A flawed Masterpiece in a niche existence.

Energy Breaker is my first full foray into the vaulted Lufia series. I played a little bit of "Rise of the Sinstrals" a few years ago, but I stopped when I had the kid. There were a number of reasons for this, but I won't get into them later. Maybe one day I'll replay it and discuss it then, but this is about the unknown entry. Energy Breaker was never released outside of Japan, and it didn't do so well at home. It's so unknown that it doesn't have a Wikipedia page. There's only a stub on the Lufia fandom page. Is there a reason for it?

To answer that question outright, let's see what Neverland/Taito did wrong.

The game mechanics drove me mad. Nothing is tutorialized in EB. Is it one of those games where you need the manual to fully understand it? Regardless, I don't have that. It took me far too long to learn how to put a negative point into my skills, and I  kept getting mad when I wouldn't learn Elby. Elby is the healing spell, so it's kinda important. In fact, I didn't learn any spells until nearly twelve hours in. It was frustrating and ruined the game. I nearly quit playing there.

The random difficulty spikes were awful. I spoke about the endless horde fights a few times, and one actually did get me to quit. I came back, but I'm uncertain if it was worth it. Having long, drawn out battles against tanks isn't a fun way to spend an hour. These weren't fun.

Limited item inventory is becoming a deal breaker for me. Five characters get a total of eight items a piece, but half of those will be gear. You can find a way to double them, so you'll find some salvation from it eventually. But you'll still be flicking back and forth between the ten menu screens. All the Item Boxes do is shift the tedium somewhere else.

The pacing, especially towards the end, isn't great. We get Myra's big reveal until the penultimate battle, so it doesn't have any time to mean anything. And nothing even changes; she's the same person as before, but we know she's immortal now. What does that mean?

There are also several plot holes and inconsistencies that ruin the plot. For starters: time travel. We do it a bunch, and it creates a lot of paradoxes. If Parasite went back in time to make Limitz a General, how, when, and why? The flower thing left me asking multiple questions. How did we see, in the same time period, two versions of Limly? By the way, her name's not Limly, but my brain decided not to remember what it really was. The game also leaves several unanswered questions. What's the point of Pygma? Dorothy and Parasite fight over him, and then he loses all plot relevance. What's the deal with the old man taking the grandkids around the island to find their parents? We see them twice but don't get any reason to care or end to their journey. Finally, who the hell is Krill, and how did Star become immortal?

Those are damning indictments to Energy Breaker and explains why I tried to drop it twice. But I kept playing. Why?

First of all, the music is fantastic! According to RPGFan.com, it was composed by Yukio Nakajima, Yasunori Shiono, and Yusei Yamamoto. I've never heard of any of those people and don't know how extensive their resume goes, but I'm curious. The slow, mellow tunes would fit in on my precious Spotify playlist, and I even enjoyed the dungeon/action pieces. There are two songs, especially, that make me want to come back to the OST. It, alone, makes playing EB worth it.

The combat was fun. It's a simple tactical battlefield, but it won't overwhelm you (outside of a few question moments). You know what to do, where you can go. Because it's an adventure style RPG, you wouldn't expect this type of battle system. And because there's no comparison, it doesn't have to be excruciatingly deep. It works, is smooth, is fun, and I'd like to see it more.

I enjoyed the characters. Everyone has clear motivations and goals, and there are a few twists throughout. There are a lot of plot holes, which I brought up earlier, but I enjoyed what we saw. They're all unique, interesting, and even have some minor differences in their spells. I still feel like Myra was the least relevant, which just feels wrong.

The goods are equal to the bad, but there's little middle ground in Energy Breaker. What it does well is amazing, but when it falls, everything falls hard. And I think that's the biggest issue with the game. It's the inconsistency. The translation team broke the fourth wall to explain that the devs dropped a few things towards the end, which is pretty obvious. Some things got cut, and it impacted the game in so many ways. Sadly, since there's no Wikipedia for it, I can't be sure what happened. And it's just a niche game that I doubt there's much information to find in the first place. But let's wrap this up with a tl;dr!

Plot: Inconsistence and filled with holes. It's a time travel plot with an amnesiac framing mechanic. Things are going to get lost in stories like this. 7/10

Gameplay: Huh? Everything works, but I don't know how it works. 6/10

Art: Maybe the best? The graphics might be among the best in the system. There might be too many blue haired people, mind you, because I got confused on a few spirits every now and then. 10/10

Sound: Worthy of a Final Fantasy. I'm going to say something controversial here. Energy Breaker is the third best soundtrack on the SNES. Strong words from a strong man... 10/10

Charm: I don't really know how to explain this. I think the rush job messed with it a lot, but there are a few things still here. 6/10

The only negatives are the confusing element allocation and the item inventory limits.

In the end, Energy Breaker is a solid 35/50. A great 70 percent!