The island suddenly appeared in the sky. Let's Play Lufia & the Fortress of Doom!

I'm still not convinced Daos isn't actually the God of Style.

I've played this years ago but that still sent chills down my spine.

So I've always wondered, how do you pronounce 'Gades'? All the other Sinistrals' names seem pretty straightforward, but not the God of Frue Destruction.

Is it 'Gah-dess'?

'Gay-dees'?

'Gadds'?

Heeeeeeeeheeheeheehee.



It's a shame Lufia II's final quarter is so underdeveloped, there's like no sign of anyone else having fought the Sinistrals and lost, despite this prologue, and Doom Island appeared for all of five minutes.

That one.

"Erim," for the record—and not that I mind it—is a thoroughly mangled form of "Helene."

Huh, honestly all this time I've been going with the second one. Neat.

How the... well, no, I can kinda see how they did it, but still, wow.

Not quite as odd as the Iris/Iris thing in Lufia II though.

"Daos" was also changed from "Dios," although that was probably intentional to avoid the religious reference.

I can't help but be amused at the name "Sinistrals", since I actually know what "sinistral" means. I always refer to them as the Lefties, even though most of them appear to not be left-handed. Though I guess it's better than calling them the "Widdershins".

Wow, it was always one-syllable 'Gayds' to me. I like that a lot better than 'Goddess'.

I don't know; the dominant hand on a polearm is the bottom one, so Amon and Erim are left-handed. Daos could be too, if you assume he's got an axe or something hidden under that magnificent robe. Gades is the only one who's unambiguously right-handed; I guess he should have been a Dextral.

Nice work, Sol! You cut off both my comments at the pass (Daos being Sinistral of Chaos here and "You little hoochees!").

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this, but Lufia II kinda cheapened the plot of this one for me. There was some genuine mystery about Maxim's party: how they came to fight together, and what drove them to combat the Sinistrals when everyone else had given up. Then the prequel-as-a-sequel came along to destroy all that mystery and basically rehashed this game's story, reverting Fortress of Doom to a Generation Xerox tale. It's quite sad, really.

For me it as the reverse, actually! there were a bunch of points in Lufia II where I said "Wait, didn't they do this in the first game?..."

Lufia II's plot sadly had a lot of problems. This game usually gives you a clearly defined goal to work towards, while the prequel has a vague "Go, travel, and fight" motif for much of the game. It all but jokes about the fact that Maxim is destined to fight the Sinistrals, because it was literally preordained in this game, and a lot of players had already seen it happen.

Well, bear in mind that "Sinistral" wasn't their original title. They did make a nod to this in the later games, however. In Lufia II, Gades is left-handed. Erim, however, is always right-handed.

What's Dual Blade in japanese, anyway? From Maxim's sprite here I always assumed it was physically two swords, and I was surprised when he gets a shield instead in the second game (though Arty's bow is also a sword, so perhaps I should just not trust these sprites).

Dual Blade.

:I

also artea is just some guy.

it's ok, at least they got to show us how cool and badass dekar is!!! he can jump really high and he's not afraid of anything!!!

I always assumed it was a reference to Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord.

Amon is also a reference to one of the chief Egyptian gods, Amun, sometimes literally called Amon. And as Kishi pointed out, Daos was named "Dios," which is the Spanish name for the Judeo-Christian God.

No idea where Gades' name came from.

I wonder if it's derived from Hades. I pronounce it so it rhymes with spades. And now I feel self-conscious about that.

This seems plausible!

As mentioned, it's called Dual Blade in the Japanese version. I chalk this one up to a linguistic bit of confusion. Plural forms are handled completely differently in Japanese versus English, and the name is transliterated from English into Katakana as デュアルブレード. It could be that they meant to call the weapon Dual Blades just as easily; it would not be the first time this has happened to a transliterated name in a JRPG.

My thoughts on how the prologue of this game and the depiction of it in Lufia 2 and their discrepancies:

100 years have passed since Doom Island, and the only people who survived to tell the tale were Guy and Artea. I picture the events as depicted in Lufia 1 to be the "historical account", the one recorded in history books, as told by Guy and Artea.

Ah, so the Chaos/Terror mix-up is indeed a localization thing. Been wondering about that.

