Lufia II reviewed

In my review of the first Lufia game I called it competent but flawed and unmemorable.  The fact that there is a franchise was clearly a huge leap of faith since I don't think anyone really was clamoring for more games but for better or worse we got a new Lufia game in 1996.  The real shock is that not only Lufia II improves everything about the first game it joins the ranks of one of the great Super Nintendo RPG's.  Then came the handheld Lufia games and nobody cares about them so Lufia's greatness began and ended here.  So without further ado, let's dig into Lufia II.

So if you remember the beginning of the first Lufia game that the prologue was a bunch of do-gooders that had to had to save the world from the evil Sinistrals.  In this game, it's a simple case of How We Got There where you play as those do-gooders for most of the game.  The lead do-gooder, Maxim, is off monster-hunting when he bumps into a mysterious green-haired chick named Iris who tells him that he has to save the world from Sinistrals and send him off on a perilous journey of love, hate and whacking everything with a sword.

The main reason why this game is so highly regarded and loved is how innovative the game was.  You know those fancy random encounters in the dungeons, ...GONE!  Alright, that's not exactly innovative since Chrono Trigger and Earthbound also did away with random encounters, and there are still random encounters in the overworld, but in Lufia II how you moved determine how the enemy moved so you could use math and pattern recognition to always get the drop on them or to prevent from getting the drop on you, let's see Earthbound or Chrono Trigger do that!  There's also the fact that there are monsters in the world you will fight alongside you in battle...before Pokemon did it!  But you don't really capture the animals, you just find them and they join you for some reason but still!  Lastly, before Final Fantasy VII had their Limit Breaks Lufia II had their IP abilities.  They work the same as the gauge goes up as you get hit but all the attacks are dependent on the equipment you have equipped but it's all very awesome.

I am a bit disheartened to say that there are a couple flaws in this game that does bring it down. I attacked the writing in the first game and I'll have to attack it here.  Now before I begin I do want to say it is better than the first game's writing in that it's much more natural and it doesn't have that level of awesome incompetence.  However, the main problem is that it is a bit too rushed despite it's huge play-time and story. There's a year-long break which just suddenly happens as it follows Maxim and Selan, one of the other do-gooders, through such things as marriage and having a kid.  The problem is that there was never any proper build-up to their love, it was all about mutual respect and then suddenly they're in love.  I know it does lead to some emotional content and out-of-context it works wonderfully(especially the ending) but in the whole of the storyline it just doesn't feel right.  Oh, there's a town in the pre-year break that gets destroyed and a year later....it's still destroyed.  Apparently the game was too poor to employ carpenters.

This game is pretty damn good. It attempts to fix every flaw that the first Lufia game had.  It looks brighter and even more colorful.  The puzzles run the gamut from interesting to mind-numbingly hard, but it's always good.  The battles system gets away from the strategy from the first game but it's replaced with the innovative IP skills and the capsule monster ally.  You don't even have to play the first game(not that you really should either unless you like bland competency) to even understand it.  It's a great game that should not be missed.

8/10