(Used romhack to revert difficulty to the Japanese original)
Coming into Lunar, I was filled with a sense of dread. The last game I played that was published by Working Designs was Cosmic Fantasy 2, and my review on that one is far from polite. Reading up some of the reviews on Lunar, I started to worry that this was gonna turn out pretty much like that game. Monotonous combat, a wasted storyline, and me walking out of it thanking Althena that it's finally over.
To my surprise, Lunar actually turned out to be... a little better than I expected, and felt like a palette cleanser after some of the more recent RPG's I had to put up with, Romancing SaGa haunting my dreams day and night withstanding. Is its combat complex? Oh, god no, there is an auto-battle command, and you can spam that shit to kingdom come from beginning to the very end, it is as basic as it gets. However, encounter rates are forgiving. Grinding is minimal, I only did it twice across my 20-hour run, and I'm not sure if I even needed to. The music is varied, and pleasant on the ears. The magic can be actually useful at times, whoa, now there's an incredible thing. You spend plenty of time exploring towns and getting new bits of story, and I overall think it's enough to prevent you from getting bored.
Of course, you'll need to bring your appreciation for 90's anime aesthetics with you for the "not bored" claim to really hold up, because if you aren't fond of that, then I'm afraid there's not much else left for you. Back in 1992, CD Audio is still a fancy new toy for developers to play around with, and Lunar places all its bets on making that the main charm of the game. Something I've found especially charming are the character intros. Everytime you run into an important character, a heroic jingle plays and they get some unique introductory art to go along with it. If Lunar was actually a popular game instead of a cult classic, these intros feel like something you could meme to hell and back. Put Jerma in one of these, except he gets the evil character intro theme.
The battle system uses a slight variation of the formation mechanic, in which the further a character is placed in the back row, the more turns they need to walk up to the enemy and hit them. In other words, it's not like most RPG's where the characters are swinging swords at each other from 20 feet away. It's slightly more real-time than that, where the character needs to physically walk up to the enemy and close the distance before being able to land a hit. Same goes for enemies landing physical damage on you. If a character's too far away, they'll move a little closer, but not close enough to land a hit. This was kinda interesting at first, but as usual, it is remedied by equipping back-row characters with long range weaponry and making use of magic spells. Once you figure that out, it's no different from any other RPG system.
Probably the biggest annoyance with the gameplay is the lack of creative dungeon design. Oops! All Mazes! Never was a fan of this sort of design, especially for RPG's where it becomes all the more clear that they are there just to waste your time. Throw in some break rooms, maybe some puzzle rooms where there are no battle encounters, a minigame, something that doesn't make it the one thousandth cave I've traveled through.
Lunar may also be likely to draw you in based on its writing alone. It's weird, wacky, tends to break the fourth wall... It's kinda mean-spirited at times. That's Working Designs showing their stuff right there, baby. Exile & Cosmic Fantasy had slivers of this, but it seems like Lunar was the game where they truly just up and went "fuck it, we're publishing this, it's our game now." There are pros to this... there are also problems with it that ring a little bit of ego.
Bear in mind, I'm not that much of a purist, it's fine for a localization to not be 1:1 with the original, and sometimes there are creative liberties taken that make the localization better than the original. However, it is both funny and partially infuriating to see this game's manual talking about the importance of staying faithful to the source material, before one sentence later talking about how they rewrote the opening theme song's lyrics to be less "lovey-dovey" and more "urgent", and claiming it's a change for the better. Seeing the localizer just outright contradict themselves like this, not to mention outright admitting their version is an improvement feels like it's lacking in the humble department.
Similarly, I take some concern with Working Design's claim that they had to replace various jokes to be more understandable for American audiences. And that's fine to do. I get it, some Japanese humor is too reliant on wordplays, puns, and the country's culture to be translatable. But, what's your excuse if you're inserting pop culture references into scenes that didn't have any? Legends of Localization did a short little article about one instance of the game doing this, and it's unfortunate they never did a more thorough look at one of these games, as immediately my curiosity wants to know how many more instances of this are there.