I really like the graphic and general visual style of this game, by the way. Nothing too fancy, but the sprite design and choice of color palette are very easy on the eye and brought a lot of personality. The music, I think we can all agree, is outstanding.

That's my headcannon, as well. People always talk more formally and seem more badass in "historical accounts".

For the record, I'd always said Gades as "Gay-dees", probably to rhyme with the way I say Hades. (And I'm pretty sure I ignored the voice acting in the DS remake that used "Gah-dehs". That game was fun but deeply flawed, kind of like Sword of Mana.)

My childhood story about this game revolves around its release date: It was delayed several times, but I was only getting news from Nintendo Power at the time, so I didn't realize that, and kept asking for it as a present from my parents. "Lufia" became my mom's catch-all name for a game that didn't exist no matter how many stores you went to. Long after I got rid of the rest of my SNES game boxes, I kept the boxes from this and Lufia 2 to prank her with.

Next update will probably be tonight.

It took a while because there's a lot of cutscenes to get through in the first few towns. As a result, this first update will probably be huge, and subsequent updates will probably be smaller and come out a little faster. I make no promises though!

Years later…



With the Sinistrals vanquished, life returned to normal for most people.









An era of peace ensued, but as they said in Secret of Mana, “Time flows like a river, and history repeats…”



Our story opens 90 years after the Battle of Doom Island…in a kingdom called Alekia.


Town


This kindly gentleman is Roman, Alekia’s innkeeper, musing about how few troubles the world has. One would gather he’s been around for quite a bit of this 90 year period of peace.

Seems like he’s bored. Luckily, something interesting is about to happen!



A small red-haired boy races into the inn excitedly! I wonder what he’s been up to?



That’s right. This tiny scamp is our protagonist, Medi!



As a small child, Medi laughs in the face of danger and spends his days doing cool boy things like exploring smelly old caves, because apparently he has no parents around to tell him not to.



Roman shows some kindly concern for this youngster, but, psh, are you kidding, old man? I have no doubts that this small child could take any monster that comes along, armed with his stick and trash can lid shield. So manly.

What’s this?



Another child is wandering outside. She seems lost, or confused. Oh no, a girl!



No, don’t come in here, girl! We’re having manly times.







Roman doesn’t recognize this girl and asks who she is, but apparently she’s not much for conversation.



No, Medi! What are you doing?! She probably has cooties!



Looks like even as a small boy, Medi has a way with the ladies, as the little girl finally opens up. That’s right, this is Lufia, the game’s titular character.





You ask way too many questions, man! She’s a little girl, she doesn’t want to take a test, she wants to play.





:3



What we are witnessing is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

And thus do Medi and Lufia continue to grow as friends over the coming years. Presumably, this involved Medi having to give up playing in smelly caves and instead have tea parties, and get flowers dumped on his head by a girl while all the boys in town pointed and laughed.

Despite the game’s warning that this is when trouble started, nothing actually happens here. Unless playing tag with an adorable little girl constitutes “trouble” in this brave new post-Sinistral era.



No, the real tale begins in earnest about nine years later…

Chapter 1: Monsters in Sheran



Medi has grown into a fine young man and is currently training with the knighthood of Alekia. A far cry from the little rapscallion we met a few minutes ago.





It’s time for training, boys! Let’s get to it! I bet this is where we’re going to get a lot of forced tutorials!



What? Oh come on, really?

And here, we see the biggest problem facing this post-Maxim era…with all the world’s greatest evils already foiled, most of the kingdom’s knights don’t see much point in putting any effort into their duties. This is the kind of thing that happens when the world relies on super-powered heroes to solve their problems for them.



Apparently the young knights are too busy harassing the local girls to put any effort into their training.

The irony, of course, is that these are the guys who probably all laughed when Medi played with a girl when he was growing up. Now, Medi has a pretty ladyfriend on his arm and the rest of them have to resort to stalking and assault to get dates.



Medi doesn’t dignify these clowns with a response. He knows the score.



Uh oh, here comes the fun police!



Man, Medi’s kind of a buzzkill…



Whatever, man, Medi has better things to do, and cooler people to do them with. Later, losers.





Medi heads for the edge of town, where a large flower field spreads out before him. Seems like he's looking for someone...

Priphea Flowers


Seems Lufia has grown into quite the pretty young lady in the last nine years.





