Lufia II is just what I, as a gamer, would have loved for every game ever made. It gives you the full back-story for the original Lufia. It is a superb prequel to the original Lufia and can defiantly be called a classic. It's combat system is truly original and in parts, far ahead of it's time. The sound and music are fairly good, and were, on their release, most likely considered top of the line. Its graphics are some very good examples of what older systems are capable of. The intriguing plot will hold your interest as you guide a nice sized cast to save the world.

The story starts out with the main character, Maxim, returning to Elcid to get money for the monsters he killed in the area outside of town. Maxim, who is a skilled swordsman, has been protecting the city as of recently. The owner, Tia and Maxim seem to have a bit of romantic interest between them, but Maxim seems a bit less interested than Tia quite obviously is. After talking to the townspeople and getting slightly acquainted with the current situation, an elderly man on the edge of town will stop you before you leave and offer to take you to a cave to work on your skills. The cave is basically a tutorial dungeon, which you soon learn why, at first glance, the game can seem like it is a cross between Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest. After you return to Elcid, you have dinner with Tia. You then find out, after dinner, that Sundletan has been overrun with monsters and they are also blocking the North Cave, which leads you there. You obviously go to investigate, and after defeating a "boss" monster at the bottom of the cave, you meet a strange woman who tells you your destiny to fight a great evil. She disappears and you go back to the surface. The story will move on from there and only gets better.

The game control is quite similar to Lufia I, with a few obvious exceptions. First off, you now have more options in your menu screen. Along with the Item, Spell, and Equip commands, you now have a Capsule menu, which is where you feed and choose your capsule creature, which I will go into in a bit. The scenario item menu has been moved out to the main menu area and sorting out your items and spells is done from their respective menus instead of from the config menu.

Saving is still restricted to city priests and save spots, exactly like in Lufia, but you will find that Lufia II is more generous in giving you hp and mp recharge points along with the save point. The map and town commands are essentially the same as in Lufia. The dungeon commands, on the other hand, are nearly completely redesigned. You now have skills that can be used in the dungeon itself. These include arrows, which freeze enemies in their tracks, bombs, and perhaps the most popular enhancement to the Legend of Zelda series, the hook shot. Unlike in Lufia, the dungeons are less like labyrinths of monsters with special items along the way. This time there are difficult puzzles you must complete throughout the dungeons. Also, the dungeon dwelling monsters now show themselves throughout the dungeon. You can even avoid them if you need to now. The monsters only move when you make an action such as walking or swinging your sword. There has been an added command where you hit the R button and a directional key and you can turn without making any monsters move around.

The battle system in the game is also different in many ways to the original. Combat is now purely turn based, meaning you select your moves all at once as do the monsters; and attacking order is all a matter of how fast your characters are compared to the monsters and the other characters. There is now an initial menu in which you choose if you wish to move character's order around, run away, or enter the battle menu. The battle cross menus have only been altered in one way. With the run command now on the initial menu, it's spot has been taken over by a new command called IP. Think of IP as, if you are familiar with Final Fantasy VII, Limit breaks. As your characters take damage, your IP meter grows. You can then, in battle, spend these points to initiate powers from the weapons and armors you have equipped. Not all weapons or armors have IP functions. This can hugely influence your choice of weapons and armor along the way. Each IP move takes different amounts of IP, and as in most games, the more of whatever the points you happen to have, the more points you spend, the better the attack or whatever the function. As always, there is also an attack "with weapon" function, a magic function, a defend function, and an item function.

Another major addition to the battles is Capsule Creatures. These are creatures you pick up along the way that help you to fight. There are different types of these creatures, one for each of the elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Light, and Dark. There is also a neutral elemental one, which uses non-elemental attacks. These Capsule Creatures, which highly remind me of a cross between Final Fantasy 8's Guardian Forces and Pokemon (It was made before Pokemon and Final Fantasy 8 by the way), fight with their own will. They will use whatever attacks they think are necessary and, if the enemy is either too strong or has done too much damage to them, they will run away. There are various levels of these creatures. The levels are I, II, III, IV, and M. I, II, III, and IV can be achieved by feeding your creature various weapons, armors, and other assorted items. The M level is achieved by feeding it one of the many special fruits you pick up at various levels. The creatures will level up like your characters with experience points. They will not, however, gain the aforementioned levels (Roman Numeral Levels) by gaining experience. Each roman numeral level is different from the previous and has different powers and abilities. New abilities may be gained at some levels by gaining enough experience points to learn it. You can only change which creature you have selected outside of battles and they are automatically at the far right-back corner of your attacking characters. They cannot be affected like characters can by status attacks. If they are elemental in nature, they will be strong against attacks of their own elemental type and weak against their opposing elements (Ex. The Fire Capsule creature will stand up well against fire attacks, but will be highly effected by a water attack.) You cannot heal your Capsule Creatures in battle except with full party healing IP moves and by the capsule creatures' own powers. They automatically heal after the battle. I must tell you all, more than a few times when the rest of my part has been out of commission in one way or another (except completely KOed), those capsule creatures have saved the day. But, Capsule Creatures do not count as a normal character could if the rest of the party is KOed. If the Capsule Creature is still standing but the rest of the party is KOed, you have lost the battle.