To be a localizer, you need to have the skill of a writer. A straight translation of a foreign language is unlikely to sound natural, so it's up to you to decide how to reshuffle everything and take advantage of your language's unique vocabulary in order for the script to flow naturally, while still preserving the overall intent of the original. In that sense, a localization always has some degree of opinion to it. However, taking a fantasy setting like this and essentially turning it into a parody of itself feels like steering the ship wheel a bit too far in the wrong direction. Rather than enhancing what's already there, you changed it completely and made it yours. That's where the problem arises for me.
Yes, your localization was amusing. Kinda dumb, but it did make for a more entertaining game at the end of the day, and it's possible I might've found Lunar kinda boring if it was more accurate. But I feel dirty admitting that. Because for all the genuine care and love that you poured into these publishing efforts, it's baffling that the one thing you didn't pay heed to is consistent faithfulness to the tone. The game's climatic moment, and what I've personally found to be the most memorable one, is undercut by a fourth wall break followed by a comment about spanking the villain. It's hard to say whether this was part of the original script or not, I don't speak the language so I'm not qualified to fully explore this. However, either the case is that the original script kinda ruined the mood of this scene, or the localizers did. Either way the jokes could've worked if they fit naturally, but instead they consist of dated references, and scat humor that make it blatantly clear they don't belong.
Anyway, that's probably gonna be the last time I rant about my localization woes, otherwise it's gonna get tiring. Is Lustar: The Silver Nar worth your time? Ehhh, maybe. For me, Lunar came at just the right time after a series of painfully slow and difficult RPG's. Lunar is not slow, it's not difficult, and it has some charm to it, some of it for the better and some of it not. If you ran out of popular RPG's to play and are hunting for some more obscure ones, I don't think you can go wrong with this one. Good enough for what it does, but the lack of complexity ultimately takes away any potential replayability. I'm interested in seeing how the later Lunar games hold up, including their remakes.
Coming into Lunar, I was filled with a sense of dread. The last game I played that was published by Working Designs was Cosmic Fantasy 2, and my review on that one is far from polite. Reading up some of the reviews on Lunar, I started to worry that this was gonna turn out pretty much like that game. Monotonous combat, a wasted storyline, and me walking out of it thanking Althena that it's finally over.
To my surprise, Lunar actually turned out to be... a little better than I expected, and felt like a palette cleanser after some of the more recent RPG's I had to put up with, Romancing SaGa haunting my dreams day and night withstanding. Is its combat complex? Oh, god no, there is an auto-battle command, and you can spam that shit to kingdom come from beginning to the very end, it is as basic as it gets. However, encounter rates are forgiving. Grinding is minimal, I only did it twice across my 20-hour run, and I'm not sure if I even needed to. The music is varied, and pleasant on the ears. The magic can be actually useful at times, whoa, now there's an incredible thing. You spend plenty of time exploring towns and getting new bits of story, and I overall think it's enough to prevent you from getting bored.
Of course, you'll need to bring your appreciation for 90's anime aesthetics with you for the "not bored" claim to really hold up, because if you aren't fond of that, then I'm afraid there's not much else left for you. Back in 1992, CD Audio is still a fancy new toy for developers to play around with, and Lunar places all its bets on making that the main charm of the game. Something I've found especially charming are the character intros. Everytime you run into an important character, a heroic jingle plays and they get some unique introductory art to go along with it. If Lunar was actually a popular game instead of a cult classic, these intros feel like something you could meme to hell and back. Put Jerma in one of these, except he gets the evil character intro theme.
The battle system uses a slight variation of the formation mechanic, in which the further a character is placed in the back row, the more turns they need to walk up to the enemy and hit them. In other words, it's not like most RPG's where the characters are swinging swords at each other from 20 feet away. It's slightly more real-time than that, where the character needs to physically walk up to the enemy and close the distance before being able to land a hit. Same goes for enemies landing physical damage on you. If a character's too far away, they'll move a little closer, but not close enough to land a hit. This was kinda interesting at first, but as usual, it is remedied by equipping back-row characters with long range weaponry and making use of magic spells. Once you figure that out, it's no different from any other RPG system.
Probably the biggest annoyance with the gameplay is the lack of creative dungeon design. Oops! All Mazes! Never was a fan of this sort of design, especially for RPG's where it becomes all the more clear that they are there just to waste your time. Throw in some break rooms, maybe some puzzle rooms where there are no battle encounters, a minigame, something that doesn't make it the one thousandth cave I've traveled through.