Apparently it’s no secret that the knights of Alekia tend to blow off their training. Medi, however, takes offense at being compared to those losers.




But that’s not important right now! Lufia has discovered something very special in this flower field!



She excitedly scampers over to show Medi what she’s found.



Priphea are a very rare and special flower that rarely bloom. Only a certified, card-carrying flower aficionado like Lufia can distinguish them.



Watching Lufia frolic in a field of flowers is just one of those little charming moments that makes this game special.

Spoiler warning: Lufia is kind of adorable, you guys.

I also really like her leitmotif.

We can gather that Lufia has always liked flowers, and that Medi had a very embarrassing childhood.





Medi asks a surprisingly introspective question of Lufia. Something seems to be bothering him, and talking to the knights about it was no help at all.



Lufia has many qualities, but subtlety is not one of them.



Medi, however, ignores Lufia’s obvious come on, and continues to nerd out about history. This is likely because he is an idiot.



Apparently Medi is a bit of a history buff, and talks about this stuff a lot. I can’t tell if this is a serious question or if she is scolding him for ignoring her.



And here we learn what will be one of the key elements of the story. Medi is a descendant of Maxim; apparently the only one alive, since no family is ever mentioned. Medi understands that if the Sinistrals ever returned, it would likely be his responsibility to deal with them. A responsibility that concerns him greatly.



Lufia seems confident that Medi’s strength will be more than enough to protect the people, but Medi doesn’t seem so sure.



Sensing her friend’s distress, Lufia offers to take him home and make some tea for him.



Medi responds to this kind offer by teasing her cooking. This would be a profoundly stupid move if he didn’t know he could get away with it.






This kind of charming banter goes a long way towards making the characters feel more realized, and developed. Right now, they’re just arguing about cooking, but we’ve also learned three important things about Lufia. 1. She’s a little insecure. 2. She’s a drama queen. 3. She always has to have her way.

Or, in other words, she’s a sixteen year old girl.

These traits will all be important later, when a certain other character is introduced.



Lufia tries to storm off, but Medi recognizes that maybe he took his teasing too far, and tries to make amends.



Did Medi just tell his not-girlfriend to make him a pie?





This is, by a wide margin, my favorite line in the game. Try saying it in a little sing-song voice for maximum effect.



Lufia makes a valiant effort to still be mad, but Medi just knows her too well. He has her wrapped around his finger, and they both know it.

Really, the relationship between these two characters is, by far, the most memorable of any in all the RPGs I’ve ever played. In just a few minutes we’ve established two people who know and understand each other at the deepest level, play off of each other very well, and with just enough romantic tension to make it interesting without being overbearing.

Since Medi and Lufia’s relationship is at the heart of this story, establishing just how special it is early on is essential, and I feel like they really nailed it.

Lufia leads Medi back to Roman’s inn for some tea. Seems Roman took a liking to that confused, lost little girl he met nine years ago, and has taken care of her since then. Apparently Roman collects orphans; it’s vaguely implied that Medi lives here too, since Roman is the closest thing he has to a parental figure.

Helping to tend the inn explains Lufia’s apparent homemaking skills.



Nonetheless, it seems Lufia baking is something of a rare occurrence. Roman seems a bit surprised.





Medi; he knows the score.



Roman, of course, points out what we’ve known since they first met. Medi is really the only person Lufia ever really opened up to.



Medi helpfully points out that Roman feeds her and puts a roof over her head out of the kindness of his heart, and could at least make him a pie once in a while.

This might have more impact if he wasn’t also a beneficiary of Roman’s kindness, and similarly never seems to do anything for the old man.



Medi cannot hold a conversation with someone without mentioning the past, I guess.



Yeah, I know! Feels like it was more like, five minutes, tops!

Meanwhile, the two guys in the other room who have been staring at each other listlessly for nine years suddenly have something to say!


Town

Uh oh, that sounds like a plot hook.






Oh man, he did not just say that! Medi will show him who’s lazy and good-for-nothing! He’s going to go round up those lazy good-for-nothing knight cadets who skipped out on training today, and we’ll show this random guy who’s really lazy and useless, once he makes them stop being lazy and useless!


Without so much as a word to Roman, Medi dashes off to face this new problem.



Uh oh.






