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Lufia is an anachronic series of role-playing games developed by Neverland that draw on elements from many other genres, including action-adventure, monster collecting, and especially puzzle games. The main antagonists of the main games are a group of evil beings known as the Sinistrals.

The series consists of:

• Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (SNES) - The Sinistrals were defeated by a band of heroes 90 years ago, but now they're back and it's all up to you (as a descendant of the heroes) to stop them.
• Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES) - The Non Linear Sequel following the adventures of Maxim and the other original heroes above. Massively spoiled by the prequel of the first.
• Lufia: The Legend Returns (GBC) - The Sinistrals fail to stay dead; heroes attempt to correct this.
• Lufia: The Ruins of Lore (GBA) - Gaiden Game set 20 years after Lufia II. Involves an evil empire attempting to resurrect The Beast.

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This series provides examples of:

• All In A Row - The entirety of the first game, and in town areas in the others.
• All Your Powers Combined - The final battle is the same as the prologue battle up until you defeat Daos, the Sinistral leader. Then, as a surprise, he and the other Sinistrals ( minus Erim)) merge together to form Guard Daos, the final boss. They try to pull the exact same trick at the end of The Legend Returns, too.
• Amnesiac Dissonance - The big plot twist in the original game, which becomes a major plot point throughout the rest of the series.
• And Now For Someone Completely Different - The Ancient Cave resets all levels to 1, except in Ruins of Lore. (And in the first game, where it's pretty much just a normal dungeon, albeit one with a handful of extra levels you can come back to later)
• A Taste Of Power - Lufia & The Fortress of Doom starts the player off with a party of very high-level characters, taking on one of the most powerful beings in the game's universe. This turns out to be a flashback that sets up the story for the rest of the game.
• Badass Grandpa - Randolph of The Legend Returns.
• Bittersweet Ending - In Lufia II, the four Sinistrels are defeated, saving the world from their rule, with the heroes able to withstand one last attack from them in their dying breaths... with the exception of Selan, who soon dies in Maxim's arms. Maxim has his companions teleport away and dies soon after from exhausting his energy to stop Doom Island from crashing into Parcelyte. The game ends with their companions celebrating their victory and anticipating the two's return, unaware of (or, possibly, unwilling to accept) their fate.
• Blind Idiot Translation: Lufia: The Legend Returns was riddled with typos, bad translations, and grammar problems galore.
• Block Puzzle - Lufia II features an enormous amount of block puzzles, ranging from "push the same-colored blocks together" to "push every block into a particular position, then bomb them in a very specific order while pressing certain switches". Surprisingly, these were almost never cases of Guide Dang It, and perfectly workable on your own (if a bit frustrating at times).
  • There are a couple of very hard block puzzles, but they're purely optional unless you're going for a perfect game.
• Boisterous Bruiser - Gades, full stop.
• Bonus Boss - The Egg Dragon in Lufia II, which requires a lengthy sidequest before you are allowed to fight it. Also, the Master Jelly at the bottom of the Ancient Cave.
• Bonus Dungeon - The Ancient Cave. Saving is not allowed, and the player must either beat the whole dungeon or use a special randomly-generated item to escape. In Lufia II, the dungeon has 100 levels, character levels are reset to 1 upon entering, and only specific kinds of equipment can be taken in and out. Ruins of Lore has 60 levels and doesn't reset levels or equipment but only allows the main character (and his monster) in. The Legend Returns resets levels and has 200 levels. Naturally, this is where the best equipment can (sometimes) be found.
• Broken Bridge
• Call Receival Area - Lufia II.
• Cap - The Egg Dragon, a Bonus Boss in Lufia II, has the largest amount of HP the game allows for. However, the developers obviously thought nobody would be silly enough to use a healing item on it, so they did not ensure that its HP could not exceed that number. As a result, you can easily defeat this boss—which normally must be faced in a New Game Plus with the ultra-expensive equipment set—by using a low-level healing item on it, thereby causing its HP to wrap around, and then attacking it once. A pretty spectacular blunder in a game where killing bosses within a certain number of rounds would yield a nice item reward...
