Dude my entire life when discussing RPGs, i keep bringing this as my favorite of all time, and rarely if ever do i meet people who actually played this. Thank you, this is truly a gem of its era.
This game was just so absolutely ahead of it's time in every way. From the unexpected yet incredibly engaging & well written story beats, to the refined & varied RPG mechanics, it's a true masterpiece that is CRIMINALLY overlooked. It ABSOLUTELY belongs in the conversations of other all time great RPG's of the era such as Chrono Trigger, FF6, Etc. It is right up there and is every bit as good as those, aside for the bugs that is. That is the one & only main flaw I can think of.
When I was a kid I owned Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES. My sisters friend wanted to borrow it but I was weary lending it out since it took 2 months of my allowance to get it. I also didn't trust him. He relented and let me borrow lufia 2. I was skeptical but agreed. I turned it on shortly after he left. Watched the intro and just watching the intro hearing the music and story I was hooked. What followed was an 18 hour gaming session. There was so much to love about the game. Each character had so much to them and anytime a part member left I felt that same sense of loss missing their contributions to my party. I loved the capsule monsters and frequently went out of my way to feed them as much as I could. I beat it 3 times in the 2 weeks he borrowed ff3. He came back and said he wanted lufia 2 back. I demanded ff3 back. He said he "lost it" and demanded his game again. I refused and when he tried to take it I made threats. He backed down after being warned off by my sister. I laughed at him and went back to playing the game. All these years later and it's one of my favorite games still. Really funny that if this didn't happen I may have never played it. Beyond that I loved all the side content, exploring the depths with the submarine, the dragon eggs, evolving all the capsule monsters, the new game+, the dungeon island that resets you to level 1 and has you battle your way down and the option to make your own party for that dungeon once you beat it, and the x 4 mode after you beat the game. The was so much to love about it. I also got a new copy of ff6 2 months later after saving my allowance again lol.
Lufia II was just called Lufia in Germany when I got this game as a kid, it even came bundled with a guide book. To this day it is still one of my favorite games ever. The ending destroyed me as a kid. I put my SNES away after beating it, because I was so sad. But the next day I was playing again. The music is phenomenal and still gives me goosebumps.
Same country, same mentality. It's still one of my top 3 games... Marrying a woman and having your own child being kidnapped while being a child yourself impacts you in another way. The story was great, violent and simply just real. No sugar-coating needed. I am happy having played it. Oh, when Dakar died.. it hit me.. When I killed Gades the first time and receiving the Gades Sword, because it was rumored to be possible, I was so happy. No 100% walkthrough sites were available back then.
I actually own a complete-in-box German copy of the game. However, I don't own a PAL SNES or a television that accepts 50hz signals, so I use my RETRODE to dump the ROM and play it in an emulator.
Recht haste. Hat mich damals auch sehr mitgenommen. Als kleines Kind bei meinem Bruder zugeschaut und irgendwann selber die Welt gerettet. War eine schöne unschuldige Zeit, wo die Tage noch unfassbar lang waren😊
Great job! One detail I was surprised you didn't mention: many old school RPGs had text boxs and sometimes little sounds play as each word apears for all the dialoge, however Lufia II goes above and beyond this by giving each character their own pitch of tone for the dialogue sound which mimics IRL human vocal ranges, ex. Tia has a high pitch, Selan's is a bit lower, and the men have the lowest ranges. It adds that much more life to the well-written characters :-) Im glad this convention is used more often in modern games, but i feel like Luffia II was one of the first and only games doing it back then. Great review! :-)
Ancient Cave is the greatest extra ever in any game, including an RPG. My friend and I used to take turns playing each level trying to get to the end on many, many days in my youth.
@@gexianhen True, but I'll tell you, up until fairly recently (mid-late 2010's) the AC was one of the absolute BEST roguelikes you could play that wasn't ASCII graphics (Mac's old Dungeon of Doom/Dungeon Revealed being the best for several decades). The bonus is that you get to keep any blue chest items you leave with in any run an use them not only in-game but also for any runs into the AC in that save file. Pretty sweet rewards, seeing how many were the most powerful items in the game!
@@gexianhen It wasn't just a "Roguelike", it's one of if not the very first instance of a randomly generated dungeon. It's what gives it so much replayability & was used as the main gimmick in the GBC sequel Lufia: The Legend Returns.
@@Animebryan2 MAYBE the first instance of a randomly generated dungeon in an SNES game, and I don't know if even that is true. Do you know where the name "Roguelike" even comes from?
Thank you for making this. As a lifelong fan of this game, I feel you have succinctly captured everything that needed to be said about it. I laughed all 3 times the fire flower puzzle was brought up, you truly gave it the recognition it deserved.
What I love about Lufia 2 that I rarely see in other RPGs is the ability to individually pick which enemies get hit by spells. Typically, it's either one enemy gets hit or all enemies get hit. Surprised it's not more common, it adds depth to strategy.
Geweldig! De Nederlandse versie ligt nog steeds bij mijn moeder op zolder. Prachtige herinneringen. Heb je er veel voor moeten betalen? Ik kan me heugen dat het een erg duur spel is geworden
So glad there is an actual following for this game. Growing up we had a friend who had Lufia 1, which we would play whenever we had a sleepover, so when Lufia 2 was released, we asked our parents to get it for us for Christmas. I remember playing it Christmas morning with my brother, we had played some other RPGs, like Final Fantasy 1 and 6 (3 Terra/Locke etc) but this one stood out to me the most. Possibly because it was a little easier for a kid to play through, but regardless, similar to you, we didn't notice some thing on our first playthrough attempt, and there wasn't the internet to look stuff up on back then. So we got as far as the cave with the colored blocks and got completely stuck there, on i believe the 2nd room. Where you need to turn in place. We started a new game as we were at a loss of how to progress only to go through the tutorial dungeon and get reintroduced to the turn in place button, and in our haste, accidentally saved Over the other game, needing to start over. But regardless i remember countless hours, staying up until 11 PM on school nights attempting the Ancient cave, collecting the iris treasures and Blue box items, game genie was a thing, but had minimal useful codes for this game at that time, so there was no speedup, just solid 3-4 hours runs in that place. The Casino was great, the side content was great, the story was amazing and the Music fantastic. Personally i really enjoyed the magic system, both the way it worked and the animations, but that's partially because we started with Lufia 1, which Needed an overhaul. To this day, if people get talking about SNES games, i always bring this game up, its just left that mark on me. Sure FF6 or chrono trigger are more polished games. But even with its glitches this is one of my favorite games ever. Also, i thought i had read years ago, something about the dual blade room being a thing. It was intended to be jumbled that way. Tho as with everything it could be speculation. But i like the idea that the power of the dual blade was too great for you at that time, so it distorted reality. All in all, thanks for the comprehensive review of the game.
I love everything about this comment, if I wasn't so sick right now I'd regale you with my own tales about what the Lufia games mean to me and how I as well was one of the few Americans that actually played Lufia 1 first and was hype for this game form day 1, how my own brother and I enjoyed it too and helped each other out with puzzles and awesome optional content like the Egg Dragon stuff etc. but alas. I will at least point out though, there is simply NO WAY the dual blade room was on purpose lmao, and these days I heavily, heavily prefer playing fan patches that fix issues like that and point new players toward them.
When i discoverd the SNS Emulator (never had the Console) i tryed some games but wasnt so intrigued. Then i started Lufia 2...and fast i was caught inside the story and the wonderfull characters. Easy Top 10 of my Liftime best ever Games list (53 Years old now,start gaming with a Sinclair Spectrum 48k in 1983). Th-X for sharing.
8:40 I think you nailed something there. So many modern video game stories (particularly rpgs) focus on the general plot more than the characters, where I believe that characters are the bridge between reality and the plot, and you can have a fantastic game, no matter how good the story is or isn’t, if you have fantastically written characters whose arcs you can relate with
The reverse is true too; you can find the Gades blade in the AC too.... Same with the Catfish Jewel that can drop from the very first boss in the game... it has an IP move that deals damage based upon how much HP the enemy has for a digit of you IP bar (I think you can perform the move some 20x on a full IP-bar)
@@AshAsmodeus actually catfish is the 2nd boss😅😅 And you can get the camu jewel from the boss in tanbel tower and the spider jewel from the spider boss as well😊
You grasped 10-12 and even 30+ years old me when I play this game. Every moment. Especially the last legs of the game. From the GOAT coming back to the soundtrack segments. Well done.