Lufia would be so mad if she knew Medi ran off. Roman apparently wants nothing to do with this lovers spat, and says nothing even though he just watched Medi run out the door.



Unfortunately, Random Guy at Inn #1 rats him out.





Furious, Lufia runs off.

It’s gonna be a while before we get around to having that tea.



Lufia might be upset, but right now, we have bigger problems.



Between Medi’s apparent anxiety lately over what would happen if monsters attacked, and whether the kingdom and their idiot brigade of useless knights would be of any help, and the fact that apparently it would be all up to him if anything actually happened, the idea that monsters are actually for real attacking just one kingdom over would probably be a legitimately terrifying prospect.

We should probably at least look into this.

Thus we gain control of Medi for the first time, and the game begins in earnest.

Speaking of Medi, let’s take a little time to get to know our hero!



Medi is the hero and protagonist of our tale. He is a descendant of Maxim, the hero who vanquished the Sinistrals decades earlier. He seems to be a pretty responsible and level-headed fellow, his spectacular faux paus tendencies with his not-girlfriend non-withstanding. One might also gather that he’s a bit of a history buff. As an heir to Maxim’s incredible power, Medi himself is quite powerful.



…Or at least would be, if he wasn’t level 1 at the moment.

As the hero of the game, Medi is a well-rounded character with no real weaknesses. He has excellent HP and strength growth, decent agility and magic resistance, and he can wear heavy armor and equip all but the very heaviest of weapons. In general, Medi’s best option in combat is to attack, except in rare circumstances.

Attacking isn’t his only option, however. Medi will also learn almost every white magic spell in the game before the end. In fact, Medi is actually a slightly better magician than Maxim was, and learns some better spells than Maxim did. One might speculate this is due to him inheriting not only Maxim’s skills as a warrior, but Selan’s great magical ability as well. It’s a bit unfortunate that no one ever acknowledges Selan as being Medi’s ancestor; in fact, I’m fairly certain she never even gets mentioned again for the rest of the game.

Medi differs from his ancestor in a few other subtle ways. While Maxim as depicted in Lufia II was always confident to the point of brashness, and often oblivious to anything but the battles before him, Medi seems more thoughtful, and a bit more hesitant about his role. He has a certain vulnerability to him that I've always found endearing. However, like Maxim, he never hesitates to protect someone in danger and always tries to help as many people as he can.

Due to inheriting Maxim’s great power, Medi will grow very quickly. He has the fastest experience curve in the game, and will gain levels faster than other characters. His stats grow quite evenly and he’s always up to whatever challenges are ahead. In fact, his only drawback is his relatively small MP pool. But that’s only really a drawback in the sense that saying a gold-plated machine gun not having infinite armor-piercing rounds is a drawback.

Medi is a really good character is what I’m getting at. Given time and trial, he has the potential to get just as strong as his ancestor, Maxim. Of course, that’s a long way off. Right now, Medi is only level 1, and he’ll have a hard enough time with the monsters outside town if we don’t do some exploring first.

We could run off to Sheran right now and see for ourselves what’s going on, but that seems needlessly suicidal. Let’s get some backup first.



The other knights are as taken aback by the Sheran rumor as Medi is. They suggest checking in with the commander in the castle.



But before we do that, they’ll teach us something useful! This knight teaches us how to find hidden items. This game is absolutely teeming with hidden treasure, and a dedicated explorer will turn up armloads of extra items over the course of the game. Finding hidden items in towns adds a lot of extra appeal to the game, and many of these items are extremely useful.



For example, this free Cloth Helm. The lack of hidden items in Lufia II is perhaps the one step backwards it took compared to its predecessor. It really made exploring towns less fun.

Anyway, this helmet provides Medi some badly needed defense right now, which we’d otherwise have to pay a lot for at an armor shop.


Castle

There’s plenty of other things to do and find in town, but right now let’s check in with the commander and see what he knows about Sheran.



You know, Jack, you really need to work on your approach, man. Try talking with her, taking some interest in the things she likes. Instead of, you know, running after her like a lunatic and terrifying her.



This is Yuria, Jack’s quarry, who is apparently forced to hide in the closet to avoid Jack’s advances, because Alekia doesn’t seem to have very progressive sexual harassment policies.



One wonders why she didn’t use these magical teleportation items conveniently located on the bookcases behind her. Oh well, her loss!

