Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

aka: Estelle, Estopolis Denki I
Moby ID: 9980
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Description official descriptions

The hero Maxim and his group defeat the Sinistrals on Mt. Doom (as portrayed in Lufia II), and all is peaceful. With such a great peace, the defense forces of the world become lax. One hundred years later attacks begin taking place, supposedly by the Sinistrals. It's up to the descendant of the hero, and his childhood friend Lufia, to form a new band of champions to save the world. Gameplay is fairly standard for RPGs, with turn-based battling by way of a menu of icons, and random battles. There's also a higher-than-normal emphasis on puzzles within dungeons.

Spellings

  • エストポリス伝記 - Japanese Spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (SNES version)

23 People (21 developers, 2 thanks)

Scenario
Main Program
Battle Program
World BG Work
  • Burio
  • Bario
City BG Work
Character Design
Monster Design
Music
Management
Map Work
Taito Staff
Special Thanks
Producer

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 13 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 22 ratings with 3 reviews)

A game many underrated

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.

SNES · by Scott G (765) · 2005

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...

SNES · by Ymir (18) · 2021

nice, nice game

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.

SNES · by frances mach (7) · 2004

Trivia

Cancelled Genesis port

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom was to be ported to the Sega Genesis, this would have marked the first time that the same RPG appeared on rival consoles. However, for unknown reasons, Taito cancelled the port.

Development

This is actually the sequel to an unreleased Famicom game called Esteel.

Ending

The battles that take place during the game's opening story are the focus of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals Information also contributed by MasterMegid and Marguerite Richardson

Analytics

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Related Games

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
Released 1995 on SNES
Lufia: The Legend Returns
Released 2001 on Game Boy Color, 2014 on Nintendo 3DS
Lufia: The Ruins of Lore
Released 2002 on Game Boy Advance, 2016 on Wii U
Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals
Released 2010 on Nintendo DS
The Granstream Saga
Released 1997 on PlayStation
Ishar: Legend of the Fortress
Released 1992 on DOS, Amiga, Atari ST
Fortress
Released 1997 on Windows
Fortress
Released 1994 on Amiga
Fortress
Released 1979 on Arcade

Related Sites +

  • Lufia World
    Lots of information about the entire Lufia series can be found here.
  • OC ReMix Game Profile
    Fan remixes of music from Lufia & the Fortress of Doom.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 9980
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Joshua J. Slone.

Additional contributors: Apogee IV, Shoddyan, chirinea, Dae, Игги Друге, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson.

Game added August 14, 2003. Last modified December 16, 2023.