Thank you for this video, to me Lufia 2 has been up there with the greats since I played it on the SNES. Commenting as this video deserves so much more attention!
this game deserves so much more love. Lots of newer/indie devs are looking at old Final Fantasy games, but Lufia 2 is a game that should be the example for how to make it fun and diverse. So many minigames(could spends hours just at the casino and not to forget the ancient cave!), Great way to implement enemies on the map screens with unique movement patterns, an interesting item and equipment selection with effects, a monster trainer game, good puzzles and so, so many secrets. I love this game.
A great vid. I found all your comments insightful and accurate. Besides the Ancient Cave, the capsule monsters and the Tia arc, I always found the inclusion of the main hero getting married and having a child as pretty groundbreaking for the time, too. I remember also getting on the World of Warcraft forums back in the day and suggesting they make a dungeon like the Ancient Cave. This format would be such a great inclusion for MMOs so that players could fight together as low levels again but also experience their own characters anew by the randomness of loot and unlocked spells.
This is still my favourite RPG of all time. One of the few games that really takes you on a journey. You really had the feeling to grow up alongside the characters. The music is also just perfect. The battle themes are bangers and the music in the emotional moments is heart-wrenching. Here in Germany it was even more of a surprise, because we didn't get Lufia 1. Lufia 2 was just called "Lufia" here.
Thank you for putting your time and effort into this, @Hutchkey! I absolutely loved this game. I played the first Lufia quite a bit before this one came out, so Maxim was already cool in my head. And starting off the first game as them going to fight the sinistrals made it so great when you got to the end of this game and found yourself in that scenario again. Prequel aside, Lufia 2 did so much right. The capsule monsters, the tools, the puzzles (I laughed every time you flashed the fire/plant/step puzzle 😂), the music, and the ancient cave! So much gloriousness. I would literally play in the ancient cave until falling asleep holding the L button through battles on the lower floors. Remember the rush of finding a blue chest?!? I really like that you emphasized Tia’s arc as much as you did, I always appreciated that too. And I liked how it was Dekar who was there to talk to her as she left; for some reason he seemed like the least likely and it showed another side of him. Now that I’ve found and watched your video, I’ll be going to sleep to it for a while ❤️
Thank you so much for the kind comment. I'm really glad you liked the video. As for the Ancient Cave... YES. Finding a blue chest still gets me so excited on replays haha it's incredible. The game has had its hooks in me for a long time, and I really wanted to share that love. It's a game that I'm afraid will be lost to time as it doesn't have a huge following. So glad to see this video is being enjoyed by so many other Lufia fans.
Lufia 2 will always be my favorite SNES RPG, it's uncontested the best one made. The story, the characters, the world, the systems, the secrets, the puzzles, none do it better. The ancient cave. How many RPG's have a Dragonball (egg) system, a casino system, a pokemon system, and a rogue-lite built into their game just as optional side content??
As a youngster I though that the dual Blade Buggy Room was a meta narrative choice to make us feel unsettling and disoriented when sharing the same place of this powerful blade...
I actually had this same thought as well when I was young. That the Dual Blade with all its power created a distorted area, showing you the power that the blade had. Same with the Ancient Cave boss floor, that this boss was so immense, and the fact it healed you and everything else, it somehow felt like the Master Slime was a magnificent terror to behold. Now some of the other translations in the game...ya those def provided funny moments as a kid
The actual reason is because when they were converting and translating it for the US, in order to free up space for the text (English requires more space than Japanese for text), they deleted some sprites that were unused. Unfortunately in doing that, they accidentally removed ones that make up the Dual Blade room and the Jelly room. So when it tries to load those rooms, it ends up referencing "gibberish" random other sprites and other memory that it tries to render.
Thank you for making this video. I grew up with 3 games on SNES - Link to the Past, FF II (4) and this one. This was my favorite by far. It's one of the most beautiful stories ever told and the fact that everything was NOT okay at the end of a truly catastrophic moment in the history of this world was just so heartbreaking. Just watching your commentary over the end of this video made me get emotional. Damn this game is beautiful and so underappreciated. I'm going to replay it right now actually. The memories I have of playing this with my brother and dad are so amazing.
I saw the title on my recommend bar and sighed because I knew I had to watch. Man I loved Lufia 2, it was so good, and it's ending is still one of the few games that made me actually cry. Mind you, I was young, but I thought the game was utterly beautiful. I'm sad I never finished the ancient labrynth even though I've beaten the full game 2-3 times by now. Maybe it's time to go back and re-play again...
I still remember beating Gades in the unwinnable fight. I did it at lvl 26 with janky mechanics, and it still took forever to grind to that, let alone the stable lvl 40 recommendation. Still love the game and this video made me feel justified and a ton of nostalgia. Thanks!
Thank you for the great video! Really well done, and does a great job to tug the heartstrings some 27 years after i played it. Lufia II is still one of my favorite games of all time.
Yes! Out of all the games I played during my emulation phase in college, Lufia 2 was the SNES game that had the largest gap between what I expected and what I experienced. It's up there with the third Star Ocean game as some of my favorite JRPGs that don't seem to get mentioned much.
I don't know I haven't found this video until now. This video made replay this again. I played this game after I got tired my N64 when I was a kid. It was a random game I bought at a down town grocery market, I think I paid $10 for it at the time. I bonded so hard with this game, as it took me about a whole school year to finish. To me it was an absolute masterpiece. The ending hit me so hard. Possibly the first time I teared up in a game. However I never could convince my friends to play it through. I unfortunately like, mostly everyone else I knew, traded their old beaten to death games in for later generation games, like Halo. Between playing hardcore sweaty halo infinite, I always find myself going back to this game. Thank you so much for making this. This wins the award for the best hidden gem for the SNES
I don't know how TH-cam knew to recommend this to me lol, but Lufia 2 is my favorite game of all time and still holds up great to this day. Fantastic video, really enjoyed it and hope to see you do more like this!
Absolute masterpiece of a game. I consider this just as good as Terranigma, FF4-6, Chrono Trigger, Dragon quest 5. The music, characters, dungeons, puzzles, ancient dungeon, new modes to play acter you finish it. Happy to see it get love on youtube.
Finally a Contenteator with the same love for Lufia 2 as I have. For me even nearly 30 years later Lufia holds a place in my heart that modern games just cant reach. The Depht of the story, the Battle system, the music, OMG the music. I've played it easyly over 20+ time incl all of the Iris treasures in the ancient cave, and I will continue to play it forevermore. I had the luck of owning the EU / german localisation of the game with waaaaay less bugs and glitches (BUT they refered to Artea as "she" so for the longest time I thought he was a female). Despite all that, Lufia 2 - Rise of the Sinistrals 11/10
It always bums me out that this game never got the credit it deserved. The first Lufia game was pretty bog standard so the sequel was always going to start on the back foot, but goddam it was so good. Not only was the story great, but the more puzzle focused dungeon mechanics compared to the standard JRPG battle slog of dungeons was a breath of fresh air. Plus I think the Ancient Cave was my first introduction to roguelike mechanics that made me fall in love with them. Oh, and the reason why sometimes the capsule monsters call desired items gross is they actually want the cursed versions, lol.
FACTS! Next to Tales of Destiny II/Tales of Eternia on the PS1, Lufia II is the greatest RPG I have ever played! It has more playability that any other game of its kind, and I still replay it to this day in Oct 2023! I think I played Lufia back in high school on the actual NES, and later in high school (2002), I actually traded a friend of mine my copy of Chrono Trigger for his copy of Tales of Eternia, which was my introduction to Namco's legendary "Tales of..." series
This is arguably my favorite rpg of all time. Despite all the bugs in the American version. It was also the first game to bring me to tears at the end. Thanks for making this video and reminding me about this game. I really hope this game gets a switch remaster.
The constant references at the grass burning puzzle on Dragon Mountain made me giggle every time. :D 7:43 I looove how you (maybe not even intentionally) called Iris "GREEN haired". The intonation was like "Yeah, NOT the BLUE haired one". :D 12:10 Money was pretty much abundant. I only run low on money every time in early game when buying food for capsule monsters. 18:40 Did you know you can hold the L button instead of repeatedly pressing the A button to breeze through battles even faster? 25:20 Didn't know you can beat the Egg Dragon that quick ... 30:38 THAT BUSH hides a healing field. =D It looks different compared to other bushes. You kinda develop an eye for these when you find the first one. Haven't even finished the whole video yet but I can savely say you deserve EVERY view, like and comment. Lufia 2 is my favourite RPG on the SNES. ❤
This game was translated into the Dutch language and it came with a walkthrough book. Still own it, because it’s literally the best game ever made. Great video, thank you!