Swing Wings can be used to warp to a town we’ve visited before. Escapes can be used to get us out of caves.



But alright, enough horsing around, time to get down to business. Medi informs the commander of the rumor and insists that a detail be sent to investigate. Good to know Medi can get things done when he puts his mind to it.



Unfortunately, the commander proves just as useless as his recruits, and won’t send anyone until a scout investigates.




Medi isn’t about to stand for that kind of nonsense. He decides to take his complaint directly to the top.



The king, similarly, is no help. This is a recurring theme throughout the game. Has the 99 years of peace infantilized everyone so much that no one can solve their own problems? I’d say this were true, if the monarchs in Maxim’s era hadn’t been similarly useless. So I’m forced to simply assume that every government in the world of Estpolis is completely incompetent.

Fortunately, however, it seems at least one person in the castle is as concerned about the rumor as Medi is. This is Princess Estea.



She applauds Medi’s resolve and decides to offer him as much help as she can to investigate Sheran.



This is the most help we’ll get from any authority figure for the rest of the game.



Medi repays the princess’ kind gesture by stealing her teddy bear. Our hero, readers.



This small treasure room contains a Revive, Antidote, and Sweet Water. Sweet Water lowers encounter rates, if you’re one of the wimps who thinks this game’s encounter rate is too high.

There are a few other hidden items in the castle, but I’m not going to screenshot all of them. There’s nothing else of note here, so let’s head back into town and put the money the princess gave us to good use.


Shopping!

Lufia has the best shopping music of all time, and anyone who claims otherwise is a liar.



That lowly dagger might not look like much, but it’s a pretty impressive attack upgrade over what Medi was using. This Cloth Helm we found we also give him some badly needed points of defense. These two items are the difference between our journey to Sheran being a leisurely walk as opposed to a nightmarish trek.



Clerics are pretty interesting in the Lufia universe. They don’t’ seem to derive their abilities from any sort of higher power, but rather from the same sort of spiritual energy we’ve already seen Maxim using earlier in the game. Some comment that certain locations have greater amounts of energy than others, which is explored in other games only vaguely. It is clear that some sort of worship is involved, however, as clerics are one of exactly two sprites in the game that were censored in North America.

I tried to find you guys a picture of the original sprite, but the only one I could get was unfortunately very blurry. Here's one compliments of Pajaro Pete instead.



Clearly much more of a priestly figure, with obvious crosses. As for what the other censored sprite was, some of you probably already know, but if you don’t, you’ll probably laugh when you find out the answer. That’s for another update, anyway.

Anyway, it’s a little unclear as to who the clerics actually worship, since all the gods in this setting are colossal pricks. Maybe they pray to the gods for clemency?

“Dear Daos in heaven, please don’t smite my family and home town. Glory to you forever, amen.”

That would actually be pretty bleak and would be a great way to add some flavor and make the world of Estpolis a darker place, where the best you can do for divine guidance is pray that the local gods don’t kill you. Sadly, I don’t think that’s actually the case, and at any rate, Daos is dead and certainly is never coming back.

Clerics can provide a number of services. They can save your game, revive fallen party members, or remove curses. Those stained glass windows don’t pay for themselves, though, so any service besides saving is going to cost you.

Staying at an inn doesn’t revive dead party members, so you could come here to revive them. However, the price of doing so is very high, and becomes increasingly exorbitant the higher level you get. Revive items can’t be bought normally, but the game isn’t stingy about giving them to you, so it’s always a better idea to use a revive item than to spend the money here.



For example, here is a free Revive item, right next door, in the cleric’s own house, that we swipe right out from under the nose of his unsuspecting wife. Ha! Take that, holy man!

You may also note that there’s a staircase. It leads next door to the chapel, because apparently the cleric would rather excavate a tunnel under the city than walk twelve steps in the rain.



The cleric congratulates us on finding this hidden road, which was in plain sight in his living room. Medi takes this as a tacit endorsement to pilfer the contents of the cleric’s chest.



I bet you thought I was kidding when I said these knights offered us some tutorials!



Hidden in this unassuming flower outside the knights’ clubhouse is this useful Power Potion. If you can’t walk on a tile that seems like you should be able to walk on, there’s a hidden item. We’ll use this in a minute, but first let’s finish exploring the town.