Lufia and the Fortress of Doom reviewed

In 1993, Taito unleashed Lufia upon us and that's kind of it. I mean there are other Lufia games and most gamers do praise Lufia II very highly but a casual gamer has no idea what Lufia is. Quite frankly, while this game is decent there must have been a huge leap of faith since the first game is quite competent and colorful but flawed and bland. So without further delay, let's dig into Lufia & the Fortress of Doom.

So a 100 years, ago the evil group The Sinistrals is surveying the world through their flying island fortress waiting for the time to strike. Before they do, a group of very powerful do-gooders bust in the fortress and beat The Sinistrals up before they could act on their evil plan slamming the world into a 100 years of peace. So guess what happens when that 100 years, or more accurately 99 years, are up? If you guessed that The Sinistrals come back, you're not that right, they will come back near the end of the game but most of the time they're in the process of being revived. However, monsters have come back and kicking everybody's butts. So now this new group of do-gooders, who are either just like the old ones or related to the old ones, have to come together and beat The Sinistrals...again.

The main thing you notice when you're off fighting things is that the battle system is a bit weird. If you remember the very first Final Fantasy battle system, well if you pour everyone's attacks into one guy out of four and the first guy killed it, the other three will attack what you just killed, instead of going to the next living enemy, resulting in three misses. There's something similar going on here but there's another weird thing in Lufia. If you have a group of the same enemies, you can't choose which specific enemy you can hit, unless you're using magic or have Jerrin using her bow to hit all the enemies in a group. However, it does lead to a sense of strategy to this that is really fun and almost a breath of fresh air compared to every other RPG out there.

The other thing worth mentioning is the writing and how awfully awesome it is. For the most part, all the dialogue is pretty much "Get this thing!" and "Rescue that person!" with most of the NPC dialogue really being banal and forgettable. Now, if we look at the the plot-related dialogue is where things get hilarious. At the beginning when you're the old do-gooders, the leader of the do-gooders tells The Sinistrals that they are going to return the pain they caused the world! That's something I expect out of Patrick Swayze in Road House. And at the end of the game, where the big twist happens, it's so poorly written and stilted that it's awesome in how the translators can screw up something should be a lot more emotional than it already is.

So on the whole, this game is somewhat above-average. As weird and flawed as the battle system is, there's quite a bit of fun to it with a good sense of strategy that must be used. The graphics are bright and colorful, none of our browns from our fancy new games. The writing at best is hilariously awful and at worst, just forgettable. In the end, you certainly won't be bored playing this game but you will be very hard-pressed to actually remember anything from it.

6/10