Lufia: The Legend Returns

"Great game, and nice battle system"

Lufia: The Legend Returns is a great. You take on the roll of Wain, a young, ignorant of all things more than 5 miles from town, dude. And all of a sudden, a young girl comes up out of nowhere, and says, ''Let's travel together.'' So they go on an adventure. That's all I'll say, since it's the introduction of the game, and I wouldn't want to spoil anything else.

GRAPHICS 10/10
These are some awesome graphics for a gameboy color, this game makes use of every simultaneous color they can get their hands on. Grass blades come on and off the sidewalk/trail, buildings have tiled roofs and battle animations are almost as good. The only real animation in battle is spells and attacking. The enemies mostly stand there and take the hits without any animation of a squint. It's about what one would expect from a gameboy color, and I can respect that very much, considering it's about time a good RPG came out for it.

SOUND 9/10
Some of the tunes in this game are awesome. There are some familiar tracks in it also, used in similar places where they were used in the previous games as well... which sends an extra shiver down your back.

GAMEPLAY 7/10
This game is basically the same as the previous games, except for two major things. First of all, you can have 9 party members in battle at once, on a 3 by 3 grid, rear row taking the least physical hurt, and the front row taking the most. The second major thing is the color attribute system. Each of the party members present has a certain color associated with them, such as green, red, blue etc. These colors represent a number of bonus stats applied to the party, such as HP, strength, MP, speed, and so on. A character sitting on the 3 by 3 grid who is providing one of these stat bonuses will apply the attribute to all other characters who are standing right next to them on the grid, not including diagonal directions. This is a pretty nifty system, and it's kinda neet to see this included in the latest release of the series. Dungeons are randomly generated, and they all look the same aside from the colors on the walls and floors, which is the main reason for the 7/10.

LASTING APPEAL 10/10
It's no short game, and no one would be able to finish it in one sitting like some kind of short story. The time to complete this is up there with the latest installments of the Final Fantasy series. You really get a lot of ''Bang for your buck'' out of this game. It's worth your dollar if you're thinking about picking it up.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/13/01, Updated 11/13/01