Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete

"By the power of Althena!"

Silver Star Story Complete is quite the charming RPG, especially if you're playing the superior albeit overpriced Playstation version. When compared to the Saturn version of the game, there are more important characters, more dialogue and significantly faster loading times. So if you're somehow struggling with system choice on this game ten years after its release, Playstation is the way to go. Saturns are probably impossible to find these days, anyway.

Lunar's story takes place on the planet of Lunar, with a giant blue star serving as the planet's moon -- like if Earth were some barren wasteland and humanity actually lived happily on the Moon somewhere. You begin as Alex in the tiny village of Burg, and Alex's dream in life is to experience adventure and follow in the footsteps of his hero, Dragonmaster Dyne. Dyne had died 15 years before the story of Lunar begins, and no one really knows how or why. Presumably, Dyne's death helped save Lunar from certain destruction at the hands of some otherworldly evils.

Things aren't so bleak when SSSC first begins. The story is more or less Alex seeking adventure with his best friends, and his ultimate goal is to find the four dragons of the world and become the next Dragonmaster. There's no giant pressing need for the world to be saved in the beginning of the game, but of course this all changes. The game's main evil shows up after some very well-done plot twists, and Alex's destiny is to become dragonmaster and save the world. There's obviously much more to it than this, but Lunar is filled with so many twists and turns that you're better off experiencing them for yourself. Lunar's story overall is amazing despite how cliché and cheesy it gets at times. A lot of what happens is surprisingly deep and breaks the fourth wall, including the question of religious morality: Are humans better served by having free will of their own future, or do they need rigid control and predetermination from a higher power?

On top of this, the characters in Lunar are very, very well-done and have a lot of inner relationships adding to the story's experience. Alex and Luna's dialogue is a little lacking compared to everyone else, but they're still top-notch. Between all the character relationships in your party, the funny things said by townpeople and deep villains, you'll experience a wide range of emotions while going through the game's storyline. It has a tendency to be a bit fetch questy at times, but it's all worth it in the end given the spectacular ending of the game.

Even better is Lunar not being a story-driven RPG, because it's an absolute blast to play. You have your generic RPG stuff with world maps and talking to townpeople and entering dungeons and stuff, but the battle system is this game's bread and butter. From the very beginning, the enemies are quite unforgiving with you. There's no adjustment period on scrubs to get you used to everything; if you try to go through the first dungeon unprepared, you'll probably die. Hell even if you are prepared, you may still have to bail out and heal a few times. Regular enemies can be a real pain unless you overlevel past them, but Lunar knows this. As such, boss strength grows along with your main character's strength. This isn't to discourage leveling up per se, but Lunar is a rare RPG insofar as you'll never hit a point where your party is invincible. There are no random encounters, so you'll screw yourself out of much-needed experience if you try and skip everything. But if you get too strong, some of the bosses, especially the last few, can maim the unprepared or unlucky.

In the actual fights, Lunar has an amazing system of character position and spell radius affecting many attacks. In most RPGs, you just select an attack and watch it hit stuff. In Lunar, especially early on, you have to consider the consequences of some attacks before doing them. For example, Alex's weapon of choice is a sword. When you choose to use a basic physical attack, he'll run up to an enemy, hit it once and that's it. No running back to the party's front line; he's now exposed to potential attacks from all the enemies that are close, and he could die if the enemies gang up on him. So do you defend for a round or two as your ranged attackers soften up the enemies with pot shots, or do you charge in right away with guns blazing and kill the enemy before they kill you? Fights get considerably easier as your party grows stronger, but the early parts of the game offer a lot of strategy typically not seen in the JRPG genre. It's a battle system very similar to Chrono Trigger, only with enemies that can actually hurt you and no dual or triple party member attacks.

That said, the battle system doesn't get any less fun as you grow stronger and learn new things. Your physical attackers will eventually attack 2 or 3 (or even 4 and 5) times per round, you'll learn some very fun catch-all magic attacks, and you'll even have some random status effects to throw at the enemies now and again for good measure. Nothing beats Alex and Kyle getting a combined 8 attacks off against a bunch of hypnotized enemies, and it stays fun from start to finish. Bosses generally require much more refined strategies because of how hard most are, which amounts to "cast all your buffs, spam single target attacks, heal when necessary and win".

The story is amazing and the battle system is near-flawless, which is the tried and true formula for making a good RPG. But there's even more. The reason Lunar is so charming is because it does so many things well, both little and small. All the townspeople have something funny to say if you talk to them twice, even at the game's darkest hour. Your party's characters do the same thing, even if they're fresh off of getting their asses whipped. Sure the world might end soon, but that doesn't stop Nall from craving fish or Jessica and Kyle from bickering like an old married couple.

There are no inns to stay in. Just touch an Althena statue in town and you're healed. There are no status effects, even death, that last after a battle. Nall revives anyone, and status effects just go away. Everyone has a funny spell quote or two, including the last few bosses. When Jessica uses a basic physical attack in battle, her hood pops off for a second. Enemies strike a pose if they're about to let loose a special attack. There are a ton of bawdy jokes and random scantily clad pictures of women, and all sorts of silly things hidden in the game for no real reason. That's just the type of game Lunar is; fun for the hell of it. And above all else, it took a look at what Final Fantasy 7 was doing at the time and said "Screw you, sprites are better". Sprites always win.

Speaking of which, this game's graphics are unbelievably top-notch for how simple it looks. The detail on all the sprites is amazing, the world map and dungeons and towns very bright and colorful, and even the various anime scenes of the game are well-done. Or as well-done as small anime scenes can be, I suppose.

To find any flaws in Lunar, you have to be extremely nitpicky outside of a couple obvious issues. First and foremost, the voice acting in this game is just over-the-top atrocious. Voice acting is almost never a deal-breaker in any one game, but be prepared to have your opinion of a few characters change when you hear them speak. The catch here is that once you beat the game, you'll unlock an outtakes scene in which the voice actors were clearly told to sound as ridiculous as possible while doing the characters. Because again, Lunar is randomly fun and silly just for the hell of it. The soundtrack, while not overly bad or good, isn't very memorable. The battle theme and main boss theme in particular don't seem to fit the game's atmosphere very well, but admittedly music is a purely subjective taste.

Which leaves the one actual design flaw in Lunar: "AI" is the default option in battle. This means when you save the game and turn it off, you're guaranteed to select "AI" in your next fight and watch as your characters expend magic points filleting some random giant ant.

And that's it. That's the one problem Lunar has. I'm sure you'll get over it.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/07/09

Game Release: Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (US, 05/28/99)