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.