Lunar may also be likely to draw you in based on its writing alone. It's weird, wacky, tends to break the fourth wall... It's kinda mean-spirited at times. That's Working Designs showing their stuff right there, baby. Exile & Cosmic Fantasy had slivers of this, but it seems like Lunar was the game where they truly just up and went "fuck it, we're publishing this, it's our game now." There are pros to this... there are also problems with it that ring a little bit of ego.
Bear in mind, I'm not that much of a purist, it's fine for a localization to not be 1:1 with the original, and sometimes there are creative liberties taken that make the localization better than the original. However, it is both funny and partially infuriating to see this game's manual talking about the importance of staying faithful to the source material, before one sentence later talking about how they rewrote the opening theme song's lyrics to be less "lovey-dovey" and more "urgent", and claiming it's a change for the better. Seeing the localizer just outright contradict themselves like this, not to mention outright admitting their version is an improvement feels like it's lacking in the humble department.
Similarly, I take some concern with Working Design's claim that they had to replace various jokes to be more understandable for American audiences. And that's fine to do. I get it, some Japanese humor is too reliant on wordplays, puns, and the country's culture to be translatable. But, what's your excuse if you're inserting pop culture references into scenes that didn't have any? Legends of Localization did a short little article about one instance of the game doing this, and it's unfortunate they never did a more thorough look at one of these games, as immediately my curiosity wants to know how many more instances of this are there.
To be a localizer, you need to have the skill of a writer. A straight translation of a foreign language is unlikely to sound natural, so it's up to you to decide how to reshuffle everything and take advantage of your language's unique vocabulary in order for the script to flow naturally, while still preserving the overall intent of the original. In that sense, a localization always has some degree of opinion to it. However, taking a fantasy setting like this and essentially turning it into a parody of itself feels like steering the ship wheel a bit too far in the wrong direction. Rather than enhancing what's already there, you changed it completely and made it yours. That's where the problem arises for me.
Yes, your localization was amusing. Kinda dumb, but it did make for a more entertaining game at the end of the day, and it's possible I might've found Lunar kinda boring if it was more accurate. But I feel dirty admitting that. Because for all the genuine care and love that you poured into these publishing efforts, it's baffling that the one thing you didn't pay heed to is consistent faithfulness to the tone. The game's climatic moment, and what I've personally found to be the most memorable one, is undercut by a fourth wall break followed by a comment about spanking the villain. It's hard to say whether this was part of the original script or not, I don't speak the language so I'm not qualified to fully explore this. However, either the case is that the original script kinda ruined the mood of this scene, or the localizers did. Either way the jokes could've worked if they fit naturally, but instead they consist of dated references, and scat humor that make it blatantly clear they don't belong.
Anyway, that's probably gonna be the last time I rant about my localization woes, otherwise it's gonna get tiring. Is Lustar: The Silver Nar worth your time? Ehhh, maybe. For me, Lunar came at just the right time after a series of painfully slow and difficult RPG's. Lunar is not slow, it's not difficult, and it has some charm to it, some of it for the better and some of it not. If you ran out of popular RPG's to play and are hunting for some more obscure ones, I don't think you can go wrong with this one. Good enough for what it does, but the lack of complexity ultimately takes away any potential replayability. I'm interested in seeing how the later Lunar games hold up, including their remakes.
Gosh, I hardly know what to say. There are some games--Shining Force 2 is one of them for me--that feel like eating a chocolate chip cookie with a warm cup of coffee all snuggled up while the snow is falling down outside.
Lunar is a cozy game; it goes down so smoothly and so easily. It's so cozy and goes down so easily because of the Sega CD which just so happens to be perfect.
And so is this game. The graphics are gorgeous, the soundtrack is wonderful--including songs that sound like they had one of those slidey-tubey sound things as an instrument.
Also the CD-System animations and the voice over and the lovely and cheesy Working Designs localization...all of it is perfect.
You won't find anything here but the absolute best vibes in the universe. If you don't find early 90s CD-Era animated cutscenes and chintzy voice acting charming, genuinely don't waste your time! But if you do, playing this game will be a very, very lovely time for you.
What else can I say? I love it.
Lunar is a cozy game; it goes down so smoothly and so easily. It's so cozy and goes down so easily because of the Sega CD which just so happens to be perfect.
