Gameplay is the game's best and worst quality.
Lufia games have always been on the rather long side. While the original
Lufia and the Fortress of Doom consisted of the rather uninspired 'troubled town- dungeon to fix it - next troubled town - etc' formula, it was the wonderfully large range of gameplay and setting it was able to derive from it's varying dungeons that was most remarkable.
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals expanded upon this 201 percent. Using the visible monsters groups as a key point in most puzzles and the almost
Zeldaesque depth of interaction you had with the dungeons themselves,
Lufia II offered some of the most enjoyable dungeon crawling one could hope to find on the SNES.
Sadly, that is nowhere to be seen in The Legend Returns. For whatever the reason, Natsume decided to make all the dungeon layouts completely random. For this reason, the character, depth and puzzles that were the cornerstone of previous Lufia games are NOWHERE to be seen. The end result of this is every dungeon feels EXACTLY like the last one. The same tired 'corridor-room-corridor-room' experience is replayed over and over again in every dungeon, and fans of the series will recall there are LOTS of dungeons. Although Lufia's only major flaw, it is a huge one that makes for very tedious gameplay and will likely be the cause of many people not finishing the game.
The most impressive quality of Lufia III has to be its battle system. For the most part, it is very similar to Lufia II in terms of what characters can do in a fight. The twist is that fights now consist of 9 active party members (12 total), instead of 4-5. This may seem like too much at first, but actually lends itself to a very customizable group by the end of the game. First of all, only one person (whom you choose every turn) in each vertical column actually enters a command, which means 3 people go every turn. Every member has an innate 'color stat': red, blue, yellow, and green. As you progress in the game, you use learning points to increase a characters color stat. The color stat serves two purposes; first of all each color increases specific character stats such as STR or WIS. The thing that keeps you thinking is that any character's color stat also affects everyone in the same row and column as them. Also, the IP skills that characters learn require a certain number of each color to learn. It's really one of those things you have to see to understand. ;)
