Lufia, or Estpolis that is the original Japanese name, is one of the better rpgs. It's very long and has a good plotline. According to what I have read there was quite many problems before Taito released this game in Japan. Firstly, they planned to do a Nes game of Lufia, but when Sega released the Genesis (known as Mega Drive in Europe), Taito saw that many people liked this 16-bit console. They began to convert their work to Genesis, leaving the old Nes format. However, after a while Nintendo also released a new 16-bit console (Which can it be...?). Taito understood that the Snes was a much more powerful console and decided to once again convert Lufia to a new platform. Here everything ended up with one of the best Snes rpgs ever created.

Story

Lufia 1 takes place after Lufia 2, so if you haven't played any of these two games I recommend you to play the second first. Simply seeing the intro of Lufia 1 spoils much of Lufia 2 and because of that this part of the review also can spoil much. You have been warned. Now to the story: As I said Lufia 1 takes place after the sequel, so the first thing you will see is the legendary fight between the heroes (You are the hero and must write your own name here.) relatives and the evil Sinistrals. Actually, you are the one who is controlling the intro, so if you really try you can get "Game over" already here. However, the relatives win and bring peace back to the world. A hundred years later in the town of Alekia, where the hero and a girl named Lufia live, news come telling that monsters has appeared in a kingdom near this town. After various chats here and there Lufia and the hero go to find out what is happening in the attacked kingdom. When they have released the king and some others, Gades (one of four Sinistrals) appears from nowhere and battles the hero. He wins but in some way Lufia revives the hero and Gades himself disappears. Now the long journey begins to find and kill all the Sinistrals.

Music

The overall music of this game is very good, besides a few sidesteps. The overworld theme is good, and I just love the Fortress of Doom tune. However, as I said there are a few sidesteps. One of these is the battle tune, which isn't good at all. I get so damn tired of it when I hear it begin after every ten steps in a dungeon. Luckily this melody has changed in the sequel to this game.

Graphics

This game has quite good graphics for its time, but as always, Square lay one step before the developers. FF5, which was released in 1992, has better graphics, mostly thanks to the fighting backgrounds. Actually Lufia doesn't have any fighting backgrounds at all, when you hit an enemy the screen just gets darker and the command menus just pop up. The villages also look kinda boring since the houses don't have any roofs. This, however, can be rather nice because the screen doesn't have to change when you enter a house. You just walk straight in.

Battles, menus, & gameplay

The battles can easily turn out to be very boring in this game. I think the main reason is that you hit enemies way to often and that the battle music is worthless. When you've heard it again and again throughout the whole game you will understand what I'm trying to say. Look at the screenshots section if you want to see more about how the battles work. The menus in this game aren't the best, but they fill their function. You will probably get a lot of magic and items and everything will be displayed so you at least can understand what you have. The gameplay is as in other rpgs; just walk in four directions and try to talk with as many people as possible. One lowdown is that in all the dungeons your characters move very slowly. I can't understand why all the manufactures of rpgs can't do the characters move faster. Only Square has understood the importance of speed and put in some kind of thing to use for running in their games.