When I was young I borrowed this game for a few months, but I got stuck on a seemingly-impossible puzzle and eventually had to give up and shelve it since looking things up online wasn't really a thing yet. A few years later, I got my hands on another copy, planning to hit the problem puzzle and then look it up online, but I couldn't remember where I had gotten stuck. So I just kept playing and kept playing until I eventually reached the end of the game without getting stuck. To this day I still don't know what puzzle I got stuck on the first time.
The game got released before the internet was totally public, so really if you got the game when it launched, all you had to do was wait a few years. Giving the cryptic nature of 90s console RPGs you probably missed talking to an NPC near the starting town that didn’t seem obvious to a child.
Took me weeks (probably only a couple hours since I was a kid with limited time between school/friends/other stuff) to get past the 3rd red/yellow block puzzle in the temple right after you get Selen and fight the two clowns.
wonder if it was the "hardest trick in the world" puzzle. Its a completely optional puzzle that is found behind some hidden walls. You can completel the dungeon, and hence the game, without ever stumbling upon it. You come to the puzzle room with tiles on the floor in a given space. a large tile in the back has treasure chests on it. You have to move all the tiles in a certain order to eventually bring the prize tile front and center. It is certainly difficult. I think the most direct way online shows like 18 steps, with each step requiring maybe 4 or 5 tile movements.
I consider this my absolute favorite game from my childhood and the SNES era overall. A real gem, indeed, the music, characters, atmosphere - just a really pleasant experience. Enjoyed watching this video :]
Great video! I've always been surprised there haven't been more in-depth looks at Lufia (especially 2). I liked that you breezed through the Lexis part of the story as that always felt the most superfluous to me.
Wow what a great video! I was going to just have this on in the background but I ended up watching it all the way through. Subscribed. I hope there are more like this to come!
This was my one of the first games I remember playing but I had actually played the first one. I will always remember how the first game started with high level heros as a tutorial zone but then a thing happens and you get your main character and the game goes on I remember then playing the sequel and it being my first introduction to a prequel so I knew what would happen to them at the end. It was all very surreal as a kid.
Thanks for making this beautiful hommage, made me nostalgic. This game sits besides the best of the best in the golden era of RPGs. Fun fact: Maxim and Selan dies in the Tower but the power struggle in the end also rends Artea blind. You learn about it in Lufia 1 meaning he’s been living blind for over 100 years.
I missed this one myself (though of the appropriate age at the time, I didn't really start playing videogames until the Playstation era) but my best friend in high school LOVED Lufia 2. Even if it isn't one of 'my' games, it's still very nostalgic to see it here again.
I love how you put a name pronounciation trigger warning in front of a name which you then proceed to pronounce absolutely correctly to my ears - something i cannot say in a lot of other cases. ;) In all seriousness though: Great vid, dude! I really enjoyed seeing one of my all time favorites getting the love it truly deserves.
Beautifully written. Seeing such a good video with 13k views and 200 subs...sucks to see, I certainly hope your channel takes off cause this was a great video to listen to!
I bought this game in a store sale. They were getting rid of "old" video games. It was the time of the Playstation 1, and the PS2 was near, so the SNES was way past its prime. It caught my eye, and because the price was reduced, I decided to give it a go. It ended up being one of my favourite SNES games, and being the last cartridge I bought for that system, the best way to end its cycle for me. Let´s hope that because of these videos more people can experience this amazing game!
I'm a huge fan of SNES RPGs, and Lufia is up there as my favorite. While part of the story's rather clichéd (chose one etc.), I liked the character dynamics, but also the entire Tia arc. It's not something you see often in games such as this. Normally, the hero would eventually fall in love with her and everyone would be happy ever after. The creators deciding to cut her out the way they did was quite mature, and her part in the ending is still as heartbreaking now as it was 25 years ago. As for the battles, yeah, gotta agree things are rather easy. I remember grinding for an hour once early on, and it made me breeze through large chunks of the game. One of the best parts of the game is without a doubt the music. The normal boss theme, the sinastrials theme, the final dungeon theme and my favorite the savior theme. And man, the ending is also fantastically well done. Even watching this review I couldn't help but tear up. Great game, and definitely deserves more love!
Lufia II is my favorite game of all time. Literally no game could ever top the emotions I feel when I play this absolute masterpiece. It's so sad that this game never got the credit it deserves. Literally every ost in this game is peak and I find myself comparing the music of new games with the osts of this beautiful game, which makes me sad, because I always feel like in most of the newer games there is no love compared to lufia (or secret of mana, mystic quest etc.). I am glad I never witnessed those texture bugs since I played the europe/pal version of lufia. (never got to the end of the ancient cave tho, but that's still on my bucket list.) Sometimes I thought lufia is just one of my favorite games since it contains so much nostalgia, since I first played it as a kid (like around 6-7 years old). My grandpa introduced me into gaming back then, I always went to my grandma's and his garden and just watched him playing daoc (dark age of camelot an old mmo) for hours! He was the one who gave me his snes with tons of games like mystic quest, secret of mana, zelda alttp, terranigma, illusion of time and finally lufia 2 rise of the sinistrals. I loved all of those games but my all time favorite was and is lufia 2. Playing this game always hit me with a big nostalgia bomb but after this beautiful video I finally know that this is not just nostalgia, lufia is and ever will be a timeless masterpiece for me. Thank you.
I tried many times but never could finish ANY Final Fantasy game, specially on the SNES, it takes itself SO seriously. Lufia on the other hand is so simple but fun, great characters and characterization, great pace, amazing soundtrack. The ending is just so.... HMMMM!!!
This game is easily in my top 5 favorite games of all time. I cant remember how i got to know and play the game, just that i did while searching for rom snes games while being at school, but i fell in love instantly with it. So many plots and character development simply made it a perfect game. Loved the video. Hope you can make a series out of this and talk more about other old school games as well as lufia 1, 3 and 4
Fantastic game, one of the best of it's time. And when it comes to characters and story it is one of the best of all time. Lufia 2 and Terranigma, both SNES RPG's, are very unknown games. But both have things to offer modern games rarely even get to touch. Thank you for this video, mister youtube man.
Gades actions make a lot of sense. Arek deliberates whether humans need Gods, which should be decided by the Lufia sword: if a human is worthy of the blade, they don't. Daos doesn't want to become obsolete, so he sends out Gades, who causes chaos to draw out the strongest heroes. If the chosen one appears, Gades would kill him, if necessary by sacrificing himself. The problem is that Eris saves Maxim and while Maxim did retire, he had a son. Daos predicted that Maxims descendents would have the same potential, which would be a constant threat to his power. When Idura, Daos minion failed to sever the bloodline and Maxim started adventuring again, the Sinistrals became more brutal because they noticed things got out of control.
Damn, this is your first and only video like this? It's really good! I also played this game forever as a child. I remember leaving the SNES running for days when trying the Ancient Cave. My parents were really mad, but it was worth it. :D
One of THE best SNES games out there. The music is amazing, like Terranigma's music. I also use their music for custom background music for certain games and even made a (if not my first) music pack of Terranigma for the game Terraria. Fits very well if it comes down to atmospherical music :D
Getting to re-experience this story without the grind was really nice. I already knew that it was powerful at the end, that's impossible to forget. I think I was just surprised that it hit so well in this abbreviated format. Excellent storytelling, @hutchkey, thanks
Awesome video! This game reached my heart back in the day. I actually took on the name Maxim to use in later RPG games from this original game, so I really took the storyline personal. Excellent work on this!
My favourite game of all-time! The game that makes me cry like a baby who got kicked in the nuts!! Both Tia leaving and the ending breaks me every single times!! 😭 I still to this day cannot listen to the ending song without crying my eyes out!!!
Thank you for making this video. You brought me back 28 years ago. I am still playing these songs while doing my morning runs. I've co-build a company based on emulation to bring back these nostalgic games to modern consoles, so that we can play again and that new generations can enjoy it again.
