Hundreds and hundreds of randomly generated floors! Lufia: The Legend Returns

Ah, Lufia: The Legend Returns, you poor thing. You never had a chance, did you? Originally announced as a Playstation game titled Lufia: Ruins Chasers in 1998, and with a story that sound suspiciously like Wild Arms Second Ignition, it wasn't long before your publisher went bankrupt and you dropped off the map.

A year later, Natsume announced that you had been moved to the Gameboy Color, but that another Lufia game was in development for the Playstation 2. Then you disappeared for another year, and didn't resurface until September of 2000, where Natsume decided to spoil the entire game in their prerelease information. Then finally, finally, you were released in September of 2001... just three months after Nintendo's shiny new handheld system launched, and two months before Golden Sun, a much more Lufia 2-esque experience, was released for it.

And the fans who loved Lufia 2? They ate you alive. They called you an abomination, a sin against their most cherished game, NOTMYLUFIA, and so forth. But you know what? You're not a bad game. You're rough around the edges, but you're actually pretty dang impressive for a GBC game. In fact, I think you'd have been much better received if you hadn't been the sequel to an amazing looking SNES game.

And that is the goal of this Let's Play: To show that Lufia: The Legend Returns isn't such a bad game. It does have a lot of problems, and rest assured we'll be taking a good look at those. We'll also be looking at the good parts.

Yes, there are good parts. For example, the opening sequence is really, really badass.

It loosely recaps the plots of the first two games with stylized versions of their box art and some crazy good music. Although it does perpetuates the lie that Lufia 2's storyline involved the Sinistrals ruling the world or really doing anything interesting at all. If you want the real story, you can check out Zithuan and Netbrian's Lufia 2 LP. Oh wait.



Anyway, let's get this show on the road. We've got a lot of excruciatingly dull dungeon crawling to get to. At the start of a new game, the player is asked to name the main character. His default name is Wain, and we have five (5) spaces for letters. So uh, please name this fellow:


(Original concept art)


(Japanese release art)


(North America release art)

For whatever reason, Lufia: The Legend Returns is one of those few Japanese games where the American artwork is considerably better than the Japanese.

Alright, now get to naming him. Remember, you've got five letters to play with.

Percy

NotMaxim

Hmm... that won't fit?

-Maxm

Mixam is a perfectly terrible name. That's what I'd go with, but I'm kind of terrible too.

Also, this game, it's kind of alright.

Nixam?

Nixon! Is he a crook? He doesn't looks like one.

Name him Joel.

No real reason.

Minim.

I change my vote to this.

Minim sounds good to me.

I've always meant to play this, but never got around to it. This will be interesting to watch.

Gets my vote.

God dammit, Yasunori Shiono's music is like an Orange Julius in music form. Or something. Where is he now?!

Bless you, sir. BLESS YOU!

Also, Minum sounds good to me.

Throwing my vote towards naming him Bruce.

Minim is good.

Also I kinda wish someone else would try that whole crazy 3x3 party angle again... ideally with better balancing. It's a cool concept.

By the way, are you going to get all of that super broken ultimate equipment?

And are you going to cheese a victory against Gades at the beginning of the game?

Minim. Also, I was JUST TALKING about how awesome this game is!

How about name him Wang, like how I think his default name's pronounced?

Wait, no, no, naming him after genital slang wouldn't be cool. Girly Japanese art man has such pretty red locks of hair, though. Name him Rouge. =D

Name him Wayne.

Yes, no. The battles against Gades are really tedious and you don't have a lot of options besides LOL GRIND BOMBS and that's not something I really want to do.

This.

EDIT: Hurrrrr i cant read thread titles

As in forum tradition, I hereby dub thee Pants.
Alternative: Shirt
Edit: Thats this one methinks- GBA one doesn't random generate that I know of.

Aye, this is the one with the randomized dungeon. Well... to an extent, since the levels aren't particularly randomized. The layouts of each floor of each dungeon tend to be similar.

The GBA one had the Ancient Cave as a randomized dungeon, though. It was among that games few redeeming qualities.

Dummy. Hopefully that will magically make his and Seena's dialogue 90% more entertaining (or at least more redundant).

I hate to admit it but my favorite memory of this game is the opening sequence...

I do like how the spiritual force idea was actually given game mechanics, though. Easily easily the 2nd best thing about it.

Wayne.

I was going to suggest Bruce, but I know just enough about this series to know that Minim is where it's at.

This concludes my Lufia knowledge, and I look forward to learning something!

Lucha.

PANTS.

But I guess Minim works too.

Here's another vote for Minim.

My favorite memory of this game is selling it online for a profit! I guess if I played it now in this post-Shiren life I might enjoy it more but probably not.

I vote for Dummy.

Minim. Or maybe Aiful?

Man, I love this game.

I just want to say that I'm excited for this.