Lufia/YMMV

And the Fandom Rejoiced: Despite fan's disappointment with the condensing of story and changing of the characters and many other things in Curse of the Sinistrals, one change was welcomed Erim sacrifices herself so that Maxim and Selan will live. Yes, after fifteen years, fans get to see them go home instead of die on Doom Island. Probably the one change fans welcomed.
Awesome Ego: Dekar is an egotist that openly boasts that he's the strongest warrior ANYWHERE, and his fans will agree with him.
Broken Base: A lot of fans were displeased with the series after Lufia II, filing the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games firmly into Fanon Discontinuity territory. That the GBA game was not even made by the same company or development team helped this too.
- And don't even ask about the DS remake: is it just what the series needed, or is it a textbook case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks?
Cargo Ship: Dekar/his sword.

Dekar: My love is my sword!
Guy: I think you should stay away from thoughts like that.

Complete Monster: The Sinistrals. Except for Arek and Erim. It is implied that there are good Sinistrals, just that none of them are around at the moment. In the DS version, it's also implied that at one point the evil ones used to be nice.
Crazy Awesome: Dekar. The whale scene mentioned below is his high point in Lufia II, but Curse of the Sinistrals takes it even farther. One of the first things he does is boot a giant robotic eye into the stratosphere, and in a later scene, he drops in from literally nowhere when Maxim asks who Tia's new boyfriend is, then Hand Waves it with "The greatest boyfriend in the world always comes when he's needed!". He also claims to have destroyed an entire parallel universe in order to come back from his Heroic Sacrifice. Since we're not given any other explanation, we can only assume that it's true.
- From any other character at all, this would be unbelievable and downright strange. From Dekar, we smile knowingly and accept that it happened without complaint.
  - Let's face it, Dekar's overall level of crazy awesome and badassery is only surpassed by Jack Rakkan himself.
Crowning Music of Awesome:
- "For the Savior" from Lufia II was such a nice track that the music composer for Super Robot Wars K actually plagarized it. The original is also very nice sounding for a 16-bit piece of soundtrack.
- This Troper honestly feels the whole soundtrack is insanely epic. Especially the arranged tracks out with the release of Curse of the Sinistrals.
- The battle music with the Sinistrals in Lufia II is epic for an SNES title.
Cult Classic
Ensemble Darkhorse: Dekar, if the amount of tropes and fanfiction about him say anything. He even reappears in The Ruins of Lore.
- In a meta sort of way, Lufia II is this for the whole series.
Game Breaker: In The 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.
- The DS remake of Lufia II introduces Level Boosting. If you get a game over, you have the option to increase your party members' levels by 5. This increase is not only permanent, but repeatable as well. It is entirely possible to reach level 99 in less than an hour by purposely letting monsters kill you over and over again.
Good Bad Bugs:
- Lufia II: defeating the Egg Dragon with a healing item (see Cap in the main section) and the Master Jelly by killing yourself.
- The 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.
Memetic Badass: Dekar is somewhat of a canon example in Lufia II.
Memetic Mutation: The fact that Artea (a male) can equip a bunny girl outfit.
- While it's not as widespread of a meme as Artea, Yurist of The Legend Returns is also somewhat notorious for being able to equip equipment that is normally exclusive to the female party members.
- "This is what I would call frue destruction!"
Sequelitis: The two portable entries are generally poorly regarded. The third portable entry is technologically better, but still a Base Breaker in its own right.
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.
That One Boss:
- Tarantula from Lufia II;; is likely the hardest fight in the entire series.
- The first encounter with Amon is no joke either. Status changing spells and massive damage attacks will haunt you.
- Gades in the DS version.
- If you haven't mastered the art of charging up your attacks in the DS version, then Daos will kill you. No exceptions.
Tough Act to Follow: While some are better than others, none of the games made for the series after Rise of the Sinistrals were ever as warmly received.
The Woobie: In Rise of the Sinistrals, it's not real hard to feel at least some sympathy for Tia as she leaves.