity.

Music 7/10:
Better than the first, which is not a big success as the first game had a very mediocre soundtrack. There are towns with some really nice music, and the ending theme is superbly beautiful, but in general it is a bit campy, and like with the graphics too repetitive.

Gameplay 7/10:
The gameplay is the most disappointing aspect in Lufia II, the interface and controls are simply perfect, they just can`t be more intuitive, easy to learn, and effective, but the game`s development is still horrendous, and if we take out the few good moments it has, the gameplay is as monotonous as in the first game, and the monotony was the first game`s big problem.

I have already explained the reason and the way Lufia II is still monotonous while talking about the story, so I am not going to repeat it here, but even if there are a few other gameplay flaws, they are meaningless when compared with the development, and I would have probably given it a perfect rating without hesitation were it not for this.

The combats seem very standard at a first glance, they are like in the first game only that this time we enter an special arena to fight and we can see our characters from behind and with an special appearance specially designed for the combats, but they also have a nice amount of interesting features that make them a bit deeper. Most weapons and armors have special attacks or magic skills, to use them we need IP points, we have an IP bar during the combats that rises when we get hit. The magic system is very good, we can choose how many enemies we want to hit with every spell whenever we want, and the same happens with the healing spells for our partners.

We also have monsters that aid us a bit in combat, but this ``monster system`` needs to be greatly improved to be useful, these monsters attack or do anything all by themselves, we can feed them and make them stronger, but we can only have one monster at the same time. This system should have been something like a summoning system for various reasons, the first one is that this way it could have been a million times more useful, then, as we can only call one monster at the same time, and as there are so many of them, you are only going to be able take care of one, maybe two, because feeding them is not exactly a cheap process. The result is that the others will be there doing nothing, which is something very sad as it is very interesting to see what kind of new creature they are going to morph in.

Unlike the first game, the encounters are not always randomly generated (excepting for the overwolrd, where there are combats like in any other rpg), in the dungeons we can see the enemies moving on the screen, but the interesting and cool thing about this is the way they move, they start to move only if we also move, for example some of them move up if we go down, or if we go left they go up, and so on, it depends on the monster, also, depending if we engage combat from behind we can hit first in battle, and the same happens when the enemies are the ones who take us from behind. Finally we can stun monsters with our special weapons to take advantage or just to avoid encounters with them. This is something very cool and works perfectly, it makes the game faster and a lot more entertaining and fluid, it is perfect.

The dungeons have greatly improved also, so much that they are completely different from before, this time you will have to think a lot to beat them because they are full of puzzles. The puzzles are Zelda style mostly, not exactly like in Zelda, but somehow they have a Zeld-ish feeling, you have to move jars to press witches, get rid of all the enemies, use special weapons such as grappling hooks, and things like that.

These puzzles however, are not always that good, there are two particular puzzles that are horribly hard and annoying, the first one is that damned puzzle where you have to turn all the pieces to yellow, I hope the guy who did that puzzle is now in jail, the second one is when you have to hit two statues, you have hints about what to do, and we are told how to hit the blue statue, but we are not told how to hit the red one, I had to use a FAQ and I got really pissed off because there was no way to image that without one. The rest of them are reasonably easy to solve, some of them can be very annoying as you will have to try again a lot to find out what to do, but they are passable.

Replay Value:
We have a special dungeon with 100 levels that is pretty hard to beat because once we enter there we loose all our equipment and experience levels, so we have to start unarmed and weak and become strong and mighty with the equipment left there in treasure chests, and this dungeon is so long that to beat it entirely you will need the time you spend to beat the game entire twice, believe it or not.

Also, like in he first game, if we find all the Dragon Eggs there is a Dragon who will grant us a wish. There are eight eggs if I am not mistaken, hidden in different dungeons, and we have to look for the ones we left behind or those who required an special item to be obtained if we want the equipment that only that Dragon can provide.

Finally there are a few other secrets like special weapons and enemies.

Overall:
To sum up, Lufa II is an extremely hard game to rate in every single aspect: the plot is too simple and clichéd, but it also has some good twists; the graphics are very good but also too repetitive and sometimes ugly; about the gameplay the interface is first-class but the development terrible; and the music has good and bad moments.

This is what I think after beating the game, for me this was a bittersweet experience, and I can`t even be objective here because we have another problem: being one of the last rpgs on the Snes, Lufia II is an average game, but we also have the fact that is very fun and has its moments.

I guess my tagline describes what Lufia II offers quite good: a very good monumental disappointment.

I would give it 7,5 out of 10.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/20/04