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chuckro100 years ago, Maxim and his companions defeated the Sinestrals on Doom Island. After 100 years of peace, it appears that the Sinestrals are returning, and it's up to Maxim's descendent and his childhood friend Lufia to stop them.
As this was a relatively early SNES rpg, my childhood story about this game revolves around its release date: It was delayed several times, but I was only getting news from Nintendo Power at the time, so I didn't realize that, and kept asking for it as a present from my parents. "Lufia" became my mom's catch-all name for a game that didn't exist no matter how many stores you went to. (Long after I got rid of the rest of my SNES game boxes, I kept the boxes from this and Lufia 2 to prank her with.)
In a lot of ways, Lufia wasn't that great a game. It was burdened with a slow movement rate and high encounter rate, a little too much grinding, problematic targeting in battles (You can only target groups, not individual enemies, and there's no auto-redirect if everything in that group dies, a la the original NES Final Fantasy), hard-to-find event flags, too many fetch quests, and a general lack of puzzles. There's very little character customization and no party customization--you take what it gives you.
But the story and the translation were overall really good. Though the "descendent of a legendary hero" thing was already a trope, they did a particularly good job with it. The prologue sequence with Maxim and company was groundbreaking. Though they later beat their big twist into the ground by repeating it three times, it was a clever idea when they first used it here. The characters have clear personalities and relationships that are shown, not told. In a lot of ways, this game is similar to Final Fantasy 4: It raised the bar, in terms of characterization, story and translation, for what a jrpg was supposed to be.
They also get a lot of credit (again, similar to FF4) for making the dungeon designs interesting. There are very few straight-line dungeons; most of them are mazes with multiple paths to the goal and plenty of treasure to find. And while the only puzzles they had were switches and keys, they were at least tying to using them in interesting ways.
Opinions are mixed on this game, but generally agree that Lufia 2 was a really strong game that was nearly perfect except for a couple of really noticeable glitches (which there is now a patch for) and a couple of strange translation choices. But the series went downhill from there: Lufia: The Legend Returns for the GBC was a plot-retread with too many interchangeable characters and randomly-generated dungeons that got old quickly. Lufia: The Ruins of Lore for the GBA was released unfinished, riddled with bugs (including monsters not properly dropping money, several problematic plot triggers, and a character who had no special abilities) that prevented it from reaching its potential. Lufia: Curse of the Sinestrals for the DS was similar to Sword of Mana in a lot of ways, in that I had a lot of fun playing it and it had a bunch of clever ideas, but it was also deeply flawed in a lot of ways.
As with most Japanese games, there were a bunch of changes made to Lufia for either localization or censorship reasons. This fellow decided to "restore" the uncensored version, and I played his hack as my excuse to replay the game.
Most of the changes are text changes: He changed Artea to "Arty" to match Lufia 2, and changed "Daos" to "Dios" to be closer to the original Japanese. Revives became "Call Back" items...how literal. The various "cider" items are now various types of alcohol. The "gourd" items are now "drugs". The attribute-increasing "potions" are now "sources". Various equipment names were changed, particularly some of the misspellings, censored renamings, and at least one Old Cave treasure: "Brone" items from the original are "Bronze" here, and several other changes were made, including a mace-type weapon bizarrely being called a "Grass Robe". Anything that used "Gloom" is now labeled "Death".
Priests and bunnygirls were returned to their original sprite. I also think a number of the monster names are different (the "reat Bat" in particular is an indication that changes were made) but I don't remember the originals well enough to catalogue them.
But most notably, he changed the spell names to phonetic moonspeak nonsense, which I really can't understand why. The other changes arguably improved the game (or at least were equivalent). This one didn't. It just makes the game harder to play. (They're only changed for player character spells. When monsters use them, at least some of them still have the English names.)
Overall: I have a nostalgic fondness for this game, but it doesn't really hold up. And the "decensor" patch isn't worth your time at all. If you're interested in the series, play Lufia 2.
As this was a relatively early SNES rpg, my childhood story about this game revolves around its release date: It was delayed several times, but I was only getting news from Nintendo Power at the time, so I didn't realize that, and kept asking for it as a present from my parents. "Lufia" became my mom's catch-all name for a game that didn't exist no matter how many stores you went to. (Long after I got rid of the rest of my SNES game boxes, I kept the boxes from this and Lufia 2 to prank her with.)
In a lot of ways, Lufia wasn't that great a game. It was burdened with a slow movement rate and high encounter rate, a little too much grinding, problematic targeting in battles (You can only target groups, not individual enemies, and there's no auto-redirect if everything in that group dies, a la the original NES Final Fantasy), hard-to-find event flags, too many fetch quests, and a general lack of puzzles. There's very little character customization and no party customization--you take what it gives you.
But the story and the translation were overall really good. Though the "descendent of a legendary hero" thing was already a trope, they did a particularly good job with it. The prologue sequence with Maxim and company was groundbreaking. Though they later beat their big twist into the ground by repeating it three times, it was a clever idea when they first used it here. The characters have clear personalities and relationships that are shown, not told. In a lot of ways, this game is similar to Final Fantasy 4: It raised the bar, in terms of characterization, story and translation, for what a jrpg was supposed to be.
They also get a lot of credit (again, similar to FF4) for making the dungeon designs interesting. There are very few straight-line dungeons; most of them are mazes with multiple paths to the goal and plenty of treasure to find. And while the only puzzles they had were switches and keys, they were at least tying to using them in interesting ways.
Opinions are mixed on this game, but generally agree that Lufia 2 was a really strong game that was nearly perfect except for a couple of really noticeable glitches (which there is now a patch for) and a couple of strange translation choices. But the series went downhill from there: Lufia: The Legend Returns for the GBC was a plot-retread with too many interchangeable characters and randomly-generated dungeons that got old quickly. Lufia: The Ruins of Lore for the GBA was released unfinished, riddled with bugs (including monsters not properly dropping money, several problematic plot triggers, and a character who had no special abilities) that prevented it from reaching its potential. Lufia: Curse of the Sinestrals for the DS was similar to Sword of Mana in a lot of ways, in that I had a lot of fun playing it and it had a bunch of clever ideas, but it was also deeply flawed in a lot of ways.
As with most Japanese games, there were a bunch of changes made to Lufia for either localization or censorship reasons. This fellow decided to "restore" the uncensored version, and I played his hack as my excuse to replay the game.
Most of the changes are text changes: He changed Artea to "Arty" to match Lufia 2, and changed "Daos" to "Dios" to be closer to the original Japanese. Revives became "Call Back" items...how literal. The various "cider" items are now various types of alcohol. The "gourd" items are now "drugs". The attribute-increasing "potions" are now "sources". Various equipment names were changed, particularly some of the misspellings, censored renamings, and at least one Old Cave treasure: "Brone" items from the original are "Bronze" here, and several other changes were made, including a mace-type weapon bizarrely being called a "Grass Robe". Anything that used "Gloom" is now labeled "Death".
Priests and bunnygirls were returned to their original sprite. I also think a number of the monster names are different (the "reat Bat" in particular is an indication that changes were made) but I don't remember the originals well enough to catalogue them.
But most notably, he changed the spell names to phonetic moonspeak nonsense, which I really can't understand why. The other changes arguably improved the game (or at least were equivalent). This one didn't. It just makes the game harder to play. (They're only changed for player character spells. When monsters use them, at least some of them still have the English names.)
Overall: I have a nostalgic fondness for this game, but it doesn't really hold up. And the "decensor" patch isn't worth your time at all. If you're interested in the series, play Lufia 2.
