Lufia II Review

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

~puzzles in an RPG? No, lots of them!

Platform: SNES
Genre: RPG, turn-based battles
Developer: Neverland
Publisher: Taito (JP), Natsume (US), Nintendo (EU)
Japanese Release Date: 02/24/95 ?
US Release Date: ??/??/96 ?
EU Release Date: ??/??/96 ?

note: 02/23/95 is what is listed some places online for US release date, but the US game itself says copyright 1996; also, finding nice pictures for an older game is difficult, so I apologize for the small picture size (the box art looks like typical terrible SNES box art, so here's the title screen)

Other games by Neverland: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, Chaos Seed, Energy Breaker, Lufia: The Legend Returns, CIMA: The Enemy, Shining Force Neo, Shining Force Exa among others
notably - not Lufia: The Ruins of Lore, not all other Shining games; there's been significant staff turnaround, and Lufia II is probably their most famous title anyway

Developer Credits: (incomplete; from GameFAQs page, credit ClaudeLv250, ky907, a0me, odino, and lufiaguy)
+ Show Spoiler +

Scenario Composer Masahide Miyata
Main Programmer Akihiro Suzuki
Battle Programmer Takuya Nagami
Camp Programmer Kiyochika Watanabe
Monster Designer Tomonari Matsumoto
Dungeon Designer Samichi Sugiura
Character Designer Ryu Kurugami
City Designer Takehito Suzuki
Music Composer Yasunori Shiono
Map Constuctor Takashi Miyasaka
Casino Programmer Asuka Shiranui
XLION Engineer Naoyuki Ukeda
Program Director Makoto Takada

What is this game?

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is--despite the release date fiasco at the top of the page--a popular cult hit SNES RPG, a game featuring many puzzles in its dungeons. It's the prequel of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, set 99 (or is it 100?) years before the original in your typical roughly-medeival fantasy setting of towns, castles, caves, dungeons, towers, and the like. Our protagonist this time is a red-haired swordsman by the name of Maxim, the direct ancestor of the hero of the original Lufia game. Thankfully, despite Maxim being a cliché heroic, sword-wielding protagonist, he and the other characters of the game are outfitted with surprisingly (for an SNES game) lively dialog sprinkled with enough humor such that doing one good deed after another in a path to saving the world doesn't actually feel too old. Two examples picked for no particular reason:

"I thought the idea was to put the knife into the wedding cake and not into monsters!"
"Fool! I'm the oldest and strongest of jellies!"

In Lufia II there are seven playable characters, although a maximum of four is in your party at all times. The plot determines which characters you use at which point in the game, and thus your party composition changes fairly frequently, similar to a game like FF2/4j. Like in games of the time, each character has six equipment slots, and different equipment can be equipped by everyone, some people, or just one person, creating good deal of flexibility in how to arrange the goods among characters. Lufia II is also one of the few SNES RPGs that progressively don't have random regular enemy encounters in dungeons (yes, there still are random encounters on the world map). But no, it's not implemented by having static enemies: more on that later.

Intro cutscene--the actual plot as a whole isn't that interesting, especially the villians, so this isn't an indication of the game's quality

Dungeon Exploration

There are two things you'll instantly notice when walking around: (1) Maxim moves pretty fast across the screen and (2) movement is tile-based, the second of which is central to interacting with both enemies and puzzles. In dungeons, enemies appear on the screen and walk around as you do; in fact, they only move whenever you move or take another action (e.g. swinging sword, which cuts grass or just wastes an action, which can be useful). Generally, enemies move one tile every time you move one tile or take an action, although some enemies move less frequently, and others yet move a scary two tiles to your one. As is familiar to players of modern RPGs, if you run into an enemy, you're taken into a fight with it. Also, how you collide with the enemy determines who gets first strike, or if the battle begins normally.

This is good: keke......................................This is bad: T_T

However, there are also other field actions that Maxim can do, like shoot arrows, set bombs, shoot a grappling hook, etc. Some of these can be used to hit enemies and stun them temporarily, which helps you a lot when 10 enemies are chasing you in the same room. However, they are also used extensively in the puzzles scattered throughout dungeons.

'Sup guys (some rooms are more crowded, most are less)

Puzzles

Puzzles in Lufia II may be as simple as pushing a column onto a button in the middle of a room to make a door open, and they may be as difficult as this:

Move blocks around until the 2x2 square is in front of Maxim...guess what's your reward!

They are truly the mainstay of this great game, bringing fresh life into an otherwise decent but not outstanding RPG. Many of them are required to be completed to finish the game, while others are off in the sides of a room, often with a piece of shiny new equipment to reward you for your efforts. Some are quite easy, while the hardest may take several minutes or perhaps even longer; however, none are difficult enough to be ultimately frustrating. The game contains every puzzle type in the book and then some more. Many puzzles are intuitive, like needing to move blocks a certain way to be able to reach the switch for the door. But even the other ones, even without any text descriptions, become quickly clear in objective and rules as you fail the first time. Others yet build on prior knowledge of the game's workings. Just know that the game gives you infinite tries, and there's always the room reset button to clear you of your latest embarassment.

