Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals and My Beef With Modern Gaming

Lufia 2 Rise of the Sinistrals was released in 1996 by Natsume to the Super Nintendo in America. Lufia 2 is actually the prequel to Lufia and the Fortress of Doom.

We get to play as the four heroes, Maxim, Guy, Arty, and Selan, and I gotta say, when I found out that I was gonna be able to play as Guy throughout an entire game, I practically wet my pants.

I really have no idea why I liked Guy so much since all he really does in Lufia and the Fortress of Doom is fight at the very beginning and then die of a heart attack about 90 years later. Still…I freaking love Guy, but back to the game.

In Lufia 2, we learn that Arek, the Absolute, has gathered the Sinistrals because the Dual Blade has begun to resonate. We are led to believe that every so often the Dual Blade resonates, thus advising the world itself that it is time for good and evil to battle. In other words, good and evil must be in perfect balance; if one side gets too strong, Dual Blade rings, and one force must challenge the other.

The Sinistrals, ‘cause they’re bad guys, just want to rule, but Arek knows better, so he sends Erim to go find something out….

The game starts with Maxim coming back from killing jellies. He sells ‘em to Tia in the town of Elcid.

They bicker, they joke, they eat, and then, someone learns that a lizard man has stolen a key, which is required to unlock a gate, so that people can travel freely from Elcid to the next town; monsters have never had the presence of mind required for forethought, so Maxim, being an all around tough guy, goes off to learn what’s what, but before all that, he has to learn how to use his tools.

This is all part of what makes Lufia 2 so great. It’s an old school RPG, but there are puzzle elements, too. As you progress, and gain levels, buy equipment, fight monsters, and gain friends, you also get more tools, which are required to solve puzzles.

Oddly, there’s no way to fail; even if you work yourself into a corner, you can use “Reset” — the spell, not the physical button on the SNES — and the puzzles reset!

This is my all time favorite SNES game.

The good is easy to see in this game.

Downright everything! Music? Awesome. Graphics? Stellar. Characters? Bitchin’. I like fighting through towers, and caves, and getting boats, and having them turned into submarines and flying machines.

I have to make a digression right here, though; as much as I like Lufia 2, and it is an improvement over Lufia 1, on the over world map, there are no clouds floating, which was a neat effect present in the first game.

(This doesn't detract from anything, but I wonder why they omitted the clouds.)

I love the spells and item features, and I love the fact that when you beat the game, you get a "new game plus" feature, which basically boils down to getting extra money and experience from enemies, but if you beat the game again, you get a sort of "plus-plus" feature; you can choose a team of four from any of the friends you gathered in the adventure, and you can then go into the deep dungeon, the dungeon with 99 levels, which is accessible in the regular game, too, but it’s always fun to run in there over and over again.

The bad is...

Nothing. Nothing about this game is bad.

Lufia 2 is funny, sad, severe; it’s a very emotional tale, but it’s also very fun to play, and it demands your attention. Now, once you’ve thoroughly beaten the game, to the point where you actually do battle with the Egg Dragon and defeat it without the healing trick, you may no longer need to really pay attention to what you’re doing, but if you’re a first time player, the music will suck you in, the stages will suck you in, the goofy monsters will suck you in, and the puzzles will suck you in, and by the time Lexis sends you off in the flying contraption, you’ll feel your heart thumping in your chest because it’s time for the forces of good to battle the forces of evil.

Unfortunately, we’ve arrived at the part of all this that cheeses my corn. You see, for a classic gamer such as myself, there is no real reason to continue on to the next console, and the next, and the next; all of the games on every console are now the same, and there’s no backwards compatibility, which is total bullshit. If you want any diversity, you have to go indie, but that means playing games on a computer.

Now, the PS Vita got around this, but....

With current technology, there’s no reason not to have a Lufia 3, and this is what it should be. Story line aside, what I want, what a lot of us want, is a true RPG. I mean, why does everything have to be a first/third person explorer? Why does everything have to be predicated upon the online experience?

Imagine an RPG with puzzles, levels, and numerous endings. Today, we have Dark Souls with, like, two or three endings. Ooo, big deal. Back in the golden age of the SNES, Chrono Trigger had like a dozen endings, so take a game like Lufia, throw in about a dozen points of diversion, thus giving it an extreme replay value, and then let us customize our characters as they level.