Thank you for this video!! I played this on emulator as a kid and finished it very very later, but the video was a great reminder of great memories. I strongly recommend you to play the enix snes games Soul Blazer, Illusion of Time and Terranigma, becouse i know you will like them as well(i played this as a child too and they have a great story, as well as not so many glitches). You deserve our support
Thank you so much! I will add those to my list. I have heard about them, but I have never gotten around to actually playing them! Can't wait to give them a shot!
@@hutchkey2397 If you have time I would definitely add Secret of Evermoore to this list as well... it's a mix of Secret of Mana and Chronotrigger with some very unique mechanics.
Thank you for doing this game justice. If it weren't for my high school self pushing through playing this game (with a walkthrough at the time, but it's been so long, gameplay wise, I'm mostly playing blind again), I wouldn't truly appreciate this game the way I do now. While Final Fantasy 6 is still my top favorite game of all time, if that game didn't exist in the state it did, this game would be the game people know me for, and the game I would speed run and love to death more than anything else. Please keep doing everything you can to spread awareness about this game. The credits theme of this game is one of the best in the industry and I don't think anything will ever capture what this game set out to do ever again. I'll be back at some point in the future editing this comment to give my final thoughts, but until then, keep on gaming!
A fantastic retrospective on a truly hidden gem of the SNES era. I remember borrowing this from a mate and completing it over and over again, it's probably one of the top games I have a lot of nostalgia for. That ending...damn, I forgot how heartwrenching it really was, my prepubescent brain didn't understand it and I'd be lying if it didn't shed a tear by the end of this vid. Keep up the good work and thanks for your efforts. Cheers mate.
Awesome video. Really glad you went and covered Lufia 2, always loved that game when I was young. Drakkhen was actually the first game that got me into rpgs, but it was really Lufia 2 and Chrono Trigger that pulled me into the genre heavily.
As someone who grew up with SNES and Lufia 2 this Video was extremely nice to watch. I hope you will someday make a Video about Terranigma which was not released in NA which makes it a hidden Gem aswell. Anyways keep up the good work and thanks for this great Retrospective
Love the analysis! For me the most memorable thing about the game was the track "the savior of those on earth" which plays during the finale before Maxim dies. It's so emotionally charged and still one of my favorite tracks to this day
I feel that the use of a trumpet in the soundtrack really fit the SNES soundchip and does a great job of adding more epicnes to the overall athmosphere
i just love this game. just got goosebumbs from the music alone. can't tell how many hours i spent in ancient cave (and crying a bit inside when i see someone run past a hidden healing-node below a bush at 29:17 xD)
I still have this game and a working SNES as well and I gotta tell you, it's not just your cartridge... My cartridge also erases ALL data after a long enough period of inactivity at least. I'm not sure if some of the cartridges just happen to have this glitch or if it's all of them but, I'm kinda convinced all the U.S. released cartridges have this glitch since they also have the infamous Dual Blade Shrine glitch and Ancient Cave Final Floor glitch as well... 🙄
Great video man. I agree with everything you said, and I always cry at the end of Lufia 2, too :( lol. One of the best RPGs of all time. I probably spent 100+ hours in the Ancient Cave one Summer as a kid.
I played this game when I was teen, and I love the music and the ancient cave, I do the run like 5 or 6 times and found some nice swords, I remember the sword that any time I use it, cast the sky split spell, and I remember crying in the end. The other RPG that make me cry at the end was Terranigma, I cry like a week.
00:00:10 "...captivated thousands of gamers all across the world." Except Europe 😢. All three of the games you mentioned didn't release in Europe until later. Super Mario RPG didn't officially release here until the Wii Virtual console. Chrono Trigger first European release was on the Nintendo DS. RPG fans in Europe were starving. Lufia 2 (released as just Lufia, becasue we never got the original game) was one of the games that did release here.
Secret of mana was another great hidden gem. Lufia 2 had a really cool minigame where you could fight in a dungeon and--as long as you didn't die--you could keep all the stuff you got. At least, I think that was Lufia 2. It was a beautiful game.
Just fyi if you didn’t know, there are mods to increase the difficulty and really give you a run for your money, especially the end game sinistral fights. Really makes the game a lot more fun as someone who has also beaten it…dozens of times. Great video, I love this game.
Ah the lufia games. These series was on the same shelf beside games like lunar stories for a long time for me. Because while it's your typical jrpg plot, complete with the 4 demon lord generals for bosses, the most memorable is definitely the love story.
It's absolutely criminal how little Lufia 2 is mentioned alongside the other greats of the SNES era. And what's also criminal is that this channel only has 210 subs as of the time of this writing. Well, 211, now that I've subscribed. This was such a well written video and I do hope that you can make more. There's an absolute treasure trove of kinda well known but underappreciated RPGs on the SNES and other retro consoles. Terranigma, Secret of Evermore, Live-A-Live, Crusaders of Centy/Soleil, Illusion of Time/Gaia are just a few I can name off the top of my head, and I do hope that you might check some of them out in the future if you haven't yet.
Goddamn it! I haven't played this in 15 years and now you just talking over that ending makes my manly tears go drip drop. Damn you, well written game with a perfect ending!! 💪😭
Ok I’m going to have to give this one a try now. I love playing classic rpg’s that I missed out on as a kid. There are so many greats from the golden age. Nice job on this.
Amazing video! Though I'm surprised you didn't mention (SPOILERS) . . . . The whole ending sequence of the game is the prologue to Lufia 1. I didn't play through too much of Lufia 1 as it doesn't hold up as well as Lufia 2, but that little detail makes it pretty special to me.
Lufia 2 is amazing. It's not Chrono Trigger or FF6, but it didn't have to be. Also, I was soooo disappointed when I got my hands on the NDS remake. The creators clearly didn't understand the charm and magic of the original. They made a completely different game that provided a completely different (and in every aspect - inferior) experience. It's sad actually... Lufia 2 is one of those games I wish to replay before I die. I last played it in 1999 but I have some really fond memories of it. Especially the dungeon puzzles and music.
Dude my entire life when discussing RPGs, i keep bringing this as my favorite of all time, and rarely if ever do i meet people who actually played this. Thank you, this is truly a gem of its era.
I second this
me too
Same, it was a rare title in the US.
My friends and I all played it when it came out. We're out there.
You are not alone. :D
This game was just so absolutely ahead of it's time in every way. From the unexpected yet incredibly engaging & well written story beats, to the refined & varied RPG mechanics, it's a true masterpiece that is CRIMINALLY overlooked.
It ABSOLUTELY belongs in the conversations of other all time great RPG's of the era such as Chrono Trigger, FF6, Etc. It is right up there and is every bit as good as those, aside for the bugs that is. That is the one & only main flaw I can think of.
When I was a kid I owned Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES. My sisters friend wanted to borrow it but I was weary lending it out since it took 2 months of my allowance to get it. I also didn't trust him. He relented and let me borrow lufia 2. I was skeptical but agreed. I turned it on shortly after he left. Watched the intro and just watching the intro hearing the music and story I was hooked. What followed was an 18 hour gaming session. There was so much to love about the game. Each character had so much to them and anytime a part member left I felt that same sense of loss missing their contributions to my party. I loved the capsule monsters and frequently went out of my way to feed them as much as I could. I beat it 3 times in the 2 weeks he borrowed ff3. He came back and said he wanted lufia 2 back. I demanded ff3 back. He said he "lost it" and demanded his game again. I refused and when he tried to take it I made threats. He backed down after being warned off by my sister. I laughed at him and went back to playing the game. All these years later and it's one of my favorite games still. Really funny that if this didn't happen I may have never played it. Beyond that I loved all the side content, exploring the depths with the submarine, the dragon eggs, evolving all the capsule monsters, the new game+, the dungeon island that resets you to level 1 and has you battle your way down and the option to make your own party for that dungeon once you beat it, and the x 4 mode after you beat the game. The was so much to love about it. I also got a new copy of ff6 2 months later after saving my allowance again lol.
Lufia II was just called Lufia in Germany when I got this game as a kid, it even came bundled with a guide book. To this day it is still one of my favorite games ever. The ending destroyed me as a kid. I put my SNES away after beating it, because I was so sad. But the next day I was playing again. The music is phenomenal and still gives me goosebumps.
Same country, same mentality. It's still one of my top 3 games... Marrying a woman and having your own child being kidnapped while being a child yourself impacts you in another way. The story was great, violent and simply just real. No sugar-coating needed. I am happy having played it. Oh, when Dakar died.. it hit me.. When I killed Gades the first time and receiving the Gades Sword, because it was rumored to be possible, I was so happy. No 100% walkthrough sites were available back then.
