Lufia II casts a spell on North America this fall

The Nintendo DS revamp of 1995's Super Nintendo role-playing game Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is coming to North America from publisher Natsume. The slightly re-titled Lufia II: Curse of the Sinistrals will arrive in stores this fall and will be shown next month at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Curse of the Sinistrals abandons the SNES game's turn-based mechanics in favor of an action role-playing game slant. Players will assume the role of Maxim the monster hunter, fighting to defeat the four nefarious "Sinistrals," whose acts are plaguing the countryside. Throughout the course of the game's narrative, Maxim will band together with five others, traversing the game's geography, solving puzzles, defeating enemies, and collecting items.

The franchise originated in 1993 with Lufia & The Fortress of Doom on the SNES and was followed by the aforesaid Rise of the Sinistrals two years later. Although it began on consoles, the most recent entries in the series have released exclusively on portable devices. Lufia: The Legend Returns came to the GameBoy Color in North America in 2001, followed by Lufia: The Ruins of Lore on the GameBoy Advance in 2003. Each entry was an RPG experience like its predecessors, although Ruins of Lore was a side story in the Lufia overall narrative.