According to Famitsu, the Hard Mode changes the story a little bit, and gives you more access to the Ancient Cave.

I can say I like the game so far. Is the camera bad? You can't move it, but it doesn't bother me. The things you can't easily see on it are things you're not supposed to see easily (much like how things were sometimes hidden behind something in Lufia 2).

The game starts off with a short cutscene on a boat... featuring Maxim and... Lexis. Yeah, apparently they're partners, or Maxim's working for him. After that, you get to choose what to do on the world map (I think the options are, from up to down: area, items, equipment, load game, save game). Choose the first area and you get right down to playing, straight into a dungeon. It's nothing like the tutorial dungeon or the first dungeon from the original. You get some short tutorial thingy sometimes and enemies fighting. No puzzles in it though. After that you'll get your first boss. I won't spoil what it is, or what happens afterwards, but you'll dig the music.

The game is pretty fast. You don't spend a lot of time in cutscenes, and I like it. So far there's not much talking... sometimes something is said. No CG so far either (game isn't too big in terms of data size). You'll literally be at that boss within 10 minutes of starting the game up. That's how fast it is.

Then you'll get to the first town. Lexis has his own laboratory there. Town isn't very big, but it's decent sized for the first one. If you're stuck and talked to everyone... try talking to Tia from behind the counter. She'll also sell things after the event. I recommend getting some healing items and anti-poison items (the blue and green potions), since you'll probably need them.

You'll get to the next dungeon afterwards, and that's the first real dungeon. It has a couple of puzzles, but nothing too hard. There's a couple of annoying enemies later in the dungeon that can kill you in no time if you don't watch it. I've had so many close calls already. The game isn't too hard, but it's most certainly not too easy either. The dungeon itself is pretty complex though. Pits and platforms everywhere. Walking around it is just as confusing as the map on the bottom screen makes it seem.

And after that dungeon I quit. Here's the controls:

B: Jump
A: Roll
Y: Attack
X: IP attack
R: Charge
R+Y: Special attack 1 (costs IP)
R+X Special attack 2 (not everyone seems to have it)
L: Switch IP abilities... or something.

You switch characters with the touch screen. Retry option is also on the touch screen, and the same goes for the escape option. Doesn't cost anything.

The story so far seems very different though. But the game itself plays very well. In the normal dungeon encounters you just hear the regular dungeon song, but you'll get one of the Lufia battle songs in the special encounters.

Menu options

World Map
Character Screen
- Status
- Items
- Equipment
- Misc
--Options
--Treasures (five slots - are they key items?
--Tutorial
Load
Save

You hear The Last Duel and Battle 3 right off the bat >_>

Niiice

Retry option is also on the touch screen, and the same goes for the escape option.

Well, I've played for a while longer now. It seems that most of the smaller quests are gone. In the original, you'd get 2 dungeons. Then you'd get Tia, then a dungeon with her, then you get Guy... and I think you have 1 or 2 dungeons in between before you get Selan. But here I've done 4 dungeons, and have 4 characters. I'm hoping the game will at least be 20 or so hours for the main quest, but it looks like it may be closer to 12-15 hours (which seems rather standard for action-RPG's).

I`ve played the first dungeon myself now, and I have to agree that the camera does not seem to be much of a bother so far. I like that it dynamically changes depending on the scene as well.

Music is great and nostalgic. First boss was awesome.

Battles aren`t too hard, but this is the first area after all. And its not supposed to be until the second play through anyways, at least according to interviews.

Won't say how long it took me, but I got past the first Gades battle. It was a pretty hard battle that started out easy. But maybe he was supposed to defeat me. I don't know. Guess I'll hear people who die in the battle.

Once the grid system is introduced, you'll find lots of those pieces. I don't know the exact requirements for what you can place where, but the grid-pieces you fiend have some stat ups, and depending on where you place them other stats could go up. Of course, since I don't know Japanese, and since you find so damn many of them, I just place them randomly.

Oh, and every character as a big grid block, and there's 6 of those blocks. It seems you can share some grid panels as well depending on how you place them.

The capsule monsters are sad absent. They might have a role in the game, but I doubt it. There are a lot less towns though, and you get characters much sooner/faster. The puzzles... they're different from Lufia 2. Not that they're easy though, but I've yet to encounter one that truly cracks my brain. There were a couple of those in the Lufia 2 main game.

And I died 2 times today. My Maxim is totally overpowered. Neither bosses nor enemies can kill him, but I died because of something else. The solution I used was to just stand in the beam with Maxim since he only gets 1 dmg constantly. He's a much better shield than that block >.<