Some screenshots breaking up walls of text

Day 398

My blog has been lacking severely in the picture department lately--not because I haven't been taking screenshots, but because I've been too lazy or busy to upload them! Here are a few to tide you (me) over.

I've been playing Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals in 30-45 minute sessions during lunch breaks at work, but I think I do like it a lot. It is positively chock full of well-trod RPG tropes, but it does distinguish itself from the pack by featuring a wide variety of different puzzles, some of which are quite challenging. This kind of thing isn't normally my forte, but I do enjoy experiencing something a little different from the norm. It reminds me of Golden Sun in some ways, although Lufia II thankfully does not feature its pages and pages of tedious dialogue.

Of course I also finished up Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions after becoming fed up with how much time I was spending grinding out level after level and unlocking every single class and special item in the game. I should know from experience that his kind of thing will quickly burn me out on a game unless it features ridiculous amounts of content to explore. The War of the Lions does feature a decent amount of content, but much of it I've seen many times before. For that reason, I just ended up rushing it there at the end.

Next on the agenda is Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 2: Innocent Sin, a game of many subtitles. I think it's safe to say I prefer it to its immediate predecessor, but I'll be the first to admit that I miss being always accompanied by a Shoji Meguro soundtrack. The game's opening theme was a composition of his (unless I very much miss my guess) but the remainder of the soundtrack seems to be a remixed variant of the original PlayStation version. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but Shoji Meguro has a flare that really distinguishes him from other video game composers.

Like Shin Megami Tensei: Persona before it, this game allows you to assume control of a five person party of youngsters capable of communing with demons and unleashing their powers on unsuspecting enemy high school students--as well as a whole host of other demons. It is a formula I'm very familiar with by now, having played and finished three of the games in the series, but there's a vocal minority among SMT fans that hail Innocent Sin as the best Persona game. I liked Persona 3 and Persona 4 a lot, so it has some pretty high expectations to live up to. I'll say right away that I don't necessarily dig the demon negotiation system. It is largely unchanged from the first game in the series except for the fact that this game features new characters and therefore new negotiation options.

Very true.

Lufia II: On battles, dungeons, puzzles, and encounters

   Day 379

Famous last words

It seems a little premature to start seriously writing about Lufia II considering the fact that I've only put in about two hours so far. I was only able to play for about 45 minutes today due to my second Elizabethtown trip and now that I'm home I'll probably make a pretty serious effort to finish Gungnir. However, I've played quite a bit of Lufia II before and even though I'm not far in this current playthrough, I do have my fair share of opinions about the game.

Lufia II's combat system is fairly vanilla and not at all atypical for JRPGs of the era. You'll assemble a party of four and bash enemies to dust in turn-based fashion much as you would in any Dragon Quest game. The developer, 

Neverland made a very wise decision to ditch several worrisome elements from Lufia & the Fortress of Doom such as the inability to target specific units and the lack of auto-targeting in the event of an enemy's death before an attack connects. Magic spells are now purchased from shops instead of learned at specific levels. I am more or less indifferent to this change but I'm completely okay with it because it seems that different characters are capable of using different spells.

Another new feature in Lufia II's combat system is the Ikari Technique, a special ability tied to pieces of equipment. Each character has an IP gauge that fills as they take damage in combat. Portions of this bar can be used for these techniques, which run the gamut from damage to utility. These techniques are useful for conserving resources because they do not use any MP and are tied to a gauge that can easily be refilled. Tia gains access very early on to an Ikari Technique that heals a reasonable amount of HP as well.

In the end though, Lufia II's battle system is not its primary selling point. There is much more of an emphasis on puzzles this time around, which would normally frustrate me--but in this case they are generally designed well enough that I don't mind them at all and in many occasions I enjoy them quite a bit. I think a lot of my enjoyment comes from not having to deal with random encounters while solving these puzzles. It takes the pressure off and allows me to concentrate on the task at hand instead of losing track of what I'm doing because I'm repeatedly being mobbed by wild dogs.

I am endlessly appreciative of classic JRPGs that do not feature random encounters. It is such a rare trait that I feel I must highlight it. To be fair, Lufia II does feature random encounters on the overworld--a place where such a thing is not at all intrusive since you're just traveling from Point A to Point B. In dungeons, enemies can be entirely avoided if you so choose. A fired arrow will stun an approaching enemy--and they only move when you do, so it's not difficult to make this happen. With as many puzzles as Lufia II features, a traditional random encounter system would have led to an immensely frustrating game for a player like myself and I'm glad the developers chose to remove them.

Rise of the Sinistrals

Day 375

Having put Fire Emblem behind me, I had to settle on a new game to play at work. It didn't take me long to choose Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, a classic SNES RPG that for some reason I have never completed. I have started it on numerous occasions but despite liking it and finding it interesting, I've never gotten more than probably a quarter of the way through the game. This is especially puzzling when one considers that I have completed the game's predecessor, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom--a game that is, by all accounts, a far inferior title.Although I haven't played enough of Lufia II to make a fair judgment, I can only assume this commonly held belief is true.

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom is not great and had an uncommon pitfall for games of that era. It drug on for far too long until the gameplay devolved into getting into random encounters while visiting a series of identical towns with swapped color palettes. It was a serviceable if dated JRPG until the point that it became apparent the game was winding down. I wouldn't consider 30 hours very long for an RPG, but when it's as needlessly stretched as Lufia was, I'd much rather it be concluded in half that amount of time. Still, I was determined to finish it--and when I did, my immediate thought was "Yeah! Now I can play Lufia II!"

But I didn't. At that point, I was all Lufia'd out and I just wanted to play something different. If I recall correctly, I ended up playing Suikoden and enjoyed it a lot. This was back when I started writing about games a lot. There are no words about Lufia on this blog but I wrote a considerable amount about it--and in fact, I kept a document chronicling my progress as I went. This is something I don't really do anymore because I update this blog every single day. I wonder though, if it's something I should consider doing once again? I very rarely do comprehensive entries once I've finished a game. I'll generally write about my impressions as I go and finally offer up some closing thoughts once I finish--over the course of several entries.

My point is that Lufia II seems like a really solid RPG and I should have finished it a long time ago. I should leave my criticisms of the first game behind me and approach this one with a fresh outlook. I'm sure it'll take me some time to get through if I'm mostly playing it at work, but at the very least it should be less trouble than Fire Emblem was. I'm playing it on my Android phone and the touch screen controls are surprisingly intuitive. New Mystery was occasionally a little awkward to control but if this works out, I might try to follow up Lufia II with Dragon Quest III, the only other SNES game left in my backlog.