I actually own a complete-in-box German copy of the game. However, I don't own a PAL SNES or a television that accepts 50hz signals, so I use my RETRODE to dump the ROM and play it in an emulator.
Totally agree! Ending TOTALLY shattered me as a lil kid.. Some of the best music ever in aaaall gaming history ever!!
Recht haste. Hat mich damals auch sehr mitgenommen. Als kleines Kind bei meinem Bruder zugeschaut und irgendwann selber die Welt gerettet. War eine schöne unschuldige Zeit, wo die Tage noch unfassbar lang waren😊
The Ending of the first game hits even harder.
Great job! One detail I was surprised you didn't mention: many old school RPGs had text boxs and sometimes little sounds play as each word apears for all the dialoge, however Lufia II goes above and beyond this by giving each character their own pitch of tone for the dialogue sound which mimics IRL human vocal ranges, ex. Tia has a high pitch, Selan's is a bit lower, and the men have the lowest ranges. It adds that much more life to the well-written characters :-)
Im glad this convention is used more often in modern games, but i feel like Luffia II was one of the first and only games doing it back then.
Great review! :-)
Ancient Cave is the greatest extra ever in any game, including an RPG. My friend and I used to take turns playing each level trying to get to the end on many, many days in my youth.
earlier this year i realized that the ancient cave is basically a Roguelike inside a Rpg
@@gexianhen True, but I'll tell you, up until fairly recently (mid-late 2010's) the AC was one of the absolute BEST roguelikes you could play that wasn't ASCII graphics (Mac's old Dungeon of Doom/Dungeon Revealed being the best for several decades).
The bonus is that you get to keep any blue chest items you leave with in any run an use them not only in-game but also for any runs into the AC in that save file. Pretty sweet rewards, seeing how many were the most powerful items in the game!
@@gexianhen It wasn't just a "Roguelike", it's one of if not the very first instance of a randomly generated dungeon. It's what gives it so much replayability & was used as the main gimmick in the GBC sequel Lufia: The Legend Returns.
@@Animebryan2 the first randomly generated dungeons were done in the 70's if not 60's.
@@Animebryan2 MAYBE the first instance of a randomly generated dungeon in an SNES game, and I don't know if even that is true. Do you know where the name "Roguelike" even comes from?
Thank you for making this. As a lifelong fan of this game, I feel you have succinctly captured everything that needed to be said about it. I laughed all 3 times the fire flower puzzle was brought up, you truly gave it the recognition it deserved.
Thank you so much! I'm very happy with how the video turned out, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
What I love about Lufia 2 that I rarely see in other RPGs is the ability to individually pick which enemies get hit by spells. Typically, it's either one enemy gets hit or all enemies get hit. Surprised it's not more common, it adds depth to strategy.
One of the most underrated RPGs ever made.
Fond memories of playing this in the dutch version on our Super Nintendo way back.
I wish I owned a Dutch copy of the game. It's notable for being the only "serious" SNES game to be fully localized into Dutch. One day, one day...
I seriously don't intend to brag (that is not my intent at all), but I have one now...
Geweldig! De Nederlandse versie ligt nog steeds bij mijn moeder op zolder. Prachtige herinneringen. Heb je er veel voor moeten betalen? Ik kan me heugen dat het een erg duur spel is geworden
It is almost impossible not to cry at this ending. Brilliant video!
I still to this day cannot listen to the ending song without crying my eyes out 😮
first time i play i was crying but that's what makes the complete Game so !!!!!!!
This man gets it.
If you think this hits the feels, you should try Terranigma.
Yes Terranigma is also a amazing Game
So glad there is an actual following for this game. Growing up we had a friend who had Lufia 1, which we would play whenever we had a sleepover, so when Lufia 2 was released, we asked our parents to get it for us for Christmas. I remember playing it Christmas morning with my brother, we had played some other RPGs, like Final Fantasy 1 and 6 (3 Terra/Locke etc) but this one stood out to me the most. Possibly because it was a little easier for a kid to play through, but regardless, similar to you, we didn't notice some thing on our first playthrough attempt, and there wasn't the internet to look stuff up on back then. So we got as far as the cave with the colored blocks and got completely stuck there, on i believe the 2nd room. Where you need to turn in place.
We started a new game as we were at a loss of how to progress only to go through the tutorial dungeon and get reintroduced to the turn in place button, and in our haste, accidentally saved Over the other game, needing to start over. But regardless i remember countless hours, staying up until 11 PM on school nights attempting the Ancient cave, collecting the iris treasures and Blue box items, game genie was a thing, but had minimal useful codes for this game at that time, so there was no speedup, just solid 3-4 hours runs in that place.
The Casino was great, the side content was great, the story was amazing and the Music fantastic. Personally i really enjoyed the magic system, both the way it worked and the animations, but that's partially because we started with Lufia 1, which Needed an overhaul.
To this day, if people get talking about SNES games, i always bring this game up, its just left that mark on me. Sure FF6 or chrono trigger are more polished games. But even with its glitches this is one of my favorite games ever. Also, i thought i had read years ago, something about the dual blade room being a thing. It was intended to be jumbled that way. Tho as with everything it could be speculation. But i like the idea that the power of the dual blade was too great for you at that time, so it distorted reality.
All in all, thanks for the comprehensive review of the game.
I love everything about this comment, if I wasn't so sick right now I'd regale you with my own tales about what the Lufia games mean to me and how I as well was one of the few Americans that actually played Lufia 1 first and was hype for this game form day 1, how my own brother and I enjoyed it too and helped each other out with puzzles and awesome optional content like the Egg Dragon stuff etc. but alas. I will at least point out though, there is simply NO WAY the dual blade room was on purpose lmao, and these days I heavily, heavily prefer playing fan patches that fix issues like that and point new players toward them.
When i discoverd the SNS Emulator (never had the Console) i tryed some games but wasnt so intrigued. Then i started Lufia 2...and fast i was caught inside the story and the wonderfull characters. Easy Top 10 of my Liftime best ever Games list (53 Years old now,start gaming with a Sinclair Spectrum 48k in 1983). Th-X for sharing.
8:40 I think you nailed something there. So many modern video game stories (particularly rpgs) focus on the general plot more than the characters, where I believe that characters are the bridge between reality and the plot, and you can have a fantastic game, no matter how good the story is or isn’t, if you have fantastically written characters whose arcs you can relate with
If you beat Gades when you're meant to lose you get Gades Blade which is a weapon you can take into the ancient cave.
OCTOSTRIKE!
The reverse is true too; you can find the Gades blade in the AC too.... Same with the Catfish Jewel that can drop from the very first boss in the game... it has an IP move that deals damage based upon how much HP the enemy has for a digit of you IP bar (I think you can perform the move some 20x on a full IP-bar)
normally done in new game+....
I remember doing it in 1996 and wondering how this would change everything...
@@AshAsmodeus actually catfish is the 2nd boss😅😅
And you can get the camu jewel from the boss in tanbel tower and the spider jewel from the spider boss as well😊
@@semihakarca8968 ah right; forgot about the spider fight...
You grasped 10-12 and even 30+ years old me when I play this game. Every moment. Especially the last legs of the game. From the GOAT coming back to the soundtrack segments. Well done.
Thank you for this video, to me Lufia 2 has been up there with the greats since I played it on the SNES. Commenting as this video deserves so much more attention!
this game deserves so much more love. Lots of newer/indie devs are looking at old Final Fantasy games, but Lufia 2 is a game that should be the example for how to make it fun and diverse. So many minigames(could spends hours just at the casino and not to forget the ancient cave!), Great way to implement enemies on the map screens with unique movement patterns, an interesting item and equipment selection with effects, a monster trainer game, good puzzles and so, so many secrets. I love this game.
I love how much love Lufia II has been receiving lately. Its my favorite SNES RPG. (It even beats the almighty Chrono Trigger)
this is the only game that has ever made me cry. i was an absolute puddle. what an amazing story.
A great vid. I found all your comments insightful and accurate.
Besides the Ancient Cave, the capsule monsters and the Tia arc, I always found the inclusion of the main hero getting married and having a child as pretty groundbreaking for the time, too.
I remember also getting on the World of Warcraft forums back in the day and suggesting they make a dungeon like the Ancient Cave. This format would be such a great inclusion for MMOs so that players could fight together as low levels again but also experience their own characters anew by the randomness of loot and unlocked spells.