This prequel, unlike in Lufia, has more than just the four "heroes" of the games. You will have in your party a total of seven separate characters throughout the game. Unfortunately, once you have "lost" a character, by either them leaving, dieing, or disappearing, you also loose any item they happen to have equipped. There were a few times where I had to go back a rather long way to unequipped vital equipment from a character that was on the verge of leaving the group and took good items with him. For your items' own protection in the game, please keep a sharp eye out for events that could make a character leave your party and prepare for it's occurrence.

Like in Lufia, there is a Forfeit Island, a shopping mall of a town in which everything, item and weapon alike, you ever sell will immediately end up. I've found a great way to secure your items that you know you will need later, but don't want to carry for whatever reason, is to use Forfeit Island more as a Vault. For weapons and armor, if you wish to feed them to a capsule creature, they will reappear in the pawnshop that sells your sold items on Forfeit immediately. This can make feeding Capsule Creatures extremely effective equipment, though slightly more expensive, much easier to deal with in the game. This, unfortunately, does not count for items, special fruits, or other such items. Once those are used or fed, they are gone for good. Another item making a return appearance are Dragon Eggs. I won't tell you the exact location of them or the Dragon's shrine, but at the most, you will have 7 of the 8 Dragon Eggs by the time you can first have the possibility of reaching it.

The last item I'll mention that is making a highly improved return appearance is the Old Cave. This time, instead of just going in, getting the treasure, and leaving, you play though 99 randomly made levels filled with monsters and items, most of which you can't take with you. You and all of your capsule creatures begin at level one of the cave and of your skills and stats. All of your items are also striped from you with the exception of items you found in the cave before. You then progress though the deep cave, struggle along staying alive, and get a rather lengthy tour of the beasts that inhabit the world. When you reach level 99, though I will not tell you what exactly happens, but I will tell you it may just make the long trek, which can take hours with absolutely no save points to turn to, somewhat worthwhile. The labyrinth changes each time you enter so you will not play it the same way twice. The only part of the cave that I can see that doesn't change is what levels you meet the monsters at.

The sound and music in the game are improved over Lufia I. They set the mood fairly well. I especially like the way they used remixes of a few of the better songs from the original. They also made a change with the fighting sounds. This time, each weapon type actually does sound different. That was a bit of a complaint I had in the original, especially when an arrow sounded the exact same as a sword. The sound was good for the time period.

The graphics are also improved over Lufia I and seem more like anime in many ways than the original. It is rather good for 16-Bit graphics. There are several bugs in the game, but nothing extremely critical in the end. One thing I liked was how this time around battles take place in a new background area instead of just being on top of the normal area map. Each, like in most RPGs of the era and type (2D type), is different, depending on where you are. The enemies were also much improved from the original game's enemies. They look slightly more like monsters than in Lufia I. The cities look quit a bit more like cities. They are now each separate from the rest of the city map. You have to enter to see what is within the building. I'm especially impressed that they gave most of the game's priests a cathedral looking place to stand in. It makes it look more realistic.

Lufia II lives up to its predecessor and more. Though at times it may seem easier in ways, there are parts that are extremely tough. The only truly annoying thing, though is since it's a prequel, not a sequel, you already know basically what will happen at the end of the game. Fortunately, it did change a bit from Lufia's opening, but you still have a feeling what is going to happen before you venture to Doom Island. That being said, you will not be disappointed by this game. It is a great mix of traditional RPG, adventure type, and puzzle games and will hold your interest with its great story line though the entire game. Overall, I give this game an 80%.