What Lufia is it? The first? I’m assuming it’s the first.
Lufia and the Fortress of Doom. This game takes place maybe, 100 years after a great hero and his wife, and two friends, killed 4 evil beings called the Sinistrals. A decendent of this hero, is the main character. You travel through the game with his best friend and love interest, Lufia, and meet two other allies, a swordsman named Aguro, and an elf, named Jerad. Eventually, it becomes painfully clear that your party is set up just like the 4 heros that had slain the 4 Sinistrals, so many years before. Surprise, surprise, they are alive! And you, as the hero, need to acquire the legendary sword, Duel Blade and put them to rest again.
Gameplay: Lufia is a very fun game. The battle system is not so original as other games, but it is definately in its own element. You’ll only journey with 3 other people, so the emphasis on character development rests with your party. You learn magic as you level up, buy armor and weapons from towns, so it’s pretty straight forward. Nothing new there. it lays the ground work for its sucessor/predecessor, Lufia 2 (which is the story that is being told in the very beginning of Lufia 1, so you get a taste of both games). You’ll start out playing as Maxim, his wife Selan, a swordsman named Guy, and an elf, Artea, and you’ll be expected to kick some Sinistral ass.
THe story is a bit cliche and not very complex. Decent, for the Super NES days. it’s worth playing through. The story is straight forward so you wont be journeying to very many optional dungeons (I can think of one…) but you wont be feeling the need to stray very far, anyways. Lufia jumps you around.
Breath of Fire My favorite of the two. You start out, witnessing the capture of a great Light Dragon sorceress, known as Sara, who tries to protect her clan from the evil Dark Dragons, who want to destroy them. Here you’ll get a glimpse of your adversary, Jade, within moments of beginning, and then both will be gone. You’ll awake as Ryu, Sara’s younger brother, and also a Light Dragon (commonly known as the Brood, perhaps, in the later BoF games). You’ll start out on your journey, to fight the Dark Dragons and rescue your sister. On the way, you’ll meet 7 other allies- Nina, the Windian Princess (and the first Nina incarnate that appears in every BoF game) and your primary healer, Bo, a woodsman, who lost his home to one of the Dark Dragon minions, Karn, a young thief who tags along and learns the power of his heritage as the game progresses, Gobi, a fish-merchant who only cares about money, Ox, a caring and sort of passive, quiet giant of an animal who is your ultimate and slow powerhouse, Bleu, the years old magician who sleeps in the desert and becomes your primary attack mage, and finally Mogu, a courage-less mole who becomes trapped within his own dreams. Throughout the game, you’ll be up against every minion and general that the Dark Dragon army has, in hopes to stop you from reaching Obelisk, a floating fortress in which Jade waits. As the game progresses, you’ll acquire I think, 8 “Goddess Keys”, in which you’ll need to unlock the goddess, Tyr, who can grant immense power to anyone. I forget her connection to Ryu (like, why he wants the keys, but Seraphim can answer that one for me) but she is also being sought out by the Dark Dragon family, for the immense power deal, headed by Zog, the leader. As you near the end, you’ll realize that your journey to defeat Zog was sort of in vain, because his flunky, Jade, has more in store for you…and so does Tyr.
Breath of Fire’s storyline is hit and miss. You’ll miss A LOT of the storyline’s elements if you aren’t paying attention, plus, there’s not much to it, to begin with. There is no character development, or party interaction. People just join you, although, they have their own basic personality that allows them to differ from the other 7. Likewise, they all have their own skills to kick bum with, but most of them become useless with the passage of time. So expect your last party to consist of dragon dude Ryu, healer-mage Nina, attack-mage Bleu, and hidden power Karn, or Bo. You learn spells as you level up, and you can buys lots of armor and weapons at every town in which you stop in. Be prepared to spend lots of time fighting and levelling up, especially to buy said armor and weapons. More often than not, it’s not cheap. if you expect to learn some of the more useful spells, you need to fight. On average, you should be nearing or at level 35 by the time you reach obelisk. BoF’s dungeons pretty much gaurantee that you’ll be wandering around for awhile-especially in the latter half of the game.
As for optional stuff, and customization, well, there are some things you can do, outside of the storyline, such as, fishing for Dragon Armor, having Ryu fight one of his own, to acquire more dragon-transforming abilities, having Karn find his transformation powers, by ways of his ancestors, having Mogu dig at the dragon footprints on the world map to find really good items, etc. Some times, you’ll be unsure of where to go, and what to do. So you will be walking around a lot, getting into things.
In conclusion, if I were you, I’d buy these games and send them to ME. Ha ha, but if you ever spot second copies, send me a PM, plz >> If you are lucky enough to find Lufia and BoF, you have to buy them. They are classics, and very fun rpgs, that you can’t be without.
