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Lufia 1 is a game with a lot of charm and a surprising amount of character, but it also has more than its share of rough edges. The game is a contemporary of Final Fantasy 5, but in a few not great ways, it looks and plays more like the earliest SNES JRPG's.

This romhack combines a lot of changes which make the experience less 1990 and more 1993. The font and typesetting changes make both the dialogue and the UI feel better, the localization edits remove a lot of immersion-breaking Engrish, and the faster walk speed and lower RE rate make exploration feel more fluid. In total, the game feels better and is more approachable for newcomers, and I would call this a great hack with no major compromises.

The game still has its problems, but most of the outstanding issues are kinda beyond the scope of this hack, and I'm not sure if they're even fixable. I have a few suggestions, though.

Suggestion 1: The script could really use further revision, as making it clearer who's speaking would improve characterization and clarify exchanges between characters, and there are still a few word choices which don't make sense in the context of the dialogue being spoken (like ransom versus sacrifice). I could provide a specific list of edits for that.

Suggestion 2: I wish something could be done about the save system too, as the game has no pre-boss save points, and some towns have no Church. Fixing it properly seems like a major undertaking, so a simpler compromise solution would be to remove or greatly lessen the party wipe penalty, so players aren't heavily penalized for not reloading. I think removing the penalty is ideal, as if a player has wiped, letting them keep their gold will help them resupply or improve their equipment before trying again. But if a penalty has to be retained, I think it should be no greater than -10%, given how grindy gold-farming is.

Played through this and found all the little improvements a nice touch with only a few downfalls. The increased movement speed in dungeons and world map needs to be accompanied by a reduction of encounter rate. The encounter rate in this game is already very high, and while playing with this mod you tend to rush from random battle to battle with less than a second of world map or dungeon map music playing.

I ended up finishing the game in 16hrs with an end game stat of 1349 random battles with a "runaway" count of 657, and I still feel like I was a bit overleveled. The game probably needs random encounters reduced by 30-40% to put it in line with other games. I understand the need for purity to maintain balance but the increased movement speed rushing you from battle to battle makes the game's encounter rate feel even more horrible than it already is with the slower movement rate.

Fantastic hack and highly recommended. It works wonderfully and makes the adventure much more enjoyable and comfortable to play.

Lufia & the Fortress of Doom Restored is a hack which greatly improves the overall feel and experience of this game. As mentioned in the readme file, various censored graphics as those of priests and churches are restored as they were originally in the Japanese version of the game. The text has also been cleaned up quite a bit and now features the correct names of alcoholic beverages sold in bars instead of the "cider" drinks used in the official localized translation, along with newly added item descriptions (press the "X" button as with spells) and an expiration notice for the Sweet Water and Foul Water items. And last, but not least, it also replaces the slow walking speed in dungeons and on the world map with the much better and faster pace of the one used in towns.

This really does seem like the vastly improved and definite way of playing this game. I would recommend this hack to both first time players and those wanting an enhanced replay experience. The naming schemes in this hack also conform with those in the "Frue Lufia" hack as well for the second game in this series, which is also highly recommended for the same aforementioned reasons as this one. Please give them both a try as they're guaranteed to not disappoint and will feel like a pleasant improvement for all fans of the Lufia series.

I've played and beaten all the Lufia entries before, but it had been a particularly long time since I'd played through Lufia I. I'd played a number of Vivify's translation cleanups before, so I decided to give this a whirl since it not only cleaned up the text but added a few quality of life improvements as well.

The cleanups are great from start to finish, and the restored functions do add greatly to the game!

The only gripes I have are that the final boss, even with its restored moveset, is still a total push-over, and status effects are still way too OP throughout this game. However, these definitely do not take away from the good this patch does-play it!