We did it in Dragon Quest 8; Yangus was able to specialize in axes or hammers. Imagine Guy specializing in spears and having access to special, spear skills or heavy armor skills. What if Selan specialized in fire magic? What if Maxim was able to duel wield?

On top of customizing characters and playing through multiple endings, you have the dungeon with 99 levels in Lufia 2. Why not a special dungeon with 9,999 levels? Yeah, that’s a lot of levels, but throw in some special room every 100 or so levels with special shops and save spots—again, Dragon Warrior Monsters on the GBC did this—and now you have a game worthy of the Switch, the One, the PS4!

Graphics are important, and so is the story line, and so is the online experience, and the overall entertainment factor, but the current, mainstream, gaming companies care only about money. They release the same game over and over—charging hundreds of dollars for the console and almost a hundred bucks for a game after DLC—then you spend more money for the next game, the same game. Think about it; what is the difference, really, between Skyrim, Fallout 4, Dark Souls 3? They look different.

The perks are different. In the end, though, it’s all the same, and this has really been going on since Morrowind; gaming has gotten away from diversity, especially in the RPG genre, which is why real RPGs are now called JRPGs, and off the top of my head, the most recent one I can think of is Tales of Vesperia, and even that’s a stretch due to the active battle design, which I loved.

I know, Dragon Quest is keepin' it real, but they're the only ones, really.

Now, let me back up and complain more about DLC. If companies are going to sell us an incomplete game, the game disk should be a flat $9.99, and then they can charge an additional $9.99 for each piece of DLC.

I still play Skyrim on occasion, a great game, but it should have been $9.99 for the disk, and it should have only provided the main plot, and then each guild story line could have been released for a few bucks, and so on, and so forth. This might also eliminate the bull shit glitches and the need for patches…fucking patches. Are you kidding?

Can you imagine if the SNES had released games that didn’t work?

“Derp, hey kids, we know you got Mommy and Daddy to blow 60 bucks on a game, but we didn’t build it right, so send her back, and in two weeks, we’ll mail you back the correct version of the game.”

And then, of course, two weeks later, you get a game that has new glitches. Patches for bull shit problems. I can’t believe it. With all the money these companies have, they can’t release a game that works?

Not to mention that rather than playing Skyrim, I could well be trying to make my way through the 9,999 level dungeon of the theoretical Lufia 3 as well as trying to get the elusive, hidden ending, and all the while customizing each of my characters in a new way, and waiting for the DLC, and completing special quests online…. Follow me?

Furthermore, lots of old games like Fire Emblem, also have hidden characters you can find. This would be a great addition to Lufia 3; make it a puzzle, RPG, strat game that’s also highly versatile—Suikoden did it—but no; we get the new Zelda, yet another third person, open world explorer. It’s a great game, but it’s the same as every other game out there, and it seems to me that technology has trumped creativity…. Too bad.

In the end, for what am I waiting? What kind of game? What’s the point of the open exploration and the freedom to do any quest at any time? It’s fine for some games, like the Elder Scrolls games; that’s what set them apart, but if every game is going to be some variation of that, I’ve already played that game. I don’t care that it looks a bit different, or that it features Link instead of unknown, hollow guy, or nameless, nuclear war survivor, or Dragonborn.

I’m begging you guys, gamers who read this article, get the word out; we want real games. We want new side scrollers. We want new platformers. We want new JRPGs. We want new overhead, space shooters, even if these simple games are only available through online stores; the Wii did it with Mega Man9 and 10; they weren’t terrible games at all!

The PS3 did it with Vandal Hearts 3, which unfortunately was awfully short for a strategy game, but it was something.

Mainstream companies, you guys suck! Your movies, games, books, and everything else just suck. That’s why people are going indie! You don’t get it. You’re not in touch with the current modality, our perception; we, the people, we have our own ideas of how the world should be, and if you can’t give us what we want, we’ll find a way to create our passions on our own.

Concluding points of contention; Lufia 2 is awesome. The SNES was a great console. Mainstream is total horseshit.

Thank you.