(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.