• Character Exaggeration - The original heroes in the prologue of Lufia I speak much more formally than either the main characters or their own selves in the prequel sequel, leading to a somewhat bizarre occurrence in the final dungeon where the party enacts a conversation that was fairly ominous in the first game but actually sounds somewhat silly in the breezier language of the prequel.
• Chest Monster - Mimics, especially annoying in the Ancient Cave.
• Control Room Puzzle - Lufia II had quite a few of these (though thankfully, the switches directly affected whatever platform you were on, keeping the whole thing nice and self contained), often in two difficulty flavors apiece - "Required", and "Complete". Only a few switches were required to be turned in order to proceed with the dungeon, but most players would still try and complete the puzzle absolutely for the excellent loot.
• Cutscene Power To The Max - Lufia II has Dekar, a ludicrously over-the-top warrior who boasts of his incredible combat skills. When you first meet him (and in other subsequent cutscenes), he shows off his incredible skill by using powerful and implausible abilities such as the aptly-named "Blastmaster" that wipe out hordes of enemies at once. While actually in your party, though...
  • He is still the most powerful (and slowest) physical fighter you'll get in the game by far, but once he's joined your party, all he can do is Attack Attack Attack...
• Degraded Boss - Many, many bosses. With the exception of the Sinistrals, you don't fight an actual unique boss until around the halfway point in the first game.
• Disc One Nuke - In The Legend Returns, the game's strongest weapon, the Alumina sword, is sometimes dropped by normal enemies very early in the game.
• Dub Induced Plot Hole - Lufia II suffers from this. Due to Nintendo of America being hard-liners against religious anything in games released in the US at the time, the Sinistrals had to be changed from being called gods to being called "super beings", and "pray" to "wish". In the first reference, this worked ("You talking about the super beings out to rule the world?"). In later references it became more awkward ("I wonder what I should wish for."). And in the religiously-devoted endgame town of Narvick, it completely fell apart ("There's super beings and there's evil beings, right? So if there can be evil super beings, why no good evil ones?").
  • When Lufia II was released in Germany, it was simply called "Lufia" (the first game hadn't been released there), and the Dual Blade was renamed to "Lufiaschwert" ("Lufia Sword"). And Lufia III did this again.
• Evasive Fight Thread Episode - A recurring theme in Lufia II, where the hero Maxim is constantly challenged by other famous warriors, including fellow party members Guy, Selan, and Dekar, to see if he is truly the best. Such duels either occur off-screen with no clear winner given or are never able to occur at all, though it is usually implied that Maxim would indeed win these fights. The trope is even subtly parodied when Maxim first meets Guy and they challenge each other to a duel, only to have their duel interrupted by monsters suddenly teleporting into the middle of town just as Guy leaps into the air to strike the first blow.
• Fetch Quest - By the truckload.
• Game Breaker - In Ruins of Lore, the Chance Hit skill for the Fighter class can be acquired early in the game, consumes little MP, and deals random damage from 20 to 200 in intervals of 20 (ignoring defense but still affected by critical hits)—rendering all other attack spells pretty much obsolete and allowing many bosses to be handily defeated by otherwise puny characters for much of the game.
  • Much later in the same game, it is possible with effort and planning to recruit an Anti Core, which can be taught a wide variety of skills and has insane defense and speed—allowing it to attack up to eight times per round. Teach it Pickpocket and steal Power Sources from a certain enemy to arbitrarily boost its attack power, then teach it Rapidfire or Octostrike (no MP cost, hits all enemies) and watch as Hilarity Ensues.
  • The Legend Returns' version of the Ancient Cave gave you a chance at finding a female-only weapon known as the Iris Blade. Equip that on Seena or Aima. Watch them tank every known enemy to hell.