And so is this game. The graphics are gorgeous, the soundtrack is wonderful--including songs that sound like they had one of those slidey-tubey sound things as an instrument.
Also the CD-System animations and the voice over and the lovely and cheesy Working Designs localization...all of it is perfect.
You won't find anything here but the absolute best vibes in the universe. If you don't find early 90s CD-Era animated cutscenes and chintzy voice acting charming, genuinely don't waste your time! But if you do, playing this game will be a very, very lovely time for you.
What else can I say? I love it.
I'm not going to lie, most of this review is based on the absolutely groundbreaking power of the Sega CD system to deliver a fantastic soundtrack. The graphics are fine, the game play is fine, it's a bit silly, which is good, but the sounds are what set it apart. This is also one of my earliest memory of significant anime-style cutscenes and the CD-quality dialogue laid over them are just stellar (pun intended). Sure, there's the slow load times of the Sega CD to deal with, but listening to this game is a joy. It's actually one of the few game soundtracks I'd listen to on its own. It's probably the best Sega CD game I owned and played!
Review from thedonproject.com
Review from thedonproject.com
This review contains spoilers
Note: This review covers my thoughts on Lunar 1 or SEGA CD, PS1 and PSP.
The best version of the first Lunar game is The Silver Star on SEGA CD. For the record, I started with SSH on PSP, and still find TSS the best (ie no nostalgia.) A cliche adventrue RPG, but it basically created a lot of said RPG cliches (eg the Bishuonen villain.) Pros: So much more is at at stake here than the remakes. The entire village of Burg is captured and enslaved to build the Grindery. Ghaleon kills Quark with much blood. Nash is much less of a dick (he does a triple cross to gather information but comes back and explans his reasons.) Xenobia actually cares about the future of her tribe and doesn't elnslave them. Ghaleon's motavation is being driven made by grief over Dyne's "death", and it works better than the remake motivation imo. Music is better quality Redbook Audio than the PS1/Saturn remakes (PSP is the only equal in this regard.) Unless you are playing on a high-end CRT, Pixel-based proto FMV looks better on a modern display than grainy FMV in most remakes. Like all versions, you can save anywhere, and like the PS1, you have Working Designs hillarious translation and good voice acting. Bigger dungeons than PS1/Saturn/PSP. Beautiful character art. Every character has unique skills. Simple but enjoyable turn based combat, with a range stat not usually found in other RPGs.
Debatable: Random battles instead of encounterable enemies.
Cons: Fewer voiced lines than in the PS1 remake. No item/spell descriptions. Alex is a silent protagonist. Luna leaves before Saith and has little story significance/no Boat Song like in the remakes. Borderline incest between Alex and Luna in all versions.
The best version of the first Lunar game is The Silver Star on SEGA CD. For the record, I started with SSH on PSP, and still find TSS the best (ie no nostalgia.) A cliche adventrue RPG, but it basically created a lot of said RPG cliches (eg the Bishuonen villain.) Pros: So much more is at at stake here than the remakes. The entire village of Burg is captured and enslaved to build the Grindery. Ghaleon kills Quark with much blood. Nash is much less of a dick (he does a triple cross to gather information but comes back and explans his reasons.) Xenobia actually cares about the future of her tribe and doesn't elnslave them. Ghaleon's motavation is being driven made by grief over Dyne's "death", and it works better than the remake motivation imo. Music is better quality Redbook Audio than the PS1/Saturn remakes (PSP is the only equal in this regard.) Unless you are playing on a high-end CRT, Pixel-based proto FMV looks better on a modern display than grainy FMV in most remakes. Like all versions, you can save anywhere, and like the PS1, you have Working Designs hillarious translation and good voice acting. Bigger dungeons than PS1/Saturn/PSP. Beautiful character art. Every character has unique skills. Simple but enjoyable turn based combat, with a range stat not usually found in other RPGs.
Debatable: Random battles instead of encounterable enemies.
Cons: Fewer voiced lines than in the PS1 remake. No item/spell descriptions. Alex is a silent protagonist. Luna leaves before Saith and has little story significance/no Boat Song like in the remakes. Borderline incest between Alex and Luna in all versions.