This video is an achievement. I hope this video gets the credit it deserves too one day.
Thank you for the kind words!
It wont
This is still my favourite RPG of all time. One of the few games that really takes you on a journey. You really had the feeling to grow up alongside the characters.
The music is also just perfect. The battle themes are bangers and the music in the emotional moments is heart-wrenching. Here in Germany it was even more of a surprise, because we didn't get Lufia 1. Lufia 2 was just called "Lufia" here.
Which is weird, because the reason the game is called "Lufia" is because of the character in Lufia one named Lufia. Did you play Lufia 1?
Thank you for putting your time and effort into this, @Hutchkey! I absolutely loved this game. I played the first Lufia quite a bit before this one came out, so Maxim was already cool in my head. And starting off the first game as them going to fight the sinistrals made it so great when you got to the end of this game and found yourself in that scenario again.
Prequel aside, Lufia 2 did so much right. The capsule monsters, the tools, the puzzles (I laughed every time you flashed the fire/plant/step puzzle 😂), the music, and the ancient cave! So much gloriousness. I would literally play in the ancient cave until falling asleep holding the L button through battles on the lower floors. Remember the rush of finding a blue chest?!?
I really like that you emphasized Tia’s arc as much as you did, I always appreciated that too. And I liked how it was Dekar who was there to talk to her as she left; for some reason he seemed like the least likely and it showed another side of him.
Now that I’ve found and watched your video, I’ll be going to sleep to it for a while ❤️
Thank you so much for the kind comment. I'm really glad you liked the video.
As for the Ancient Cave... YES. Finding a blue chest still gets me so excited on replays haha it's incredible. The game has had its hooks in me for a long time, and I really wanted to share that love. It's a game that I'm afraid will be lost to time as it doesn't have a huge following. So glad to see this video is being enjoyed by so many other Lufia fans.
Lufia 2 will always be my favorite SNES RPG, it's uncontested the best one made. The story, the characters, the world, the systems, the secrets, the puzzles, none do it better. The ancient cave. How many RPG's have a Dragonball (egg) system, a casino system, a pokemon system, and a rogue-lite built into their game just as optional side content??
As a youngster I though that the dual Blade Buggy Room was a meta narrative choice to make us feel unsettling and disoriented when sharing the same place of this powerful blade...
That's actually amazing. Maybe the localizers were secret masterminds all along.
I actually had this same thought as well when I was young. That the Dual Blade with all its power created a distorted area, showing you the power that the blade had. Same with the Ancient Cave boss floor, that this boss was so immense, and the fact it healed you and everything else, it somehow felt like the Master Slime was a magnificent terror to behold. Now some of the other translations in the game...ya those def provided funny moments as a kid
I know, right? I thought it was intentional, like not showing Dual Blade or Daos to the player to add tension.
I had the same experience! I totally thought it was on purpose to provide a challenge to get through the maze and be mysterious.
The actual reason is because when they were converting and translating it for the US, in order to free up space for the text (English requires more space than Japanese for text), they deleted some sprites that were unused. Unfortunately in doing that, they accidentally removed ones that make up the Dual Blade room and the Jelly room. So when it tries to load those rooms, it ends up referencing "gibberish" random other sprites and other memory that it tries to render.
Thanks for taking me on an adventure. great video. made me cry.
Thank you for making this video. I grew up with 3 games on SNES - Link to the Past, FF II (4) and this one. This was my favorite by far. It's one of the most beautiful stories ever told and the fact that everything was NOT okay at the end of a truly catastrophic moment in the history of this world was just so heartbreaking. Just watching your commentary over the end of this video made me get emotional. Damn this game is beautiful and so underappreciated. I'm going to replay it right now actually. The memories I have of playing this with my brother and dad are so amazing.
I saw the title on my recommend bar and sighed because I knew I had to watch. Man I loved Lufia 2, it was so good, and it's ending is still one of the few games that made me actually cry. Mind you, I was young, but I thought the game was utterly beautiful. I'm sad I never finished the ancient labrynth even though I've beaten the full game 2-3 times by now. Maybe it's time to go back and re-play again...
I still remember beating Gades in the unwinnable fight. I did it at lvl 26 with janky mechanics, and it still took forever to grind to that, let alone the stable lvl 40 recommendation. Still love the game and this video made me feel justified and a ton of nostalgia. Thanks!
Lufia and Lufia 2 are the best love story on games , its impossible not to cry at the ending 🥲🥲🥲
😮I loved this game growing up. When the Sinistrals theme started rocking, I got chills and wonderful flash back. Thanks!
The Sinistral battle music is one of my favourites of all time!
ToxicEternity did a fantastic metal cover of it too.
Damn I love this game.
i personally think the regular boss theme is even better, but this entire game has my favorite soundtrack out of any video game ever so
This version is better: th-cam.com/video/JJgZ0eSj1qw/w-d-xo.html
TE's cover is goated.
SSH covered it too! th-cam.com/video/-EzMOAswIYM/w-d-xo.html
Check on TH-cam. There is a guy who does dueling/harmonized guitars. And does a few lufia songs. He is amazing!!!
Thank you for the great video! Really well done, and does a great job to tug the heartstrings some 27 years after i played it. Lufia II is still one of my favorite games of all time.
Yes! Out of all the games I played during my emulation phase in college, Lufia 2 was the SNES game that had the largest gap between what I expected and what I experienced. It's up there with the third Star Ocean game as some of my favorite JRPGs that don't seem to get mentioned much.
I don't know I haven't found this video until now. This video made replay this again. I played this game after I got tired my N64 when I was a kid. It was a random game I bought at a down town grocery market, I think I paid $10 for it at the time. I bonded so hard with this game, as it took me about a whole school year to finish. To me it was an absolute masterpiece. The ending hit me so hard. Possibly the first time I teared up in a game. However I never could convince my friends to play it through. I unfortunately like, mostly everyone else I knew, traded their old beaten to death games in for later generation games, like Halo. Between playing hardcore sweaty halo infinite, I always find myself going back to this game. Thank you so much for making this. This wins the award for the best hidden gem for the SNES
I don't know how TH-cam knew to recommend this to me lol, but Lufia 2 is my favorite game of all time and still holds up great to this day. Fantastic video, really enjoyed it and hope to see you do more like this!
Absolute masterpiece of a game. I consider this just as good as Terranigma, FF4-6, Chrono Trigger, Dragon quest 5. The music, characters, dungeons, puzzles, ancient dungeon, new modes to play acter you finish it. Happy to see it get love on youtube.
one of the few games that make me cry just thinking of the ending, thank you for the retrospective. it means a lot.
To this day I still think it's the best rpg on SNES. It has everything
Lufia 2 was the first game that made me cry. I hold it above CT for my SNES GOAT list
Finally a Contenteator with the same love for Lufia 2 as I have. For me even nearly 30 years later Lufia holds a place in my heart that modern games just cant reach. The Depht of the story, the Battle system, the music, OMG the music. I've played it easyly over 20+ time incl all of the Iris treasures in the ancient cave, and I will continue to play it forevermore. I had the luck of owning the EU / german localisation of the game with waaaaay less bugs and glitches (BUT they refered to Artea as "she" so for the longest time I thought he was a female). Despite all that, Lufia 2 - Rise of the Sinistrals 11/10
It always bums me out that this game never got the credit it deserved. The first Lufia game was pretty bog standard so the sequel was always going to start on the back foot, but goddam it was so good. Not only was the story great, but the more puzzle focused dungeon mechanics compared to the standard JRPG battle slog of dungeons was a breath of fresh air. Plus I think the Ancient Cave was my first introduction to roguelike mechanics that made me fall in love with them.
Oh, and the reason why sometimes the capsule monsters call desired items gross is they actually want the cursed versions, lol.
FACTS! Next to Tales of Destiny II/Tales of Eternia on the PS1, Lufia II is the greatest RPG I have ever played! It has more playability that any other game of its kind, and I still replay it to this day in Oct 2023! I think I played Lufia back in high school on the actual NES, and later in high school (2002), I actually traded a friend of mine my copy of Chrono Trigger for his copy of Tales of Eternia, which was my introduction to Namco's legendary "Tales of..." series
This is arguably my favorite rpg of all time. Despite all the bugs in the American version. It was also the first game to bring me to tears at the end. Thanks for making this video and reminding me about this game. I really hope this game gets a switch remaster.