• Global Airship - Lufia II has first a boat and then a submarine—which, while slower and underwater, does fulfill many of the same functions as an airship, namely the ability to avoid encounters and access the next areas of the game. Eventually, of course, the sub got another upgrade and was an airship as well. Ruins of Lore technically has a boat pirate ship, but the game just lets the player move directly between locations.
• Golden Saucer - Forfeit Island in Lufia II
• Good Bad Bugs
  • Lufia II: Defeating the Egg Dragon with a healing item (see Cap, above) and the Master Jelly by killing yourself.
  • Ruins of Lore: the Sacrifice skill—a 0 MP skill that is supposed to deal 999 damage to a non-boss but kill the user—fully heals the user if they target themselves. Blue Tea in Ordens can be sold for more than the purchase price, and the Blacksmith near the beginning can be exploited to get a limitless amount of whatever item he last made.
• Hidden Elf Village - The literal hidden elf village of Elfrea in Lufia I.
• Hopeless Boss Fight - Except for the last game, the Sinistrals can only be killed with a magic sword called the Dual Blade. However, defeating one in combat prior to obtaining it (most likely thanks to a New Game Plus) results in a rare equipment drop, and a slightly altered cut-scene afterward, where the Sinistral blinks and then blows your party away anyway.
• I Know You Are In There Somewhere Fight - The hero to Lufia, after she remembers her true identity as Erim and joins the Sinistrals.
• Keep The Reward - In Lufia II, when you recover a king's stolen crown, you're offered a number of rewards, one of which is "Nothing". If you ask for nothing, you get a bigger reward than any of the other choices would have given you. In Lufia III, if you wish for nothing as a reward for beating the Master Jelly in the Ancient Cave, it will insist that your accomplishment not go unrewarded, and your characters will be given a stat increase when you leave.
• King Of All Cosmos - Arek The Absolute, the true leader of the Sinistrals (seen in the prologue of Lufia 2). Fan speculation was that he was the series' true Big Bad. Turns out he's more like a True Neutral The Watcher.
• Klotski - The "World's Hardest Puzzle" in Lufia II.
• Metal Slime - Cores, which have low HP but crazy speed and defense and tend to flee before the party can attack. Of the cores in Ruins of Lore, however, only Anti-Cores retain notable speed, allowing them to attack/flee 6-8 times per turn. Capturing one is very difficult but greatly rewarding—a late game Game Breaker with a little grinding.
• Money Spider - Lufia II has the main character start the game by walking into the item shop and apparently selling the corpses of the slimes he'd killed for the amount of money usually awarded for killing them. This included an argument when he was told the amount he could sell them for had gone down, because of how pervasive monsters had become as of late. The rest of the game just has money awarded at the end of battles, though.
• Monster Allies - Lufia II has "capsule monsters", a small group of monsters—each with their own element—that can be found outside of combat and recruited. Ruins of Lore allows you to capture and train any regular monster and teach them skills from other captured monsters. In both games, the player does not control the monster's actions.
• New Game Plus - Lufia II's version allows the player to start a new game where experience and gold received are greatly increased, speeding up Level Grinding and making buying the ultra-expensive equipment and beating the Hopeless Boss Fights (including the Bonus Boss) possible. A third "Gift" mode limits the game to the Ancient Cave and allows the player to freely select party members.
• Noble Demon - Erim bounces all over the place with this. In the original game, she was a pure evil entity who briefly turned good and found love thanks to the miracle of amnesia. The prequel Lufia 2 reveals she always had something of a split personality, having simultaneously been both an evil The Dragon to Big Bad Daos and a True Neutral The Watcher helping the hero all along. The final game, The Legend Returns, drops her back down to pure evil status, being something like a hereditary version of The Virus.
  • If anything, The Legend Returns makes her fully good, at least after The Reveal.
