What is it about?
Prequel to Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, this time we follow the story of Maxim, a monster hunter, who one day have to leave his village and follow the ball of light that is going around causing havoc. During his journey, he encounter a mysterious girl named Iris who foretold his destiny to face the Sinistrals whom are plotting to destroy the world.


Completion Hours: Around 20 to 30 hours


Storyline: 6/10
The story in Lufia 2 is pretty straight forward. Go to the next area, visit the next town and go to the only dungeon in that area. Rinse and repeat. It certainly makes looking for the next point of destination easy.

Despite being a linear game, there are a few twist or turn of events in Lufia 2 that will keep you entertain all the while. It certainly is a breath of fresh air playing Lufia 2. What’s charming about Lufia 2 is that for each story event that you encounter, almost everyone in the village will say a different line of dialogue, and don’t forget that it’s a retro RPG! It certainly makes your fellow NPC full of life and if you love spending time talking NPC, you’ll realized that they all have interesting things to say after each event.

Unfortunately, the story is mostly light-hearted, so you’re mostly spending your journey in a happy-go-lucky adventure that you don’t really feel the intensity of world doom in the game.




Gameplay: 8/10
What makes this game different from the other RPGs is that there are puzzles incorporate for all dungeons, and almost all the rooms have them! If you like to puzzle good, then this game will be fun for you to try to solve those puzzles. If you don’t like puzzles, you may have to stay away from this game because the puzzles are not exactly easy to solve at first sight. Personally for me, I have a blast trying to solve the puzzles in every dungeon that I’ve visited.

Battle system is quite innovative for its time too. You will need to buy spells from shops to learn them, and depending on the weapons and armors that you equip, they will grant you a unique skills that use up your ‘Limit Break’ bar known as Ikura Point, aka IP for short. Although it’s fun to customize your characters so that you will have certain skills that you can bring to battle, but it is also a crutch for you as you may hesitate to upgrade your weapons and armors if they offer skills that you don’t like.

Having your standard 4-man party, you also have an accompanying monster known as ‘Capsule Monster’ whom will join you in battle. It is a great idea to have an additional monster party member, however you cannot control it’s actions and it will usually do little damage and die off easily. Eventhough you can feed and grow them, but they are so weak that it’s best to think of them as a meat shield to take your damage before it disappears from the boss battle after a few turns. Great concept, but unfortunately they are not as useful as you think they are.

You have random encounters in the world map, like most retro RPGs are, but in the dungeons there are no random encounters! There are monster sprites walking in the dungeon that the battle will only start if you bump into them. It makes it great if you wish to avoid battles in the dungeon. Definitely quite innovative for a RPG that’s made in 1995.

Lastly, the game is easy for the most part of the game. You won’t really have any troubles facing any of the random encounters or the boss. However it does get slighting annoying towards the end of the game because the monsters HP are so much that it takes a while to beat them and they also have the tendency to cast a 1-hit KO spell on your party members, dragging the battle longer.




Sound/Music: 7/10
Music for the most part is entertaining, but not memorable. Having a light-hearted story, the music is pleasing and relaxing for most of the time. The battle theme is a delight to hear and won’t be an annoyance to your ears. However, there aren’t that many ‘epic’ music to pump yourself up so you might feel bored listening to the music after some time since the music is too soft-hearted and relaxing.



Graphics: 8/10
Graphics are pretty amazing for its time. Everything is so well detailed. Just look at the image above here, the trees are nicely detailed! Everything in Lufia 2 is bright and colourful, giving you a smile with each location you’ve visited. Sadly there aren’t that many animations done for the characters’ actions, making them look like a talking doll that moves around. Still, the spells animations are done amazingly, especially for high-level spells which they took the effort to look like you’re summoning despite it being just a normal fire/water/etc spell.




Final Score: 7/10
This game is so much fun that you won’t be able to put down the game for the first few hours. Solving the challenging puzzles in the dungeon is exciting and enjoyable and you will enjoy every moment battling every monsters. Despite being a 25 hours game, it feels like you’ve spend a long time in this game! There have been many times that I thought the game is ending soon, only to realise that there are still so many things going on! The world map is so huge that if you’re not careful, you’re going to get lost easily. Thank god there’s a warp spell that could easily transport you to your previous visited villages to save up your back-tracking time and the annoyance of finding your location in a giant world map. Sadly I feel a little burn out towards the end of the game due to the unnecessary high-HP random encounters that simply drags out the battle longer and your useless Capsule Monster aren’t really doing much.


Will I replay the game for a second time?
Yes! Going through the dungeons have never been so much fun for me. Give me a mixture of puzzles and RPG and the game would usually turn out to be fun and memorable for me. Pretty much a few years later I’ll probably just tell myself how I miss Lufia 2 so much and going to replay it for a second time going through those puzzles again.