Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

Hey all, the most recent game I've played was Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals for the SNES, although I played it as a ROM on the excellent Super Nintendo Entertainment System simulator, ZSNES. This game is known probably as one of the best RPG games for the SNES.

It is good old classic turn-based RPG, and (surprise!) the hero of this game is your basic sword-wielding hero who can use some of the more basic magic (yet of course not the amount of magic that the typical wizard or healer can use). Several characters leave and join throughout the game, but by the end of the game, your party consists of four characters - the hero, the brute fighter, basically a healer, and an elfish (I believe it was an elf) wizard. There is also a 5th character to your party; what is known as a "capsule monster" that you can have fight for you. There are I believe 6 different capsule monsters you can find and switch through (different elements/abilities). Think of these guys as Pokemon - just a little extra power (and meat-wall) to add to your party. You can also feed them your equipment to make them evolve into a higher being.

The story was well written, and followed itself nicely all the way to the end. Like most RPG kind of games like this (like Mario RPG, which I played before this - also a very nice game), I tend to try and max out my characters levels even if it is not really needed to beat the game. So of course I reached 99 with all of my characters (including capsule monster) before the end of the game.

When you are not in battle, you must travel the world and get through dungeons and whatnot to do what needs to be done. The monsters in the dungeons will only move if you perform an action such as moving, swinging your sword, or using one of the many special tools you can find that will help you get through the dungeons (such as arrows, bombs, and hooks - think Zelda with the hookshot on that one). Touching a monster will innitiate battle. Kill them, and gain the rewarding experience and gold. Simplicity.

One thing that is pretty interesting is the number of puzzles that must be accomplished throughout the dungeons. Some are easy, some are harder. This adds a nice perspective to the game so it's not just a pure hack-and-slash RPG - you might actually need to dust off that noggin'.

There are many towns, where you can do the same good old kinds of things like saving, sleeping at an inn, buying goods/gear, or just talking to NPC and figuring out what you need to do. Later in the game, walking will not be the only way to get around while on the world map - you will also be able to ride one the waters on a ship, which later gains the ability to go underwater, and finally the ability for it to fly as well. So that would make it a subflyship or whatever...who knows.

In general, I do recommend this game to any RPG fan. I think I spent somewhere from 90-100 hours on the game, but of course I spent the time reaching max levels; one could probably get through the game find if their party are all in the 70's or so. This game sure gets a nice thumbs up from me.

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I guess that does it for a review; I better get to bed so I can wake up for anthro tomorrow morning. Night y'all.