I’m now playing the Lufia games in chronological order, so the last game made in the previous continuity is actually the second to play (I played Lufia 2 a few years ago). It’s supposed to be around 20 years after Maxim & co’s initial confrontation with the Sinistrals. This event is alluded to in Ruins of Lore’s intro but is barely ever brought up in the game; the only thing that places it is the presence of Dekar. This game is a sidestory and named as such in Japan, and it shows.

The plot has no bearing on the overall series; fair enough too, as it’s a different team to the one who made every other Lufia game. As a result it feels a little off, like it was made as a cash grab. A lot of elements are here: enemies, items, adventure aspects in the dungeons, a few songs. But it also tries several interesting new things, which is not a detriment in itself.

Any monster can potentially be captured and used as a party member; I never used them much because they replace a regular member, and why would I want that? The mechanics around using the monsters are very confusing, and were left largely untapped by me, but I didn’t feel the loss. It sometimes feels like party members are forced out in the early stages simply to leave you with an open spot to fill with these—boo!

Speaking of poorly explained things, again the plot. I had no idea what was going on half the time, we traipsed around half the world, seemingly happening upon magic stones that we then used at the end to get to some ill-defined magical realm to confront a vague threat. The cliche anime-style set-up of ten year olds passing a test to get a monster hunter’s license also put me off. Much of it was not in keeping with what I expected in a Lufia game, unfortunately.

Traversal is fairly unique, as each route between towns is a kind of dungeon in itself, and once completed becomes a fast travel location from the world map. Since you hop around so much it works well.

This game implements a job system to acquire skills. I picked one for each of the three who could get one (why not Bau?) and stuck with it for the whole game. So another mechanic that seemed unnecessary that I didn’t fully utilise. I had no trouble with difficulty by the way, except for the very final boss which takes a huge spike upwards. So there are some balance issues. Battles are also very slow and without my emulator’s turbo button (this game has never been released in my region, as with the first Lufia) I would have given up on the whole thing. Add on to this a clunky menu system and you can see how it approaches mediocrity.

Which is a shame, because there’s a fair bit to like. The areas, towns, and enemies have colour and character (despite a lack of recurring antagonist apart from the vague evil empire which you infiltrate no sweat). Dungeons are decent with each character having skills to help you through. It’s just that it doesn’t hang together so well.

All in all, I’d only recommend it if you have a turbo button. The Lufia-ness is about half of the game’s identity, with the other half being a range of other good and ill-formed ideas and tropes. It’s a decent RPG in its own right, but on a system overflowing with great ones like Golden Sun, the Final Fantasy remakes, and even Mother 3. Plus Dekar was a little underused, and they set him up with a young dancer girl! Quite a rude shock after the lovely relationship with Tia in Curse of the Sinistrals. Poor Dekar, he should get his own game that’s not this one.