Lufia & The fortress of Doom is a standard Japanese RPG
produced by Taito. This game came out in the early 90’s for the Super Nintendo.
You take control of the Hero (I believe he is ultimately nameless, save the
name you give him) and gather 3 friends to fight some super evil destructive
beings called Sinistrals. Along the way you will meet interesting characters,
save cities, make lot of other friends, and ultimately save the world. Along
the way you will travel the world, navigate the sea, dive underwater, and fly
in the air. You will meet old heroes, meet new heroes, become heroes
yourselves, stop human sacrifices, liberate the kidnapped, build bridges, and
unwittingly help resurrect evil beings.

I must preface this review on the fact that I am SUPER
FREAKING BIASED about this game. I love the whole series and this game in
particular has a special place in my heart. I will try my hardest to not be a
fan boy, but I may fail in some instances. My prior RPG experience was playing
Dragon Warrior start to finish several times. I have rented Dragon Warrior 3 or
4 or something for the NES. This was the game that got me into RPGs and helped
me develop a love for the genera. My brother rented it, and I sat down and
decided to play it from beginning to in and I was instantly hooked. I
eventually got about half way through before I had to return the game. I
eventually bought the game and played the game through several times over the
next several years. I have since gone back to replay and had as much fun. I
still have a fondness for the story, characters, and the whole experience as a
whole. I have followed in Beard Man’s example a while ago and completed this
game as much as I was able too at the time by leveling ALL my characters up to
level 99, and collecting all dragon eggs. With my current knowledge, I would
attempt to find all the treasure chests and all the other secret items in towns
and suck hidden in bushes, houses and castles.

Graphics: The graphics of this game remind me of an anime.
They are bright, colorful and fun to look at. Some of the caves can get boring
to look at and the towers are not well detailed. But the character sprites and
enemies are detailed enough.

Sound: The music in the game is amazing. The soundtrack sets
the mood wherever you are and is catchy. You will find yourself grinding quite
a lot, so it is nice listening to. Any of the music around Doom Island is fantastic
and I believe is an excellent source for remixers. The over world music is
classic and has continued on through future games. For some reason, the volume
in this game is set to high, VERY HIGH. If I keep my TV set on a volume of 12,
whenever I put this game on I had to turn the volume down to 6. This is not a
big deal, but something to mention.

Right when you turn the game on, you get gloomy and intense
music eluding you to the seriousness of the situation. There is happy music,
sad music, and everything in between. There is something to fit the mood of the
game. My least favorite track is the cave music. This is bad because there are
a lot of caves and you will be spending a lot of time in caves hunting around
for treasure and finding people.

Addictiveness: This sucked me in the first time I played it.
I always wanted to know what came next and what more I can learn about the story.
Since then the novelty has subsided. There was this great mystery of what these
evil beings were and how they would return. I feel this would get you sucked
in, but after the first or 2nd time through playing and beating this
game, it may not be as engaging.  

Story: This game brings us to the very end of the first Doom
Island conflict where you play as Maxim and friends, on Doom Island and defeat
the 4 Sinistrals. Your characters are very powerful with all the best weapons and
armor. The game then fast forwards to about 100 years later to our young Hero
(who is a descendant of Maxim) is a knight in the Alekian guard. A neighboring
castle is decimated by monsters and you go to investigate. You find one of the
Sinistrals has risen and destroyed  the
town. At this point you and your childhood friend Lufia undertake a quest to
find and destroy the Sinistrals. Early on you find one of the heroes of Doom
Island named Guy. He tells you to go find Artea, and that Artea has an
apprentice they should seek, right before he dies. Our heroes find the
apprentice who tells them how to find the Elf town of Elfria. After finding
Artea, he tells you to find a professor because he will help you find Doom
Island and the Duel Blade. After another long series of quests you find the
Duel Blade, and one of the BIGGEST M. KNIGHT SHAYMALAN TWISTS in video game
history. I will not spoil this ha ha. Doom Island is now resurrected and you continue
your quest to get on Doom Island and Defeat the Sinistrals. After beating the
game, prepare yourself for a nice 20 minute long ending.  There are a lot of games that take a long
time to beat and have short or crappy endings. This is not one of those
endings. The ending is both somber, melancholy, and happy. I am sure you will
enjoy it.

Depth: There is a balance with the weapons between attack
power and weight. If you are too weighted down, it affects your agility and
order of combat. But at the end of the game, this is all sorted out. I found
myself using the same spell TONS of times, while other spells I hardly ever
touched. There are rings or accessories that can help enhance stats or magic
abilities you can find. These do not make  dramatically huge change in game play though. Once I found a good ring for a character, I stuck with it for most of the game. The only two side quests that exists are Dragon Egg collecting and the Ancient Cave. I will explain these further later in this review. After beating the game, you have the option of the "retry," which will also be explained later in this review.


Difficulty: In retrospect, this game has an unbalanced
difficulty level. Some parts are moderate difficulty, while others along the
story were extremely difficult. In the beginning of the game, you will fight 2
boss battles against some demons on a dock and trying to save a boat. Both of
these times will require some grinding. Later you will have to fight an
apprentice. This is a very difficult one-on-one battle.  If you are unprepared you will get massacred.
For this instance, I would skip the tower he is in, and travel to the next
castle to buy stronger equipment. Later in the game you will have to save a
professor from some pirates. This is another unbalanced fight and requires
quite a bit of grinding and top notch weapons and armor. With all the
difficulty, any real troubles can be solved with grinding, and upgrading
weapons and armor.
Another note on difficulty/story. I found it frustrating at times on my first few play throughs progressing the story. It is that common RPG trope where you have to talk to the RIGHT person in the RIGHT sequence in order for something to happen and/or someone to appear somewhere. The game is not always clear at times where you should go or do. This may be a turn off to some people.  This section I will just post notes and observations I decided
not to mention in the above sections.

·        
On the over world/caves/towers, your characters
move a normal JRPG pace which is annoyingly slow. However, in towns your
characters move at sprinting pace which is such a relief. This feature is
further expanded upon in the sequel/prequel Lufia: The Rise of the Sinistrals
where all the walking is at a very brisk pace. There is a Lufia & the
Fortress of Doom ROM hack that corrects this and allows your character to walk
fast in all settings.

·        
After you beat the game, there is a 2nd
quest of sorts. You will be given the option to play on “Retry” mode, which
doubles to quadruples the experience and gold you obtain from enemies. This is
fun because it means you can breeze through the game and now worry about the
required heavy grinding. You will be able to buy all the most expensive weapons
and armor whenever you encounter new towns.

·        
I find it difficult to explain the battle
system. It is kind of turn based, and not turn based. For most of the game, it
will appear turn based. The order in which each character gets a chance to
perform an action is based on agility, weight, and probably something else.
Towards the end of the game, if you go back to the beginning and fight the
beginning monsters, you will find your characters will be able to have multiple
chances for attack before the monsters will have a chance for action. I do not
have a solid explanation for this phenomenon.

·        
There are several things introduced in this game
that has become a staple of the series. One of these is the Ancient Cave. In
the Ancient Cave, you can access the each new level by going up 5 levels. You
go into the nearby town of Grenoble, get your assignment, then enter the
Ancient Cave to the appropriate floor of the cave, find the above mention item
(and anything else you can find), take it back to the guild, and get your
reward. There are a total of seven levels. This has gone on in grander heights,
becoming almost it’s own game. The other staple has been the Dragon Eggs.
Throughout the game you will find 8 Dragon Eggs in treasure chests. You take
these Dragon Eggs to the Egg Dragon and you will be granted 1 of 4 wishes.
These could be the Might Bow (the strongest bow in the game), a Might Shield
(the strongest shield in the game), a bundle of stat building potions, or to
advance your party members by 5 levels. I never increased my party members by 5
levels because I always found this uses, since I can just defeat more monsters to
gain levels, and money. I never got the potions because you get pick them up
from fallen monsters. I usually got the Might Bow or Might shields. After you
take the Dragon Eggs to the Egg Dragon, the eggs are scattered across the world
to different predetermined locations. There are a total of three batches of
Dragon Eggs. This game is does not innovate or bring anything new to the JRPG table in my opinion compared to other Super Nintendo contemporaries like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger or Tales of Phantasia. But what this game does is perfect a formula of standard JRPGs. In other words, this game is basic algebra, done beautifully.One thing that distinguishes this game from many others, is the script of the game. I feel like I am connected to the characters and I learn who they really are and what they are about. I have never felt this way about any Dragon Quest game (only 1-6). Not even Breath of Fire, or Secret of Mana. The characterization of this game is amazing and everyone has their own little quirks and issues. The useless banter between characters is amusing and funny at times. This game has it's serious moments, but also light and funny moment. It plays out like some kind of anime. On your second or third time playing, you will probably skip lots of this banter, but on your first play through, I recommend enjoying all that it has to offer.

I hope you have enjoyed my review of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom. This is a bright and colorful game that I recommend to any lover of RPGs or JRPGs and this one should definitely not be passed up. Happy Gaming!

Although very detailed, I find your review to be unbalanced. You talk lengths about difficulty (I know the game is frustrating!) but only have two sentences about graphics. You could have also organized you text better; for example, put what you wrote about the replay value (dragon eggs, second quest) in the "addictiveness" part.