Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom

North American box art
Developer(s) Neverland
Publisher(s) Taito
Director(s) Masahide Miyata
Writer(s) Masahide Miyata
Composer(s) Yasunori Shiono
Aki Zaitsu
Naomi Kuroda
Platform(s) Super NES
Release date(s)
  • JP June 25, 1993
  • NA December 1993
Genre(s) Role-playing game
Mode(s) Single-player

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, known as Estpolis Denki (エストポリス伝記, officially translated Biography of Estpolis[1]) in Japan, is a role-playing video game developed by Neverland and published by Taito in 1993, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the first title in the Lufia series of video games and the only game from the series released under the Taito label in North America.

Gameplay

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom plays much like a traditional role-playing video game and features 2D character sprites and environments. The player advances the story by travelling through several harsh dungeons, encountering monsters along the way. These battles occur randomly (every few steps or so) or in scripted situations, and winning them yields experience points that go towards leveling up the characters, giving them access to new abilities and making them stronger in the process. The battles themselves take place from a first-person perspective, and require the player to use each character's strengths, such as physical attacks or magic use, as in many other mainstream RPGs.

An interesting quirk in the battle system, reminiscent of older RPGs like the original Final Fantasy, makes it such that when ordering two characters to attack a particular enemy, and the first character defeats the enemy, the second character's attack will still target the defeated enemy and thus miss. Thus foresight is required to make sure that no characters' battle moves are wasted, unlike other RPGs, where other enemies will be targeted if the intended enemy has already been defeated.

New equipment and restorative items are purchased from vendors in various towns, or found in chests scattered throughout the world. The player's progress is saved in one of three available slots on the cartridge's built-in battery back-up system by speaking to a priest at a church found in most towns.

Plot

Setting

The player character when in-town

The story of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom begins, in accordance with an ancient prophecy of the Lufia world, with a massive floating island with a large castle located on it emerging into the sky one dark day. Dubbed the "Fortress of Doom", this castle served as the base of operations for a group of all-powerful beings known as the Sinistrals, who planned to use their strength to bring the world to its knees.

In response, the people sent four of their bravest warriors: Maxim, Selan ("Serena" in Estopolis Denki), Artea ("Arty" in Estopolis Denki), and Guy, to infiltrate the dark fortress and destroy the Sinistrals before they could do any harm. The game begins with the player controlling these characters as they prepare to engage the Sinistrals, and eventually defeat them. However, after the battle, the fortress begins to collapse, with Maxim and Selan becoming trapped on the other side of a deep chasm that forms when the Sinistral throne room splits apart. Unable to teleport them to safety, Artea and Guy leave the falling island alone, and their trapped allies apparently perish when it crashes into the earth below.

Peace reigns for ninety years after the heroes' encounter with the Sinistrals, and the actual game is set nine years after that. The story is told from the perspective of a red-haired boy the player is in charge of naming, and along the way he gets caught up in a struggle to save the world once again from the newly emerged Sinistral army.

Characters

Playable characters

Battle mode

Starting characters

At the start of the game (introduction):

Non-playable characters

Development

Taito began to develop a port of Lufia & the Fortress of Doom for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, but the game, primarily intended for a North American release, was not released because of Taito America's closure in 1995. At least two full-page advertisements were made in U.S. magazines, the second one announcing a delay to spring 1995, with the tagline "It´s worth the wait".[2]

Reception

Reception
Aggregate score
AggregatorScore
GameRankings69% (3 reviews)[3]
Review scores
PublicationScore
Dragon[4]
EGM7.8 of 10[5]
Famitsu28 of 40[6]
GamePro4.5 of 5[7]
Nintendo Power[8]
Electronic Games93%[9]
Game Players9 of 10[5]
RPGamer8 of 10[10]
RPGFan86%[11]

Upon release, Electronic Games scored it 93%, calling it "the best RPG so far this year".[9] In Dragon, Sandy Petersen gave the game 3 out of 5 stars.[4] GamePro gave it ratings of 4.5/5 for graphics, 4/5 for sound, 4/5 for control and 4.5/5 for overall fun factor.[7] Lufia II was runner-up for GamePro's 1993 Role-Playing Game of the Year award, which was won by Secret of Mana.[12]

Retrospectively, the game has received positive to mixed reviews. Some reflect on it fondly for its story and characters, while others criticize it as being inferior to other console RPGs of that era, such as Secret of Mana, the Final Fantasy titles, or its sequel Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals. Game Rankings gives Lufia a score of 69% by averaging the ratings of several online sources.[3]

References

  1. Neverland Co., Ltd. (25 June 1993). Estpolis Denki. Super Famicom. Taito Corporation. < Staff > [...] Biography of Estpolis
  2. "Magazine advertisement for Lufia for the Sega Genesis". Taito. Retrieved 2015-01-13.
  3. 1 2 "Lufia & the Fortress of Doom Reviews and Articles for SNES - GameRankings". Game Rankings. Retrieved 2012-08-12.
  4. 1 2 Petersen, Sandy (June 1994). "Eye of the Monitor". Dragon (206): 57–60.
  5. 1 2 "Lufia & the Fortress of Doom for SNES (1993) MobyRank". MobyGames. Retrieved 2012-08-12.
  6. http://www.famitsu.com/cominy/?m=pc&a=page_h_title&title_id=8943
  7. 1 2 GamePro, issue 53 (December 1993), pages 260-261
  8. Nintendo Power, issue 54 (November 1993), pages 104-105 & 107
  9. 1 2 Electronic Games, issue 15 (December 1993), page 112
  10. http://www.rpgamer.com/games/lufia/luf1/reviews/luf1rdrev1.html
  11. http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/lufia/Lufia.html
  12. GamePro, issue 55 (February 1994), page 27

Sources

External links

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