What? A young man is fated to save the world from an oncoming evil? He and his buds must travel all over the world in order to collect items and defeat bad guys in order to stop that evil? yawn
This might be the easiest JRPG I've come across to date. It is baby's first JRPG for sure. Use the auto battle, grab a map to help you sort through the game's often identical looking cave dungeons, and chill out to the game's excellent CD soundtrack.
This might be the easiest JRPG I've come across to date. It is baby's first JRPG for sure. Use the auto battle, grab a map to help you sort through the game's often identical looking cave dungeons, and chill out to the game's excellent CD soundtrack.
So much charm and personality, but I dropped it my first time through and had to come back a second time to finish it, mostly due to some very egregious lack of QoL. There is a lot to like about this, but the PSX remake has to be considered the definitive way to play it.
Pretty standard lil RPG. This is probably a hot take but I think the working designs translation honestly gives this game more character and personality than if they had just played it straight. The characters and plot are goofy and while there are a lot of cringe jokes they feel endearingly cringe to me. I'd definitely recommend playing the patch that makes the text easier to read and fixes the wack difficulty changes.
Working Designs is BACK and they're here to shoehorn in jokes about Bill Clinton into your JRPGs that will horribly date them immediately!
Or maybe that happens in Lunar: Eternal Blue... Look, I can barely keep these games straight when it comes to characters and humor since they seem to follow the general Working Designs outline for localization. Characters are reduced down to their most basic elements, which are then played up to the point of being a caricature. Toss in loads of (then) current pop culture references and sexism and you've got yourself a game.
They're also known for making alterations to how their games play, though yet again I could not tell you what they changed mechanically with this one. Lunar: The Silver Star is a very barebones RPG, in any case. It's the sort of game where you can rely upon one or two attacks per character and sweep most encounters, whether they're random battles or end game boss fights. There's not much to this one outside of its cutscenes, which are well rendered on the Sega CD. It's anime, 90s anime, the sort of shit everyone eats up now but totally would've gotten you shoved into a locker back in the day. Enduring repeated swirlies is the price you pay for enjoying Lunar: The Silver Star in 1992. In 2022 the price is about 129$ for a used copy. Misery all around.
Compared to its sequel, the story is pretty scaled back and fairly one-note. I do have to wonder if a lot of the nuance was stripped away in localization, but I'm still a sucker for Working Design's scorched Earth policy when it comes to doing right by these things. I'm sure very little of the identity of Lunar remains, but there's still some fun stuff here, and (from what I can remember) nobody says any slurs in this one, which is a marked improvement over PopFul Mail and Albert Odyssey. That said, Eternal Blue does tell a more emotionally engaging and complex narrative, and The Silver Star is a bit of a prerequisite given how much it expands upon the characters, story, and world that Silver Star establishes. To put it another way: I enjoyed The Silver Star while I was playing it, but after completing Eternal Blue I really don't care to ever go back.
There's better JRPGs that are more worth your time, even on the Sega CD, and Working Designs isn't for everyone. Personally, I found the gameplay to be a little boring and the story a little too simplistic, but it's not bereft of charm.
Or maybe that happens in Lunar: Eternal Blue... Look, I can barely keep these games straight when it comes to characters and humor since they seem to follow the general Working Designs outline for localization. Characters are reduced down to their most basic elements, which are then played up to the point of being a caricature. Toss in loads of (then) current pop culture references and sexism and you've got yourself a game.
They're also known for making alterations to how their games play, though yet again I could not tell you what they changed mechanically with this one. Lunar: The Silver Star is a very barebones RPG, in any case. It's the sort of game where you can rely upon one or two attacks per character and sweep most encounters, whether they're random battles or end game boss fights. There's not much to this one outside of its cutscenes, which are well rendered on the Sega CD. It's anime, 90s anime, the sort of shit everyone eats up now but totally would've gotten you shoved into a locker back in the day. Enduring repeated swirlies is the price you pay for enjoying Lunar: The Silver Star in 1992. In 2022 the price is about 129$ for a used copy. Misery all around.