It may look unfamiliar, but you'll solve it in 15 seconds as you quickly figure out what's going on

IP System

Equipment in Lufia II does not necessarily just grant boosts to stats. Many pieces of equipment, especially those found in dungeons, allow the wearers the use of IP skills in battle. IP skills are special abilities or actions that are more potent than most regular attacks and spells. IP skills may be as bland as a special attack for 1.5x damage and Ice element or as situational as a mirror that reflects enemy attacks for a very short period of time. Others may give healing or stat boosting options to character who has no magic at all. In any case, some equipment as them, and others don't; also, some weaker equipment may have useful skills that will make you want to equip them even when you have statistically stronger other equipment. And in other cases, you may hang on to a weapon just because its IP skill is an attack that does exceptional damage against lizards, for example.

To use IP skills, you must use up some of your IP gauge, a third bar in battle in addition to a character's HP and MP. Whenever a character takes damage, the bar increases by a little. The more damage a character takes, the more the bar increases, except when a character dies completely in which case the bar resets to zero. Of course, better skills use up more if not all of the meter. Thus, IP skills add strategic depth and planning to the game beyond the ordinary magic skillset seen in most games.

What a useful Guy

Capsule Monsters

Throughout the world, there are seven capsule monsters. They're useful creatures that you can feed and put into your party for battle, although you're limited to only using one. There is a capsule monster for each element in the game: fire, water, wind, earth, dark, light, physical. Each has a different set of attacks that they choose from randomly--you can't control them directly, but they're all still marginally to somewhat useful compared to your real party members. Each has four tiers and then a secret fifth special tier of development, gaining stronger and stronger attacks as they progress. To make them grow, you must feed them equipment and sometimes items. However, they're picky eaters and will only grow from stronger equipment (generally rare stuff you're no longer using) and the best of items. Keep in mind that doing this is all optional, and for the record, the first Pokémon games were released the year after Lufia II. All in all, the capsule monsters are a somewhat interesting distraction, an alternative old equipment sink other than the sell screen in a shop.

The Ancient Cave

Somewhere in the middle of the game, an optional dungeon opens up for you to explore. However, it's no ordinary dungeon: it's a 100 floor randomly-generated dungeon. Like all of the dungeons in Lufia III and I think some SMT game and others, each floor of this dungeon and this dungeon alone in Lufia II has objects, chests, and enemies scattered randomly about. Each time you enter, all of the rooms will be different. The only thing that's certain is that each floor will always have a staircase leading down--that is, except for the final floor. When you go into the Ancient Cave, you lose all of your levels, equipment, items, and spells. In fact, the Ancient Cave can be thought of as a stand-alone separate game. You'll have to grind your way through enemies, avoiding the most dangerous ones but fighting the rest so you'll be strong enough to handle the next level, all the while frantically looking for chests for weapons and armor to equip yourself with and spells (especially healing spells!). Recovery items and MP are usually in short supply, yet if you become a master of the dungeon, you'll have a good shot of making it all the way to the bottom. Typical end levels after fighting through hours of this dungeon to the end go up to the low 90's. It's a long and fun adventure of its own, and often a cruel, cruel world much more challenging than the main game.

Miscellany and Summary

Spells in this game aren't learned upon level-ups but rather bought from stores for individual characters to use. Because the game really isn't too difficult (and that's my only real complaint with the game), you probably won't be level grinding any. Thus, you'll be short of cash and will have to make smart decisions about who to buy equipment and spells for. Note that only some characters can use certain spells, and others can use no spells at all. Maxim, for example, stereotypically is an above-average fighter with above-average stats and a spell selection that includes a decent amount of healing and just some attack magic. Also, Lufia II is unique in that spells can be targeted on all enemies, some enemies, one enemy, all allies, some allies, or one ally. Maybe you want to increase the attack of Maxim, Guy, and Dekar, but not Selan. Well, you can--you can literally choose whatever combination like that you want.

After you beat the game once, this unlocks a New Game+ mode, in which you gain extra money and experience (IIRC) for each fight, thus making the game a lot easier. It's meant to let you breeze through the game again. After you beat this mode, you unlock Gift Mode. This allows you to choose your exact party to play the Ancient Cave with. Normally in the course of the game you must use the characters you have in your party as dictated by the plot. However, Gift Mode allows you to choose a better optimized party, an all-male team, a duo, or solo challenge: whatever combination you'd like.

As stated previously, Lufia II's nothing but a solid game made even better with good puzzle and dungeon design. As you can see, the graphics are pretty good, a couple upgrades up if not more from the original Lufia title, the kind of nice-looking 16-bit graphics you expect from the late SNES era. For once, you see that I don't highlight the music composer's name in the developer credits list. Nevertheless, don't be alarmed--the tracks are also pretty good for the most part and they fit the situations well . In fact, there's little that can go wrong by playing Lufia II: it's a rare game that's good and appeals to most everyone (who plays RPGs).

This concludes this week's post. Happy gaming, and here's a bonus poll to send you off. As always, especially with the "Other" option, please leave comments below.

Poll: Should I change the review format any?
(Vote): Score games with numbers, like music - 8/10, plot 6/10
(Vote): Make more well-defined sections
(Vote): I like it the way it is
(Vote): Other

edit: changed the intro movie to the English version (I think, didn't watch it myself). Also, just to note, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (Lufia 1) is a solid if primitive-looking SNES game in its own right. It's one of the harder games on the SNES, requiring some level grinding. Also, Lufia: The Legend Returns is surprisingly good for a Game Boy Color game. The battle system is pretty interesting in that you field 9 characters (out of like 15 available or so by the end of the game) in a fight in a 3x3 grid, and position determines stat boosts and other things. Only one character in each column can act in each turn, so the way you place your characters and distribute equipment is quite interesting.

edit2: added info to summary and miscellany

Lufia II Review

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming