Although it is the second game in the series, Lufia II is the first game chronologically (indeed, Lufia & the Fortress of Doom starts in the final dungeon of Lufia II and spoils the ending). Additionally, Lufia II is much more polished than its predecessor; Lufia still has a lot of NES RPG conventions while Lufia II benefits from several years of learning on how to do a good user experience in an SNES RPG.
Lufia II is a turn-based JRPG with a rather unique design for its dungeon crawling. The mechanics of movement through dungeons takes some cues from the roguelike genre; all enemies are visible on the map and they only move when you take an action. This can be manipulated to get back attacks or to dodge around enemies. Additionally the game has a large number of Zelda-esque puzzles to progress through the dungeons or to get treasure. It makes for a more interesting experience instead of just facing random encounters until you get to the boss.
Combat involves a party of up to four characters against enemies. It is standard turn based where everyone selects their action at the start and then it plays out according to your battle speeds. The game features physical attacks and magic attacks, but something unique to the series is a limit break-esque mechanic called IP. You gain IP as you take damage at a fairly generous rate, so you can expect to fill a bar regularly. You use IP to activate skills of your equipped items. Not all items have a skill available and different skills require different percentages of your IP bar. Many of these skills are unique effects you can't get elsewhere and it adds a degree of strategy to how you outfit your characters; it's not always advantageous to use the statistically best piece of gear.
The final unique thing to the game is the Ancient Cave, a challenge dungeon consisting of 100 randomly generated floors. At the start you are stripped of all your items, spells, and levels and get a stock of 10 potions. The dungeon is strewn about with treasure chests to reequip your party and regain magic and a bunch of monsters to get your levels back. There are also occasional full heal or full magic tiles to keep you in the fight. If you die you are kicked out of the dungeon and your party will be back to the way they were before starting. There is also an escape item that can be gained around the 20th floor in case things are going south. The reason you would use this item before the end is that in addition to regular chests there are blue treasure chests. The items from blue chests are not removed from your inventory when you start the Ancient Cave and many are quite powerful statistically. A few of the blue chest items can also be found in regular gameplay but most are unique. You must use the escape item to keep blue chest items you have opened in that particular run. Beating all 100 floors is one of the biggest optional challenges in the game.
So I look forward to seeing how everyone of you enjoys this one. It's definitely one of the lesser known RPGs for the system but is a real hidden gem.
