Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

The Good
I guess a simple story can have its advantages, but also stereotypes... music may have been repetitive in some parts, but it did have other tunes (intro e.g.) that did form something catchy and interesting.

The Bad
I suppose one doesn't expect much from a 1993 game, but that is still just two years before Chrono Trigger, which one can't say the same of. The problem is monotony, and not just with its plain story ("go to these three towers" etc. with three being too much too), but also villagers that inhabit the world. There are many villages, in fact, but... not many villagers in many of them, and the ones that are there say simplistic stuff, but a more obvious thing is... they all have templates. There are, about, two of each kind of people, with regards to age too, and a soldier. Those are spread everywhere, as if somehow they ran out of variety... now, I'm not sure it's a 1993 thing, or perhaps not enough memory for the hardware of the time, but it just doesn't look as appealing, especially when most villages look identically too (so much so one has problems distinguishing them), and dungeons too obviously (only difference being the walls' hues).

The Bottom Line
All the sameness wouldn't be so much of an issue if they invested a bit in the story, but... they didn't, much. CT is so much more imaginative in comparison... this, on the other hand, seems to be a bit of a Tales Of game, except it still doesn't have that fantasy element that defined even Phantasia...

The Good
This game is a bit longer than an average RPG, it takes about 20 hours to beat, for a game released in 1993, thats pretty decent.

The plot and scenario writing is pretty good.

The Bad
The programming, sometimes an enemy can attack you, then you decide what youre going to do next and it attacks again. Your character will shoot at an already dead target, ok for an NES game, but for an SNES game, thats a little too primitive.

The music tracks are a bit too repetitive and too short for an RPG, some tracks are played throughout the entire game, others you only hear once. Some may argue that its Yasunori Shiono's first work on an SNES game, but thats no excuse considering his experience on Japanese PCs prior to this game.

The Bottom Line
Once you get over the flaws that are in this game, its actually not that bad.

The Good
Everything. Need I say more?

The Bad
The music was screwing my ears.

The Bottom Line
It's REALLY cool and fun, and good games aren't always the ones with good art and graphics and musics and.. yeah. The characters are VERY VERY VERY cool and fighting is HARD for once, and that REALLY matters to me.