This was the first game to ever make me cry like a baby, and i played the First Lufia so I knew how things would turn out.
The constant references at the grass burning puzzle on Dragon Mountain made me giggle every time. :D
7:43 I looove how you (maybe not even intentionally) called Iris "GREEN haired". The intonation was like "Yeah, NOT the BLUE haired one". :D
12:10 Money was pretty much abundant. I only run low on money every time in early game when buying food for capsule monsters.
18:40 Did you know you can hold the L button instead of repeatedly pressing the A button to breeze through battles even faster?
25:20 Didn't know you can beat the Egg Dragon that quick ...
30:38 THAT BUSH hides a healing field. =D It looks different compared to other bushes. You kinda develop an eye for these when you find the first one.
Haven't even finished the whole video yet but I can savely say you deserve EVERY view, like and comment. Lufia 2 is my favourite RPG on the SNES. ❤
This game was translated into the Dutch language and it came with a walkthrough book. Still own it, because it’s literally the best game ever made. Great video, thank you!
When I was young I borrowed this game for a few months, but I got stuck on a seemingly-impossible puzzle and eventually had to give up and shelve it since looking things up online wasn't really a thing yet. A few years later, I got my hands on another copy, planning to hit the problem puzzle and then look it up online, but I couldn't remember where I had gotten stuck. So I just kept playing and kept playing until I eventually reached the end of the game without getting stuck. To this day I still don't know what puzzle I got stuck on the first time.
The game got released before the internet was totally public, so really if you got the game when it launched, all you had to do was wait a few years. Giving the cryptic nature of 90s console RPGs you probably missed talking to an NPC near the starting town that didn’t seem obvious to a child.
Took me weeks (probably only a couple hours since I was a kid with limited time between school/friends/other stuff) to get past the 3rd red/yellow block puzzle in the temple right after you get Selen and fight the two clowns.
wonder if it was the "hardest trick in the world" puzzle. Its a completely optional puzzle that is found behind some hidden walls. You can completel the dungeon, and hence the game, without ever stumbling upon it. You come to the puzzle room with tiles on the floor in a given space. a large tile in the back has treasure chests on it. You have to move all the tiles in a certain order to eventually bring the prize tile front and center. It is certainly difficult. I think the most direct way online shows like 18 steps, with each step requiring maybe 4 or 5 tile movements.
Red, blue, yellow blocks I bet
It has taken years but I feel like Lufia 2 is finally starting to get some attention online. This is awesome!
This is one of the few games I could never bring myself to play again because of the ending.
I had played Lufia I so I knew I was going to have my heart broken again...
I consider this my absolute favorite game from my childhood and the SNES era overall. A real gem, indeed, the music, characters, atmosphere - just a really pleasant experience. Enjoyed watching this video :]
Thank you so much! Always takes me back when I play it.
Great video! I've always been surprised there haven't been more in-depth looks at Lufia (especially 2). I liked that you breezed through the Lexis part of the story as that always felt the most superfluous to me.
Wow what a great video! I was going to just have this on in the background but I ended up watching it all the way through. Subscribed. I hope there are more like this to come!
This was my one of the first games I remember playing but I had actually played the first one.
I will always remember how the first game started with high level heros as a tutorial zone but then a thing happens and you get your main character and the game goes on
I remember then playing the sequel and it being my first introduction to a prequel so I knew what would happen to them at the end.
It was all very surreal as a kid.
Thanks for making this beautiful hommage, made me nostalgic. This game sits besides the best of the best in the golden era of RPGs. Fun fact: Maxim and Selan dies in the Tower but the power struggle in the end also rends Artea blind. You learn about it in Lufia 1 meaning he’s been living blind for over 100 years.
This video is amazing bro, thank you for gift us your time with this incredible artwork!
I missed this one myself (though of the appropriate age at the time, I didn't really start playing videogames until the Playstation era) but my best friend in high school LOVED Lufia 2. Even if it isn't one of 'my' games, it's still very nostalgic to see it here again.
I love how you put a name pronounciation trigger warning in front of a name which you then proceed to pronounce absolutely correctly to my ears - something i cannot say in a lot of other cases. ;) In all seriousness though: Great vid, dude! I really enjoyed seeing one of my all time favorites getting the love it truly deserves.
Beautifully written. Seeing such a good video with 13k views and 200 subs...sucks to see, I certainly hope your channel takes off cause this was a great video to listen to!
I bought this game in a store sale. They were getting rid of "old" video games. It was the time of the Playstation 1, and the PS2 was near, so the SNES was way past its prime. It caught my eye, and because the price was reduced, I decided to give it a go. It ended up being one of my favourite SNES games, and being the last cartridge I bought for that system, the best way to end its cycle for me. Let´s hope that because of these videos more people can experience this amazing game!
This game DESERVES both a Pixel Remaster and a 3D remake (just like Final Fantasy III and IV on NDS).
Yes, with bestiary and other modern additions!
I'm a huge fan of SNES RPGs, and Lufia is up there as my favorite. While part of the story's rather clichéd (chose one etc.), I liked the character dynamics, but also the entire Tia arc. It's not something you see often in games such as this. Normally, the hero would eventually fall in love with her and everyone would be happy ever after. The creators deciding to cut her out the way they did was quite mature, and her part in the ending is still as heartbreaking now as it was 25 years ago.
As for the battles, yeah, gotta agree things are rather easy. I remember grinding for an hour once early on, and it made me breeze through large chunks of the game.
One of the best parts of the game is without a doubt the music. The normal boss theme, the sinastrials theme, the final dungeon theme and my favorite the savior theme. And man, the ending is also fantastically well done. Even watching this review I couldn't help but tear up.
Great game, and definitely deserves more love!
Lufia II is my favorite game of all time. Literally no game could ever top the emotions I feel when I play this absolute masterpiece.
It's so sad that this game never got the credit it deserves.
Literally every ost in this game is peak and I find myself comparing the music of new games with the osts of this beautiful game, which makes me sad, because I always feel like in most of the newer games there is no love compared to lufia (or secret of mana, mystic quest etc.).
I am glad I never witnessed those texture bugs since I played the europe/pal version of lufia. (never got to the end of the ancient cave tho, but that's still on my bucket list.)
Sometimes I thought lufia is just one of my favorite games since it contains so much nostalgia, since I first played it as a kid (like around 6-7 years old).
My grandpa introduced me into gaming back then, I always went to my grandma's and his garden and just watched him playing daoc (dark age of camelot an old mmo) for hours!
He was the one who gave me his snes with tons of games like mystic quest, secret of mana, zelda alttp, terranigma, illusion of time and finally lufia 2 rise of the sinistrals.
I loved all of those games but my all time favorite was and is lufia 2.
Playing this game always hit me with a big nostalgia bomb but after this beautiful video I finally know that this is not just nostalgia, lufia is and ever will be a timeless masterpiece for me.
Thank you.
One of the GOATs. Soon time for another playthrough - nicely done
I tried many times but never could finish ANY Final Fantasy game, specially on the SNES, it takes itself SO seriously. Lufia on the other hand is so simple but fun, great characters and characterization, great pace, amazing soundtrack. The ending is just so.... HMMMM!!!
This game is easily in my top 5 favorite games of all time. I cant remember how i got to know and play the game, just that i did while searching for rom snes games while being at school, but i fell in love instantly with it. So many plots and character development simply made it a perfect game.
Loved the video. Hope you can make a series out of this and talk more about other old school games as well as lufia 1, 3 and 4
Fantastic game, one of the best of it's time. And when it comes to characters and story it is one of the best of all time. Lufia 2 and Terranigma, both SNES RPG's, are very unknown games. But both have things to offer modern games rarely even get to touch.
Thank you for this video, mister youtube man.
And not one mention of the DS "remake". This was truly how the game was meant to be experienced.
This is one of my favorite games ever. I love the dungeon stuff after you beat the game too.
Gades actions make a lot of sense.
Arek deliberates whether humans need Gods, which should be decided by the Lufia sword: if a human is worthy of the blade, they don't.
Daos doesn't want to become obsolete, so he sends out Gades, who causes chaos to draw out the strongest heroes. If the chosen one appears, Gades would kill him, if necessary by sacrificing himself.
The problem is that Eris saves Maxim and while Maxim did retire, he had a son. Daos predicted that Maxims descendents would have the same potential, which would be a constant threat to his power. When Idura, Daos minion failed to sever the bloodline and Maxim started adventuring again, the Sinistrals became more brutal because they noticed things got out of control.
