#4

Lufia 2: The Rise of the Sinistrals (Originally released in 1996 on the SNES)

One day I will write about a newer game, I promise!

But for now I write about Lufia. Both Lufia games are amazing, but I enjoyed Lufia 2 more because when I was younger and played the first Lufia I always craved to know more about Maxim. Maxim was the hero of the opening scenes of the first game, but he dies trying to save the world. In Lufia 2 you are given Maxim early in his life before he became a world savior.

Sure, you knew his eventual outcome, but the journey to that point was an amazing one. Maxim a common monster hunter, begins to notice an increase in the aggressive behavior of the local monsters. He decides to try and uncover the meaning of the recent disturbances and finds a group of deity-like beings calling themselves "The Sinistrals" wreaking havoc around the globe. Along the way Maxim meets up with a wonderful group of people who also enjoy the peace their world once knew. Alone, they are unable to stop these Gods, but together they eventually combine the human will to overcome there oppressors.

Now, I've talked about puzzles before, but this was the daddy of all those puzzles in the other rpgs. There are so many puzzles that will either make your brain work double time, or frustrate you to all hell. That is one of the most memorable things this game leaves in me. This was also one of the first games that had a casino available in the game itself that let you spend how ever long you wanted away from the story to waste your hard earned coins in games of luck for valuable treasures. This game also had the Treasure Cave. A cave that had a seemingly bottomless amount of floors. Every time you left the cave you had to start at the top, and every time you left all experience gained was removed. You always started at the top at level 1 with no gear. You had to collect rare treasures in blue chests that you could take with you out of the cave and also back into the cave. It was always a fun detour form the main game.

Lufia 2 provides fans of the first game some insight into the characters you only were given glimpses of and the some. Being a game created much later then the first, Lufia 2 benefits from a better story, better graphics, better interface, better sound, and a better overall feel to the whole experience. They made a remake on the DS of this game, but it's not the same. Its fun, sure, but much of the story is chopped up and mixed in together and it makes the whole game feel much shorter then it was originally. In the end, I prefer the original.