• Non Linear Sequel
• Older And Wiser - Dekar joins the team again in Ruins of Lore, but calling him wiser may be a bit of a stretch...
• Only Smart People May Pass - Lufia II is filled with puzzles, so get used to it. The other games have much less emphasis on puzzles, and the ones they do have are dumbed down.
• Physical God - The Sinistrals, Nintendo localization notwithstanding.
• Puzzle Boss - Except in Ruins of Lore, the Master Jelly of the Ancient Cave doesn't actually attack you but instead heals everyone and peacefully ends the fight if you cannot beat it in just a few turns. Inexperienced players—expecting the fight of their lives after such a long, difficult dungeon—are in for a rude awakening if they spend their first turns setting up defenses.
• Puzzle Reset - Lufia II included a "Reset" spell to reset any puzzle you screwed up, in case leaving and re-entering the room isn't an option.
• Randomly Drops - In particular, the quality of items found in chests in the Ancient Cave in Lufia II has no relation to the dungeon level. Not so in Ruins of Lore, though.
• Rare Candy - Sources for each stat
• Set Piece Puzzle
• Sequelitis: The two portable entries are generally poorly regarded.
• She's A Man In Japan - Oh, what a snarky girl that Artea is. In the German version of Lufia II, anyways.
• Sidequests - Naturally. Notably, in Lufia II, you can collect the various Dragonballs Dragon Eggs and bring them to the Egg Dragon to get a wish granted (selected from a list). One can keep doing this to get all the wishes, but each time a wish is granted, the eggs are randomly redistributed among all of the chests in the game. In order to recollect them, one must get all the normal treasures beforehand and then use Sonar to find dungeons that suddenly have unclaimed treasure. Exhausting your wishes allows you to take the Egg Dragon on as a Bonus Boss.
• Solo Character Run - Soloing with the main character in Ruins of Lore quickly makes the early game a breeze and allows you to learn the various game-breaking class skills that much quicker. Who needs a party when you can deal random amounts of damage for cheap (Chance Hit), heal yourself fully for free (Sacrifice), skip most normal fights (Tear Gas), and attack all enemies for free (Rapidfire)? In addition, the Ancient Cave bonus dungeon only allows the main character (and a pet monster) in anyway. Good Bad Bugs help with the equipment selection, as well, if you're so inclined.
• Soup Cans - The games contain many unlikely ways to lock a door, occasionally devolving into this trope. A door that opens when all of the grass patch nearby is fully grown, anyone? And you can make the grass grow by walking over it...
• Stay In The Kitchen - Lufia II. The guys, especially Maxim, are perhaps overly protective of Tia (who does tend to get into trouble) and Selan (who doesn't). However, just before a big battle, Maxim tells Tia and Selan that he needs them to do something more important than fighting The Dragon: they have to coordinate an evacuation. With that justification, they agree to stay out of the fight.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel - Lufia II adds huge amounts of innovation and fun to the fairly standard system of the original. Note that almost every example here comes from Lufia II.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend - Tia in Lufia II, to the point where she leaves the party when Maxim marries Selan because simply seeing him would cause her pain.
• Vicious Cycle - The Sinistrels continuing to revive.
• Wedding Crashers - In Lufia II, Maxim and Selan happily took off the minute after they said their vows to respond to a sudden report of monsters at the castle. It was noted that they'd both been wearing armor under the other stuff. Kinky.
• Wutai Theft - Oh, Seena.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair - This is actually a plot point. The girl with the blue hair, in every game, is Erim, the Sinistral of Death. Yes, that includes Lufia herself. Never trust the blue-haired girl.
  • Subverted in Lufia II, where Erim's 'counterpart', Iris, actually has green hair, and simply goes to the normal shade of Blue after The Reveal.
    • Tia is the first girl with blue hair you meet in the 2nd game and is not Erim. Something of a Red Herring as she resembles Lufia from the first game.

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