Turn based fun that doesn't do anything new, but does the basics real well.
Lufia & The Fortress of Doom is the first Lufia game created in 1993. The game is a fairly basic Role Playing Game in many respects but is still quite enjoyable. At the beginning, you control Maxim and his three allies who have set out to destroy the four Sinistrals who are set to destroy the world. The fights are fairly easy and allows the player to get used to the battle system. The four evil Sinistrals are defeated but the dungeon begins to self-destruct and who survives, is ambiguous.
99 years later, the descendant of Maxim is now a knight while he spends a lot of time with his childhood friend Lufia. He hears of a great evil in a neighbouring land and sets to find out what the source is. Along the way, Lufia will join the party, along with Guy, and finally a half-elf named Jerin.
You main character, you will get to name and is your main go-to guy. He is very strong and can use most of the weapons and armor available in the game, while still having some magical ability. Your second part member, Lufia, is basically a strict magic user. Guy is even stronger than the hero but can not use any magic and finally Jerin, a Half-elf who uses bows but is more proficient in magic use than anything else.
The turn based battles in the game are very similar to other RPGs. Your party is at the bottom of the screen and enemies are at the top. There are very few animations as you command your group to slay the monsters. You attack, and a yellow line goes through the enemy and at least the sprite at the bottom of the screen moves too. Spells are much more engrossing as you can see pillars of flame strike your enemies and cones of water drown them until they disappear into the sunset. Enemies though, seem to have the upper hand and when they strike you with spells, the screen flashes vibrant colours to keep you on your toes. All of the battles animations and status symbols are easy to keep a track of like when you're poisoned or your character is dead so the game does a good job with the basics.
The game does have it's own unique sense of itself in the battles I do have to admit. For starters, you can select which enemies to hit, but only of that group. For example, if you have rats and mummies to choose from, you can only select the group, not the individual monster. It's very strange that the game allows you choose like this but not fully choose so there is less tactics than in other games, but in the end disappointing. Also, the game punishes you if you choose a target that's already dead. Say, you focus all your attacks on a single rat and there's 2 mummies to the left. If the rat dies in one hit, in most RPGs, your characters would just transfer their attacks to the mummies. Not in this game. Instead, they attack thin air and it goes "miss!" Now this does make the game harder but unnecessarily so and was definitely something they could have omitted. One more notable thing about the combat in the game is the speed. Though it doesn't have a real active time gage system like Final Fantasy Six or Chrono Trigger, it does reward you if you wear lighter armors allowing your characters to go before enemies but the lack of defense is a major drawback and the game heavily favours you to wear the biggest, bulkiest armor even with this feature.
Sounds in the game have the basic tones of the overworld and the dungeons and though nothing is especially memorable, the music does fit the mood effectively. During battle, the sounds of the spells attacking like water spells do sound like you are getting drenched and healing effects do sound like they should. Striking your sword through an enemy, it's the same sword sound again and again.
One aspect of the game I really enjoyed, was the difficulty level. Though the game was a straight forward RPG with very few side quests and secrets, the longevity of the game was prolonged because of the difficulty. Most of the game, it was hard to advance simply because the monsters were tougher in the next zone, considerably. I'm the kind of guy that likes grinding monsters for loot and experience but if you hate RPGs that make you grind, I really don't recommend this game because you'll be doing a lot of that just to make it bearable in future areas.
Overall, the game is a not an excellent RPG but it is above average. With colourful characters and a difficulty forcing you to crave more to get more out of it, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom is definitely worth playing if you're into an older generation of Role Playing Games. Just don't expect to be dazzled and you'll be entertained to the end.