I’ve been super busy lately, but things are cooling down so I decided to finally pop on Lufia & the Fortress of Doom. My understanding is that this game tends to get massively overshadowed by its masterpiece sequel (Hm… Sounds familiar), so I’m relieved to report that this game is already pretty amazing on its own!! (… Sounds familiar!!!) I’m kind of astounded at the quality of the writing considering it’s - at this point - a standalone SNES RPG from 1993. I think of circumstantially similar RPGs on that system from that time and I think of Secret of the Stars, Paladin’s Quest, games like this… Not ones especially beloved for their writing. I’m only about five hours into Lufia and have already felt a pretty wide range of completely authentic and honest emotions. Of course there’s that master class of a cold open, but the character dialogue once the game starts properly is so consistently charismatic and human. Incidental dialogue, story cutscenes, all of it is remarkably polished. There’s one single line of dialogue from a completely innocuous NPC that was more effectively anxiety-inducing than my entire playthrough of Clock Tower - any fans of this first Lufia, I wonder if you know which line I’m talking about, lol.
Also - who was going to tell me that Wild Arms has secretly been a Lufia fangame this whole time?? It’s kinda eerie how similar these games are presentationally, and there’s even been some suspiciously similar plot beats so far. I wonder to what degree that will continue. I’ve loudly shared my love for Wild Arms around the forum in the past, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I started loving Lufia. And again, this is all for the quieter, back-of-the-class original game; if Rise of the Sinistrals really is the masterpiece everyone says it is, it very well may become a new all-time favorite. Any improvements at all on this first game would have me floored. In the meantime, I’ll continue enjoying this one before it becomes hard to look back.