A look back at: Lufia: The Ruins of Lore

 

Finally I close out an RPG franchise, well, it's not one of the more famous ones, but I highly rate Lufia 2 and there's not much else to really say about it other than its great. Every other game though? Either average to mediocre (this and The Legend Returns) or bad (first game). So it's kinda hard for me to say what I really think of The Ruins of Lore. The story is easy to forget, because there's a lot to actually do in the game away from the story you just sort of forget what you're doing at times. Bringing in a job system and making it Final Fantasy-like with regards to skill learning seems great, but then I have to battle an awful lot just to get the skills or to master the job. The magic oriented ones, specifically the bishop, seem to take 500 battles to just master. And you really want specific skills like Fury, Chance Hit, Divine Ray, Heal All, and Valor, so you'd be spending some time grinding.

Frankly though the game does feel relatively easy to compensate. Enemies tend to not have a lot of health, and that goes for the whole game. A good hit-all skill can win most battles. And even better, it's incredibly easy to surprise most enemies, since all you gotta do is attack them where they don't look. Only some fixed encounters can't be done this way, but there does exist the Tear Gas skill for those who are either tired of the encounters or doesn't want to fight any.

Not only does the game take a page from Final Fantasy, but a page from Pokemon too. Now you can actually capture monsters with "discs" which work best when they are weak, but some of these guys can't even be captured. Plus there's a few sidequests early on in the Ancient Cave, plus equipment for the monsters you catch and use in battle. Oh and speaking of, I never bothered with the Ancient Cave again. I especially don't like the idea of going in solo (although you can capture a monster to bring) as well as the possibility of losing the items you bring when you lose in there.

The game's plot is helping this priestess stop the beast, while a familiar nation invades everyone. Although of course, that nation is run under the actual bad guy who deposed of the good in it of course. I hate how Eldin is a silent protagonist, as the series has never actually had one throughout and it feels weird to see ellipses in places or other characters talking for him. I do appreciate the little tools each character uses on the field. Other than that, mostly cookie-cutter stuff, with a few homages like Dekar and the locations brightening up my mood a bit.

A look back at: Lufia: The Legend Returns

Oh boy, the Lufia series has not aged well. II is the best game, bar none, while The Fortress of Doom had some real annoyances. This game? Pretty interesting but it still has its nuances.

Yeah cool, nine party members can be in the active party, but only three can be used to do things. And the top three characters must never fall in battle or it's a game over, which is dumb. The problem with this is that all the really good fighters (so just Wain, Aima, and Deckard) are the ones you HAVE to put in the front, because other characters like the glass cannon Randolph are really not useful for front line assault. Sure, put Seena or Milka in the back and have them use magic, but then again, magic isn't entirely all that useful here when physical attacks do way more damage. Why though? The answer is IP. This game really does rely on that moreso, even though many of the good ancient texts can be difficult to find. But they are pretty much what you WILL rely on.

Admittingly though, they do make battles a lot more interesting, especially if you get good ones while trekking through the now 200-floor Ancient Cave. And speaking of dungeons, all of them are actually randomized, which actually makes things quite interesting on the whole. There's a few hidden areas to look out for, and monster patterns to fight as well. Bosses tend to be much harder than the regular enemies overall, especially concerning Sinistrals, which for the majority of the time are supposed to be unwinnable (but it is possible to beat them). There are so many ways to break the game though. Ruby has this one ability which can do well over the damage cap, but really is only good for a save scummer. The Cat Ring makes any female character really fast. And if you were as lucky as I was when playing, you may pick up an Alum Blade from a low-level monster. This blade just so happens to be stronger than the Gades Blade if you managed to win the first fight against Gades. What the hell.

Given how long I did things, especially Ancient Cave trekking for items, I guess this really was worth the play. But what about the characters and plot? Naturally, Sinistrals returning is pretty much what drives this as a Lufia game, but our heroes are surprisingly nothing special. Wain is idiotic for a main character, Seena has to keep reminding him of that fact which ACTUALLY makes her way worse, not to mention her obviously spoilerific secret. Dei seems competent enough to be that one friend who actually ends up with more interaction than the rest of the playable cast. So what about the others? Aima has a short arc and that's it. Yurist spends most of his time prior to recruitment cheering on Jan, who is a good character despite being an NPC. Mousse, Isaac, and Ruby have no plot significance whatsoever. Making Milka and the Egg Dragon into playable characters is really sort of just fanservice, as they don't really do much*. The arc involving Randolph, Melphis, and Deckard was somewhat decent and at least involved Amon to a large degree. Once it's over, there's not a whole lot left for these characters. I'm okay with Melphis and Deckard being brother and sister even though they look nothing like it though. So really, the plot is just dumb and the character interactions are worse. The gameplay does randomize things to ensure it stays interesting, but there really didn't need to be that many characters when most aren't all that amazing in the first place.

