/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10511854]

Why didn't this series ever gain any mass traction?

[Anonymous No.10511869]

>>10511854
I made sure to keep it a hidden gem only known by sticky nerds.

[Anonymous No.10511879]

i’ve wondered this too. i was a bit young for the release of the first one but remember clearly the second coming out right after super mario rpg so that probably had a negative impact. then it also wasn’t from a known publisher and, as now, that always matters a good deal for whether someone essentially window browsing is willing to give something a try on a whim. plus there’s always the argument that the snes was so glutted by rpgs that people missed a bunch either from ignorance or being blown out on the similarities.

[Anonymous No.10511985]

>>10511854
how would they even, when the most prominent games were released during the apex of square? they had nothing that made them stand out (no, the ancient cave is boring garbage, accept it). and then came the nihon flex disaster... and later the remake fiasco...
lufia is just a cursed series; it never had a chance at all. which sucks, because i still long for remakes of ruins of lore and TLR

[Anonymous No.10512162]

>>10511854
i think the problem is that the first one sucked shit too hard, so nobody bothered to look at the second one. lufia 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. arguably, i would even say that its a better game than chrono trigger. while chrono trigger has a better plot, the actual GAMEPLAY from lufia 2 blows it out of the water. i find the interesting dungeons and loads of puzzles way more compelling than a few minor forks in the road and button or two to find, while simply advancing the plot.

[Anonymous No.10512407]

I feel like i straight fever dreamed this entire franchise. Was this the game that had an optional path to let a demon lord take over the MC as a way to gain more power?

[Anonymous No.10512440]

>>10511854
Just spent 150 hours getting the perfect save file on Lufia 2 lol. The timer loops back to 0:00 at 99:99 hours. Trying to max out the first one now. Probably going to take me well over 500 hours to get everybody to 999 stats.

[Anonymous No.10512441]

>>10511854
Does it have cute girls?

[Anonymous No.10512442]

>>10512441
Yes but it also has Dekar. Who is better.

[Anonymous No.10512496]

Played Lufia 2. About 8 hours. It's a great game. Super charming, but the battles are the weak point.

[Anonymous No.10512615]

The game has fantastic dungeons, better than anything you can find in the genre. But the genre was over saturated with good games with far better designs and stories. The combat is not that bad as the anon says, it is actually at the level of FF sans ATB.

[Anonymous No.10512739]

Honestly I'd chalk it down to bad luck and timing

2 was a sleeper hit, but what really killed it was the PSX entry being cancelled. Lufia 2 came out in 1995, and the PSX entry was supposed to be a 1998 release. After the publisher, Nihon Flex, went bankrupt Neverland couldn't really get the PSX entry out the door + combined with scrapping it and doing a Game Boy Colour entry instead meant the next game, The Legend Returns, didn't come out until September 2001; At this point, the GBA had been released in Japan since March the same year.

So yeah, a six year hiatus between entries and the next mainline game being on a dead console really put it in a bad spot. Add to that Ruins of Lore getting a poor reception and the series was essentially dead in the water.

In hindsight, if they had gotten the PSX entry out in 1998 as planned I think there's a good chance the series would have been a lot more well-known. The long delay between 2 and TLR meant Neverland couldn't really strike while the iron was hot and capitalize on the IP.

[Anonymous No.10512750]

>Nihon Flex doesn't go bankrupt and Neverland gets the PSX entry out as originally planned
>Alternatively Neverland gets The Legend Returns out by 1999 or early 2000s so it doesn't release on a dead console
>Make Ruins of Lore a launch title for the GBA or get the polish up to the level that it doesn't look outdated in 2002 compared to Golden Sun which had released half a year earlier

There, the IP is now in a position to have kept going in the 2000s as a smaller-scale RPG series with either portable or console entries

[Anonymous No.10512826]

lufia 1 was generic af
lufia 2 was okay

[Anonymous No.10512834]

it was well known. lufia 2 is like the original gfaqs-core.

[Anonymous No.10512849]

>>10511854
I've been playing Lufia 2 but honestly I'm thinking about dropping it, it has soul but I'm getting to a point where I need to alt tab to a guide every time there's a puzzle and there are a lot of them.

[Anonymous No.10512997]

seems like a niche interest game. some of the characters look cool but overall i find it unappealing.

[Anonymous No.10513016]

>>10511854
It's no final fantasy or dragon quest sure but it did pretty well to get a handful of sequels and a questionable remake

[Anonymous No.10513058]

>>10511854
First game has that feel of being a late 8 bit jrpg except it came out in 1993 in Japan and 1995 in the us when that shit didn't fly anymore. Sequel feels like proper 16 bit style but the better jrpg series it was competing with were in a more refined second generation at that point

[Anonymous No.10513537]

>>10511854
It kind of did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufia_%26_the_Fortress_of_Doom
>In the United States, it was the top-selling Super NES game in February 1994.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufia_II:_Rise_of_the_Sinistrals
>In Japanese polls of all-time favorite Super Famicom games, Lufia II was consistently voted one of the top five between 1995 and 1996.

[Anonymous No.10513606]

>>10512407
i think you're thinking of "soul nomad and the world eaters"

[Anonymous No.10513619]

>>10512496
tell me a snes rpg where the battles arent a snoozefest that you just mash A to attack through. yeah, yeah, maybe you use a spell instead or something, but most battles you can get through by just having all characters attack.

[Anonymous No.10513626]

>>10512849
lol filtered brainlet

[Anonymous No.10513635]

>>10512849
theres like one hard puzzle in the game. the rest are toddler level.

[Anonymous No.10513639]

bold take: the ancient cave alone is better than most final fantasy games

[Anonymous No.10513697]

>>10512849
>a guide every time there's a puzzle and there are a lot of them.
i hope you are 10 years old bro, because i got bad news if you are an adult.

[Anonymous No.10513704]

>>10513639
only if you enjoy repetitive dungeon grinding with no character interaction or plot. but i guess a lot of people are like that.

[Anonymous No.10514363]

>>10513704
I'd tell you to read a book, but we both know you're too lazy for that.

[Anonymous No.10514394]

there's games mostly everyone considers unique and worthwhile, and there's games mostly everyone considers bland and forgettable, and lufia's kind of in the exact middle

[Anonymous No.10514407]

There's too many mediocre jrpgs popl have esteem and nostalgia for because it as their only game for a summer and Lufia is the face of that

[Anonymous No.10514428]

>>10511854
Isn't this the series that to get a physical copy of you have to spend meme-level money to get? I suspect that, and originally appearing on the Sega CD had an effect on it failing.

[Anonymous No.10514513]

>>10511854
>first game was bad
>second game was filled with bugs and overshadowed by final fantasy
>gb game was a clusterfuck

[Anonymous No.10515316]

>>10514513
the bugs are so negligible though. i dont understand why people have this notion that it was some sort of unplayable mess. there was like "the sword shrine" map being fucked up, and thats it. nothing else ever really mattered or impacted anything unless you did some REALLY specific shit.

[Anonymous No.10515540]

>>10514428
You're thinking of Lunar.

[Anonymous No.10515593]

>tfw you can't even bring yourself to play this past the bridge

[Anonymous No.10515652]

>>10515540
lunar is worth something? the playstation game "lunar silver story complete"? im pretty sure my mom picked up a copy from a garage sale or bargain bin in the early 2000s. it might be a little used/beat up, but its definitely a real copy. just how "meme-level" are we talking?

[Anonymous No.10515661]

>>10515652
i guess i should add that its the cardboard box set, with a thick booklet too. not just the game disc.