Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals
Dec. 26th, 2010 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroTo this day, my mother still bristles at the word “Lufia”. When the first game in the series, Lufia and the Fortress of Doom was announced, I asked for it for my birthday. But this was back in the SNES era, when accurate release dates were even harder to come up with than today, and rpgs in particular suffered. I think Lufia finally was out in time for my next birthday.
The original was a fairly standard jrpg with a decent plot and some glaring flaws. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals fixed most of them, and added a lot of puzzle elements which made it one of the finest rpgs of the SNES era. (Well, besides the problematic playtesting that didn't reveal a couple of serious graphical glitches in the late-game, but they weren't game-breaking, just really noticeable.) This game is an action-rpg remake of Lufia II.
The battle system is a real-time, 3D Zelda-esque system. You can switch freely between the six characters, each of whom has a different weapon, special attack, and set of combos. The inventory and equipment systems are standard jrpg, with the usual equipable weapons and armor, usable items, and an energy grid that you can assign “energy gems” to and get special abilities. There are only about a dozen types of enemies, which come in various palette-swapped forms, and can be “overkilled” for extra experience and gold. (These fly out as little gold coins and red cards, so in practice, it appears that dead enemies turn into piñatas.)
The characters' special abilities are often used to solve puzzles, and I'm very happy with that. There are only a few puzzles where the solution is annoying timing or pixel-perfect aim; most of them are fairly clever. They hit all of the major jrpg puzzle types, including switches, bombing walls, block-pushing, step-on-every-space, lasers-and-mirrors, and sliding platforms.
In the kindest move I've seen from a game...possibly ever...the game is very nice about letting you retry. If you die, you can restart from your last save, or retry from the last checkpoint (usually only a few minutes back) or retry with “level boost”. The level boost means each character gains five levels, then you try again from the checkpoint. No penalty, no muss or fuss, and you keep the boost going forward. It's as if you left, level-grinded for a while, and came back, except you don't have to do that and the game doesn't need an excuse to let you do so. It's decidedly pleasant.
The only time you need it are for boss battles, though, and probably only a specific boss battle at that. Except for the poison status ailment (which is particularly annoying, because it'll quickly drop you to 1 HP if you don't have an antidote handy), most normal enemies don't pose much threat. Most of the real bosses (as opposed to the small groups of normal enemies that end some dungeons) are giant puzzle bosses, where you need to destroy one section to expose a weak point or knock back an attack. The first Sinestral, who you fight twice in one form and then three times in another form, is by far the hardest and most annoying of these.
The plot is a “distillation” of the original, which removes most of the sidequests and minor events and just keeps the most noteworthy and memorable events. Lexis and his awesome ship are with the party from the start. Guy's sister is gone, and his girlfriend's role is increased dramatically. The characters of Tia, Dekar and Iris are fleshed out significantly (they all stay with the party for virtually the entire game, now), and many locations (along with their rulers) are concentrated into three major kingdoms.
My biggest complaint would be that the game is rather short, even with the re-use of many locations (you visit each dungeon at least twice) and a few time-filling events (in several cases, you need to visit every town to watch a scene in each location). And I think it's a good sign when I finish a game and wish there was more of it.
The series has been weak since the second game. Lufia: The Legend Returns for the Game Boy Color had a few too many gimmicks, a few too many supporting characters, and a few too few original plot ideas. (Every dungeon had randomly-generate floors, which made it a bit repetitive.) Fun to play, but ultimately forgettable. Lufia: The Ruins of Lore was a little depressing in the big dreams they had and the awesome game it could have been, but it was obviously rushed out the door in beta form. (The monsters only random dropped gold, the monster-capturing system was totally broken, one character didn't get his special abilities implemented, and you really needed to abuse several good bad bugs to make the game playable at times.) This game is a good return to form and hopefully signals a revival for the franchise.
The original was a fairly standard jrpg with a decent plot and some glaring flaws. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals fixed most of them, and added a lot of puzzle elements which made it one of the finest rpgs of the SNES era. (Well, besides the problematic playtesting that didn't reveal a couple of serious graphical glitches in the late-game, but they weren't game-breaking, just really noticeable.) This game is an action-rpg remake of Lufia II.
The battle system is a real-time, 3D Zelda-esque system. You can switch freely between the six characters, each of whom has a different weapon, special attack, and set of combos. The inventory and equipment systems are standard jrpg, with the usual equipable weapons and armor, usable items, and an energy grid that you can assign “energy gems” to and get special abilities. There are only about a dozen types of enemies, which come in various palette-swapped forms, and can be “overkilled” for extra experience and gold. (These fly out as little gold coins and red cards, so in practice, it appears that dead enemies turn into piñatas.)
The characters' special abilities are often used to solve puzzles, and I'm very happy with that. There are only a few puzzles where the solution is annoying timing or pixel-perfect aim; most of them are fairly clever. They hit all of the major jrpg puzzle types, including switches, bombing walls, block-pushing, step-on-every-space, lasers-and-mirrors, and sliding platforms.
In the kindest move I've seen from a game...possibly ever...the game is very nice about letting you retry. If you die, you can restart from your last save, or retry from the last checkpoint (usually only a few minutes back) or retry with “level boost”. The level boost means each character gains five levels, then you try again from the checkpoint. No penalty, no muss or fuss, and you keep the boost going forward. It's as if you left, level-grinded for a while, and came back, except you don't have to do that and the game doesn't need an excuse to let you do so. It's decidedly pleasant.
The only time you need it are for boss battles, though, and probably only a specific boss battle at that. Except for the poison status ailment (which is particularly annoying, because it'll quickly drop you to 1 HP if you don't have an antidote handy), most normal enemies don't pose much threat. Most of the real bosses (as opposed to the small groups of normal enemies that end some dungeons) are giant puzzle bosses, where you need to destroy one section to expose a weak point or knock back an attack. The first Sinestral, who you fight twice in one form and then three times in another form, is by far the hardest and most annoying of these.
The plot is a “distillation” of the original, which removes most of the sidequests and minor events and just keeps the most noteworthy and memorable events. Lexis and his awesome ship are with the party from the start. Guy's sister is gone, and his girlfriend's role is increased dramatically. The characters of Tia, Dekar and Iris are fleshed out significantly (they all stay with the party for virtually the entire game, now), and many locations (along with their rulers) are concentrated into three major kingdoms.
My biggest complaint would be that the game is rather short, even with the re-use of many locations (you visit each dungeon at least twice) and a few time-filling events (in several cases, you need to visit every town to watch a scene in each location). And I think it's a good sign when I finish a game and wish there was more of it.
The series has been weak since the second game. Lufia: The Legend Returns for the Game Boy Color had a few too many gimmicks, a few too many supporting characters, and a few too few original plot ideas. (Every dungeon had randomly-generate floors, which made it a bit repetitive.) Fun to play, but ultimately forgettable. Lufia: The Ruins of Lore was a little depressing in the big dreams they had and the awesome game it could have been, but it was obviously rushed out the door in beta form. (The monsters only random dropped gold, the monster-capturing system was totally broken, one character didn't get his special abilities implemented, and you really needed to abuse several good bad bugs to make the game playable at times.) This game is a good return to form and hopefully signals a revival for the franchise.