*okay, Milka actually does have natural significance in that she exposed Seena, and naturally is the one character in the whole series who at least lived long enough to know just about everything here, but still, being the last party member to join doesn't really help her that much.

A look back at: Lufia II, Rise of the Sinistrals

Hey everyone, good game alert, this is a true favorite RPG of mine. Lufia II may have been a prequel game, but it did basically everything right with a basic turn-based RPG and then some.

Interfaces are cleaner, music is nicer, characters are more in-depth than they were in the first game, the dungeons are quite puzzling, there's nothing here I really hate. The villains are appropriately villainous, without being any sort of anti-hero. The love triangle thing was done rather well enough, the numerous side deeds around multiple towns to help them out was also quite well done with each scenario being unique in some way. Of course, the Ancient Cave is a fun randomizer of a dungeon, and there's also the World's Most Difficult Trick. Almost all of the puzzles in this game are pretty nasty, and one titled as being the World's Most Difficult Trick basically eclipses all of the puzzles I have seen thus far in a game.

The whole IP skills thing is pretty good, but better in the next game. I also didn't really get the capsule monster thing all that much, but sometimes these things either put up a good fight or are nice fodder so my other characters stay safe. The enemies being active in dungeon also allows me some advantageous positioning to ambush them by stunning with puzzle tools and going behind them. Quite a few glitches, such as killing the egg dragon in one hit, but these are FUN glitches, mind you. I like them.

The game's plot is the simple story of Maxim going on his usual hunting business, then getting this one woman, Iris, telling him he needs to go on his journey. This naturally ends up finding him at odds with the first sinistral, Gades, and after that he ends up marrying Selan, possibly being one of the few JRPG protagonists to actually be married. Making matters better is that Selan's also a warrior, and naturally so are Guy and Dekar, two other great dudes. Of course, there's the addition of the other Sinistrals, further strengthening their villainous resolve and fueling the heroic resolves of the heroes on this journey. It just is the kind of linear RPG story that is decent though, starting out very small, giving one nasty threat, then another one to keep it pumping.

Naturally though, I have nothing but disdain for the remake, having made a lot of changes, most are questionable and awful really.

A look back at: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom

Oh I am not happy.

Nice on the surface when you look at this SNES game and play the intro to it, but that falls apart later on. Lufia 1 may just be the first JRPG that I played and hated, to be honest. It's got all the traditional turn-based cliches in it, which isn't the problem, the problem is that it really doesn't do anything exciting with them. You've got the four characters you play with permanently affixed for your party, even though only one of them (the titular character) is the only important one, and that is because of her connection with the four characters on the villain side. Every other hero isn't really noticable. Main character who is a "choose your own name" person has archetypal hero and also archetypal "I love Lufia" persona. Aguro honestly is nothing but a guard. Jerin's best purpose for the plot is to help you get through a forest and that's about it as far as she goes. Guy and Artea don't serve too much, but then again, they are super old. Artea manages to fair better being an elf and all. But it all boils down to Lufia and it's honestly a bit lame.

And yes, I'm not a fan of the gameplay. While I try to stay indifferent on turn-based games as far as what they offer, Lufia 1 actually made me quite mad. Looking at how the battle system presents itself isn't the problem. Looking at how grinding is a necessity isn't a problem*. The problem is how the combat works. The Final Fantasy 1 rule applies, in that once you kill a group and someone was targeting that group, it's an auto miss. It's a little better than it was in that game in that it only happens if you already take out a monster group, but still. Oh and speaking of targeting, for a group, you target a random enemy for single-target attacks, which really sucks. To put more insult into this game's combat system, the monster stats are actually randomized around a median value, making it hard to effectively kill certain enemies. Put this together with how much grinding I had to do and it seems that 3 out of 5 battles just frustrated the hell out of me.

There really aren't a whole lot of positives I can say for this game. Well, the music is rad, especially the boss battle music. Having a ton of towns in game is questionable, but I wouldn't go too far and say it's bad, because it really isn't. A few extra premises are interesting provided you trounce all the broken bridges. Finally, the intro. God that intro is great. It's one of the best ways to lean a player into a JRPG, give them a really good high-level fully-equipped party and watch them go through an endgame dungeon, fighting off those same four bad guys easily. Then you get to the main course, which is the entire main game and, well, it's quite the grinder, lame unfortunately. So yes, I still don't like Lufia 1 all that much. While presentable, it's far from being anywhere better than its successor game or most other SNES RPGs.

*I'd like to point out I grind liberally for this game, even when my guide doesn't tell me to do so. So grinding isn't really an issue and the level up curve here is fine as well.