Have you played...? Lufia & The Fortress of Doom
Lufia & The Fortress of Doom is an old school SNES JRPG. It’s grindy, repetitive, and annoying sometimes, but it’s charming in its simplicity. It’s a 16 bit RPG with an 8 bit soul.
I played Lufia for the first time maybe around 25 years ago, when I discovered I could use emulators to run console games on my PC. I knew I liked RPGs (I had already played Phantasy Star and Pokémon by then), and somehow I came across Lufia.
I remember that for the longest time the emulator I used (I think it was ZSNES) froze right after the first boss battle of the game, still in the prologue. Some time later, probably after a new version of ZSNES came out, I was able to continue past that point. I then played it for a good while and reached around 2/3rds of the game I think. Then I simply stopped. Maybe the grindiness got to me at the time. Fast-forward 25 years later, and I still had some fond memories of that game. I decided it would be the first one I’d play on my newly acquired Anbernic RG40XXV.
The plot of Lufia is really simple: one day, a group of 4 evil beings called “Sinistrals” appear and start terrorizing the land. The people gather 4 of their strongest heroes to combat them, and the heroes win. However, the main story of the game actually starts 100 years after that event, when people grew complacent due to the long period of peace. One nice and original touch for its time is that we play the prologue with the 4 heroes, so we begin with a fully powered and equipped party right at the start. After that, a hundred years pass, the main game begins and we take control of a young knight, descendant of the hero of a century ago, and his journey to defeat the Sinistrals who are returning.
At its core, Lufia is an old school JRPG. You go from city to city, talk with people to advance the story - which is basically a looong string of fetch quests -, buy equipment, find new party members to join you and kill thousands and thousands of enemies to get stronger. It was just as grindy as I remembered from the past, and the incredibly frequent random encounters can make the experience annoying sometimes, especially when exploring dungeons. All in all, it’s a simple but enjoyable RPG that leans on the easier side. I must have died only once or twice in my whole playthrough.
The characters are as simple as the story, but they show some personality in the cutscenes peppered around the game. The secondary protagonist and titular character, Lufia, is the hero’s childhood friend and the one who shows the most personality. She’s also key to the plot, especially near the end. The ending is simple, but I liked how things were resolved.
The soundtrack is nice in general, not extraordinary. Town themes are chirpy and dungeon music is spooky and appropriate. The battle theme might get etched into your brain due to how frequently you’ll hear it 😂. However, I have to highlight that the opening and the Fortress of Doom themes are absolute bangers. They’re the tunes that stuck fondly with me for 25 years, and I still get goosebumps when I hear them even now.
I’m glad I played this game again and finished it, it brought closure to one of my fond childhood memories. I want to finish more games that I started and never finished, and the Anbernic console is perfect for playing those.
With patience, I was able to finish Lufia in around 25 hours. I liked it, but would only recommend it for lovers of old school RPGs. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is the sequel (which is actually a prequel plot-wise) and is a more modern and refined game, which I also need to play and finish. 🙂
Details
- Name: Lufia & The Fortress of Doom
- Genre: JRPG
- Developer: Neverland ⤴, published by Taito
- Year: 1993
- Console: Super Famicom/Super Nintendo