🕹️ New release: Lunar Lander Beyond

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

aka: Estelle, Estopolis Denki I
Moby ID: 9980

SNES version

Simplistic...

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...

by Ymir (18) on October 1, 2021

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