Compared to its sequel, the story is pretty scaled back and fairly one-note. I do have to wonder if a lot of the nuance was stripped away in localization, but I'm still a sucker for Working Design's scorched Earth policy when it comes to doing right by these things. I'm sure very little of the identity of Lunar remains, but there's still some fun stuff here, and (from what I can remember) nobody says any slurs in this one, which is a marked improvement over PopFul Mail and Albert Odyssey. That said, Eternal Blue does tell a more emotionally engaging and complex narrative, and The Silver Star is a bit of a prerequisite given how much it expands upon the characters, story, and world that Silver Star establishes. To put it another way: I enjoyed The Silver Star while I was playing it, but after completing Eternal Blue I really don't care to ever go back.
There's better JRPGs that are more worth your time, even on the Sega CD, and Working Designs isn't for everyone. Personally, I found the gameplay to be a little boring and the story a little too simplistic, but it's not bereft of charm.
read.
Sega CD version
Lunar: The Silver Star offered a better realized version of Dragon Quest's aesthetics and excelled in charm. Despite the lackluster battle system and uninspired premise, the goofy characters, lighthearted witty humor, and memorable soundtrack helped to convey the sense of a grand adventure. But mostly, its strengths are owed to the hardware, The Sega CD - graphically and performance-wise, brought the quality standard and polish of PC games over to the console generation.
though i have just now played the game in its entirety for myself, i have some history with it going back into the mid '90s. see, i actually owned a copy of it and had played just a bit of it before a friend of mine offered to buy it from me. he had a new sega cd, and i was far more stoked on squaresoft games; i wanted to buy a copy of chrono trigger (which was retailing for EIGHTY BUCKS!) and, well, lunar got me there. that's pretty much the long and short of it.
still, though the game was no longer mine i did see bits of it over at my friend's house. its music felt familiar and nostalgic even as i began to play it last month. now, in 2020, this version of the game carries with it the charming mystique of those early '90s cd-rom games from japan which largely eluded me as a teenager (i mean, until the ps1 and saturn... but i'm talking about the sega cd and the turbo cd, among others). in short, my enjoyment of this game leans heavily on this vibe.
it's just not a particularly great jrpg. it's not bad! it's good enough that i still look forward to seeing what improvements are made in eternal blue and the psx/saturn remakes. and frankly, the working designs localization does it no favors. i did not need to read dialogue about using barney video tapes as target practice in a fantasy rpg. also, there's a serious imbalance in the obnoxious encounter rate when i can't walk two steps without getting into a fight half the time, but every single boss fight is over in 3 or 4 turns. this is absolutely one of those jrpgs where the endless battling becomes tedious, especially since you're just attacking (or choosing 'ai', which is... also just attacking) most of the time.
aside from wanting certain quality of life improvements to menus and understanding what spells do, i hope the future games are much more colorful. this one made overwhelming use of brown and often felt very drab—not the best use of the system's color palette, at least outside of the really nice anime-style pixel art cinematics.
one last note: the music is great! i just love this style of early disc-based, prog rock inspired jrpg music. from what i've heard, it's actually much more pleasing to my tastes than the music in the remakes. we'll see, though.
still, though the game was no longer mine i did see bits of it over at my friend's house. its music felt familiar and nostalgic even as i began to play it last month. now, in 2020, this version of the game carries with it the charming mystique of those early '90s cd-rom games from japan which largely eluded me as a teenager (i mean, until the ps1 and saturn... but i'm talking about the sega cd and the turbo cd, among others). in short, my enjoyment of this game leans heavily on this vibe.
it's just not a particularly great jrpg. it's not bad! it's good enough that i still look forward to seeing what improvements are made in eternal blue and the psx/saturn remakes. and frankly, the working designs localization does it no favors. i did not need to read dialogue about using barney video tapes as target practice in a fantasy rpg. also, there's a serious imbalance in the obnoxious encounter rate when i can't walk two steps without getting into a fight half the time, but every single boss fight is over in 3 or 4 turns. this is absolutely one of those jrpgs where the endless battling becomes tedious, especially since you're just attacking (or choosing 'ai', which is... also just attacking) most of the time.
aside from wanting certain quality of life improvements to menus and understanding what spells do, i hope the future games are much more colorful. this one made overwhelming use of brown and often felt very drab—not the best use of the system's color palette, at least outside of the really nice anime-style pixel art cinematics.
one last note: the music is great! i just love this style of early disc-based, prog rock inspired jrpg music. from what i've heard, it's actually much more pleasing to my tastes than the music in the remakes. we'll see, though.