Damn, this is your first and only video like this? It's really good!
I also played this game forever as a child. I remember leaving the SNES running for days when trying the Ancient Cave. My parents were really mad, but it was worth it. :D
One of THE best SNES games out there. The music is amazing, like Terranigma's music. I also use their music for custom background music for certain games and even made a (if not my first) music pack of Terranigma for the game Terraria. Fits very well if it comes down to atmospherical music :D
Getting to re-experience this story without the grind was really nice. I already knew that it was powerful at the end, that's impossible to forget. I think I was just surprised that it hit so well in this abbreviated format. Excellent storytelling, @hutchkey, thanks
Awesome video! This game reached my heart back in the day. I actually took on the name Maxim to use in later RPG games from this original game, so I really took the storyline personal. Excellent work on this!
My favourite game of all-time! The game that makes me cry like a baby who got kicked in the nuts!! Both Tia leaving and the ending breaks me every single times!! 😭
I still to this day cannot listen to the ending song without crying my eyes out!!!
Thank you for making this video. You brought me back 28 years ago. I am still playing these songs while doing my morning runs. I've co-build a company based on emulation to bring back these nostalgic games to modern consoles, so that we can play again and that new generations can enjoy it again.
Thank you for this video!! I played this on emulator as a kid and finished it very very later, but the video was a great reminder of great memories. I strongly recommend you to play the enix snes games Soul Blazer, Illusion of Time and Terranigma, becouse i know you will like them as well(i played this as a child too and they have a great story, as well as not so many glitches). You deserve our support
Thank you so much! I will add those to my list. I have heard about them, but I have never gotten around to actually playing them! Can't wait to give them a shot!
Solid recommends all around.@@hutchkey2397
@@hutchkey2397 If you have time I would definitely add Secret of Evermoore to this list as well... it's a mix of Secret of Mana and Chronotrigger with some very unique mechanics.
Thank you for doing this game justice. If it weren't for my high school self pushing through playing this game (with a walkthrough at the time, but it's been so long, gameplay wise, I'm mostly playing blind again), I wouldn't truly appreciate this game the way I do now.
While Final Fantasy 6 is still my top favorite game of all time, if that game didn't exist in the state it did, this game would be the game people know me for, and the game I would speed run and love to death more than anything else. Please keep doing everything you can to spread awareness about this game. The credits theme of this game is one of the best in the industry and I don't think anything will ever capture what this game set out to do ever again.
I'll be back at some point in the future editing this comment to give my final thoughts, but until then, keep on gaming!
A fantastic retrospective on a truly hidden gem of the SNES era.
I remember borrowing this from a mate and completing it over and over again, it's probably one of the top games I have a lot of nostalgia for.
That ending...damn, I forgot how heartwrenching it really was, my prepubescent brain didn't understand it and I'd be lying if it didn't shed a tear by the end of this vid.
Keep up the good work and thanks for your efforts.
Cheers mate.
Nice video! I've got Lufia and Lufia 2 on my schedule to LP this winter and coming spring, so I guess TH-cam read my mind and suggested your video.
Awesome video. Really glad you went and covered Lufia 2, always loved that game when I was young. Drakkhen was actually the first game that got me into rpgs, but it was really Lufia 2 and Chrono Trigger that pulled me into the genre heavily.
Thank you. Those are two of my favorites! I've never heard of Drakkhen. I'll have to look into it.
Glad you enjoyed the video!
As someone who grew up with SNES and Lufia 2 this Video was extremely nice to watch. I hope you will someday make a Video about Terranigma which was not released in NA which makes it a hidden Gem aswell. Anyways keep up the good work and thanks for this great Retrospective
Love the analysis!
For me the most memorable thing about the game was the track "the savior of those on earth" which plays during the finale before Maxim dies. It's so emotionally charged and still one of my favorite tracks to this day
It's so good. I get chills during that part every single time.
I feel that the use of a trumpet in the soundtrack really fit the SNES soundchip and does a great job of adding more epicnes to the overall athmosphere
i just love this game. just got goosebumbs from the music alone. can't tell how many hours i spent in ancient cave (and crying a bit inside when i see someone run past a hidden healing-node below a bush at 29:17 xD)
I still have this game and a working SNES as well and I gotta tell you, it's not just your cartridge...
My cartridge also erases ALL data after a long enough period of inactivity at least.
I'm not sure if some of the cartridges just happen to have this glitch or if it's all of them but, I'm kinda convinced all the U.S. released cartridges have this glitch since they also have the infamous Dual Blade Shrine glitch and Ancient Cave Final Floor glitch as well... 🙄
11:30 I... never bought potions. I didnt know this at all XD Im replaying while watching this video and holy wow did i never check this?
Great video man. I agree with everything you said, and I always cry at the end of Lufia 2, too :( lol. One of the best RPGs of all time. I probably spent 100+ hours in the Ancient Cave one Summer as a kid.
I played this game when I was teen, and I love the music and the ancient cave, I do the run like 5 or 6 times and found some nice swords, I remember the sword that any time I use it, cast the sky split spell, and I remember crying in the end. The other RPG that make me cry at the end was Terranigma, I cry like a week.
I really love how they handled the Tia arc. Definitely one of the top thing I remember about this game. Super well done video, congrats!
00:00:10 "...captivated thousands of gamers all across the world."
Except Europe 😢. All three of the games you mentioned didn't release in Europe until later. Super Mario RPG didn't officially release here until the Wii Virtual console. Chrono Trigger first European release was on the Nintendo DS.
RPG fans in Europe were starving. Lufia 2 (released as just Lufia, becasue we never got the original game) was one of the games that did release here.
Lufia 2 did release in the Netherlands. It even had a Dutch translation. If i remember correctly it was just called Lufia.
I have it as "Lufia" here in Spain.
Btw, I realized while watching this video that the damn capsule monsters had a 5th form.
Secret of mana was another great hidden gem. Lufia 2 had a really cool minigame where you could fight in a dungeon and--as long as you didn't die--you could keep all the stuff you got. At least, I think that was Lufia 2. It was a beautiful game.
Great, underappreciated series. I'm replaying Lufia III right now myself.
Just fyi if you didn’t know, there are mods to increase the difficulty and really give you a run for your money, especially the end game sinistral fights. Really makes the game a lot more fun as someone who has also beaten it…dozens of times. Great video, I love this game.
Ah the lufia games. These series was on the same shelf beside games like lunar stories for a long time for me. Because while it's your typical jrpg plot, complete with the 4 demon lord generals for bosses, the most memorable is definitely the love story.
It's absolutely criminal how little Lufia 2 is mentioned alongside the other greats of the SNES era.
And what's also criminal is that this channel only has 210 subs as of the time of this writing. Well, 211, now that I've subscribed.
This was such a well written video and I do hope that you can make more. There's an absolute treasure trove of kinda well known but underappreciated RPGs on the SNES and other retro consoles. Terranigma, Secret of Evermore, Live-A-Live, Crusaders of Centy/Soleil, Illusion of Time/Gaia are just a few I can name off the top of my head, and I do hope that you might check some of them out in the future if you haven't yet.
Goddamn it! I haven't played this in 15 years and now you just talking over that ending makes my manly tears go drip drop. Damn you, well written game with a perfect ending!! 💪😭
The ending of this game is so ridiculously good. Can't say enough about that!
The editing for this video was quite hilarious, thanks.
Ok I’m going to have to give this one a try now. I love playing classic rpg’s that I missed out on as a kid. There are so many greats from the golden age. Nice job on this.
Amazing video! Though I'm surprised you didn't mention (SPOILERS)
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The whole ending sequence of the game is the prologue to Lufia 1. I didn't play through too much of Lufia 1 as it doesn't hold up as well as Lufia 2, but that little detail makes it pretty special to me.
Lufia 2 is amazing. It's not Chrono Trigger or FF6, but it didn't have to be. Also, I was soooo disappointed when I got my hands on the NDS remake. The creators clearly didn't understand the charm and magic of the original. They made a completely different game that provided a completely different (and in every aspect - inferior) experience. It's sad actually... Lufia 2 is one of those games I wish to replay before I die. I last played it in 1999 but I have some really fond memories of it. Especially the dungeon puzzles and music.
Only 2 good things came from that abomination: The "Happy Ending" after beating NG+ and the soundtrack.