Lufia 2 AC Movement Guide

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Movement, as in navigating around the map to manipulate encounters in your favor, is one of the key elements in Lufia 2. It could easily be seen as the first half of the battle system, because it determines surprise attacks, or allows you to pass enemies altogether that you'd rather not fight. This allows you to save time, prevent taking damage, and skip enemies you couldn't dream of defeating.

While this guide is about the Ancient Cave, where movement is your only option to navigate around enemies, the rules are identical for the main story, with the latter having additional access to tools such as the Arrow, which allow you to stun enemies to pass them without triggering an encounter.

Enemy Sprites

A sprite on the map represents an encounter of one or more enemies. The sprite will hint at what enemies you will encounter, but sprites reappear for different types of enemies. Also, enemies appear mixed with other enemies (which are always based on the map sprite), however you can always be sure that the enemy hinted at by the map sprite will be present at least once.

Encounter Rules

An encounter will take place when an enemy ends up on one of the four adjacent tiles of Maxim, or on the same tile (which can happen with teleporters, or when entering a floor).

No matter how large an enemy's sprite appears, only the tiles it actually occupies (as in those you can't step on) are taken into consideration for triggering encounters.

Surprise Attacks

The relative facing of Maxim and an enemy determines whether you will be surprised ("Surprise Attack!"), or get a preemptive attack ("Got in first!").

  • 100% chance of
    a preemptive attack

  • 50% chance of
    a preemptive attack

  • 50% chance of
    a preemptive attack

  • 0% chance of
    a preemptive attack

  • 100% chance of
    being surprised

  • 50% chance of
    being surprised

  • 0% chance of
    being surprised

  • 0% chance of
    being surprised

The favored side gets a free turn of attacks or other actions, which also means an opportunity to escape without getting hit at all. After this turn, the battle continues normally. This can be a big advantage or disadvantage depending on the side you find yourself on, and since it makes such a big difference in both time and survivability, you should always try to maximize the chance for preemptive attacks and minimize the chance of being surprised.

Only enemies with sprites facing in different directions can surprise-attack, or be surprise-attacked. The sole exception is the Ghost Ship sprite, which has a facing and therefore can be surprise-attacked, yet never actually changes its facing.

Battle Transitions

The amount of enemies in a group varies between one and four (or one and two, as long as there are no characters other than Maxim in the party), however some enemies take up two of those slots. Even with enemies calling for reinforcements, there is a maximum number of four enemies you will be fighting at the same time.

When you escape a battle, the sprite you were encountering will remain on the map. It will not move for a single step, allowing you to get out of its encounter range if its speed isn't higher than one tile per step. The next time you encounter this sprite, you will find the same constellation of enemies at the time you escaped from them.

When enemies run from you, or you defeat all enemies, their sprite will disappear from the map.

Player Actions

Turn-Based System

Enemy sprites will never move when you do nothing, so you have as much time as you want/need to invest to figure out the correct movement sequence.

They move whenever you press a directional key to walk, which includes walking against an obstacle. This guide will refer to a single unit of player movement as a step throughout.

You can turn into a direction without moving by holding the R button, which will also not make enemies move. It's recommended to do so every time when turning, for example to open a chest, in order to not waste steps.

While it largely appears that enemies move at the same time as the player, they actually move directly after the player does. This means that their movement already takes the player's movement into consideration.

Sword Slashing

Just like taking a single step, slashing the sword will make enemies move in the same way as if you'd have taken a single step.

For enemies that have move relative to your movement direction, you can use an exploit called "R-Slashing", which is slashing the sword while holding down the R button and holding a direction. This will make enemies move just as if Maxim would have moved in the direction he's facing - except that holding down the R button prevents your movement, so only the enemy will end up moving.

Expanding on that, you can do "Hadouken-Slashing", which works like R-Slashing, but includes a well-timed quarter circle motion to end up facing a different direction, while the enemy's movement still considers your original direction for its movement. This tech's only useful application is getting a 50% chance of a preemptive attack on Trolls.

Entering Stairs

Walking on a stairs tile transports you to the next floor. If there is an enemy next to you after your move, the encounter happens before the transport does.

Enemies always spawn facing downwards, and spawning directly next to an enemy on the next floor will immediately trigger an encounter. You can eliminate the chance of getting surprise-attacked by making sure you're facing upward when that happens, either by entering the stairs from below or by holding the R button and Up on the D-Pad during the floor transition to change your facing before encounters are happening.

Movement Properties

Enemy movement behavior is composed of several preperties, which are explained in detail in this section.

Patterns

  • stationary
  • random
  • teleporting
  • rotating
  • following the player

Activation

Some enemies have an activation condition, which changes their movement pattern. This condition may be a radius in tiles, a field of view in a cone-like shape (although this is square-based rather than involving diagonals), or being in the same room as them.

Some enemies continue to execute their active pattern after Maxim leaves their activation area, and others return to their idle pattern.

Speeds

Moving enemies will move with a frequency relative to Maxim's walking speed, meaning they move a certain amount of tiles every time Maxim takes a single step.

  • 1/3 speed (1 step for every 3 steps Maxim takes)
  • 1/2 speed (1 step for every 2 steps Maxim takes)
  • Regular speed (1 step for every 1 step Maxim takes)
  • 2x speed (2 steps for every 1 step Maxim takes)

Any set speed is fixed, so an enemy with 1/3 speed will always move after the 3rd step, never after the 2nd or 4th.

Some movement patterns have different speeds for horizontal/vertical movement.

Individual Pattern Breakdown

Cyclops

Interactive Map Objects

Doors

...

Treasure Chests

Chests are unpassable objects for player and enemy sprites alike.

When walking on a tile next to a chest while an enemy sprite enters the encounter radius of the player, it is possible to open the chest before the encounter takes place. This will consider the player facing downwards (which is always the case after opening a chest), as far as determining surprise attacks go.

If an enemy sprite would walk in a direction and is stopped from moving there by a chest, its facing will not change. For large sprites, this is only true for the main tile.

Bushes

Bushes are unpassable objects for player and enemy alike, until cut by the player using the sword.

If an enemy sprite would walk in a direction and is stopped from moving there by a bush, its facing will not change. For large sprites, this is only true for the main tile.

Healing Tiles

A bush with a different sprite can be cut just like any regular bush, except that it will reveal a healing tile when cut.

This tile is passable for the player, but not normally for enemies - large enemy sprites will only consider their main tile regarding healing tiles though, meaning their right tile can move on top of a healing tile.