Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete

"A classic revival of a classic game"

Yes, I suckered myself into buying a Sega CD. There were about a dozen games for it that I dared to play, and one of them, and the one to rule them all, was Eternal Blue, the sequel to a game called Lunar. Both were later updated and rereleased onto the Playstation, and I can't think of any two games that deserved another chance on a better system any more than the Lunar pair.

The story, as before, is set on the world of Lunar, which orbits the lifeless Blue Star. Some awesome threat awakens Lucia, a mysterious young woman whose purpose is to eventually bring life back to the Blue Star (my friends made some stupid joke about the title being about what she dyes her hair with). She sets out to Lunar to warn the local goddess Althena of what she has foreseen, but unfortunately, all of Althena's servants think that LUCIA is the menace, and is bent on destroy Lunar.

Seeking the help of a young archeologist named Hiro (ha! irony!), and his wisecracking flying cat (why does that sound familiar? Maybe because there's a guy named Nall in this game too), Lucia sets out for the holy city of Pentagulia to find Althena and warn her before it's too late. Since this is an RPG, their tiny group will eventually grow include a group of companions with a wide array of unique and potent contributions to make to the group: Ronfar, a gambling healer who gave up on himself when he failed to purge a curse from his lover's body, Jean, a carnival dancer with martial arts skills, and Leminia Ausa, a money-grubbing magician trying to revive the magic guild of Vane. There's even White Knight Leo, Ronfar's childhood friend and the head of Althena's guards, whose confidence in his orders is gradually shaken by the sincerity of Lucia and her friends.

The original Eternal Blue had a system where you got points you could spend to increase the strength of your characters' magic...OR to save the game. Yeah, it cost you something to save the game. It also took forever to gain levels, and there were some plenty tough bosses to be reckoned with in the game, so like any RPG you needed your levels as high as you could get them. There's good news and bad news about this in the rerelease: the points system to upgrade magic (and save the game) is gone and they go up automatically as the character gains levels, but levels are only a little easier to get in this game than they were in the Sega CD version. So it's still a struggle to get enough power to make beating the newest kinds of enemies, let alone the boss monster of the dungeon you're trying to get through, an easy job.

The progression through the game is like any other RPG: you fight monsters around a town to get money and experience, you buy the best stuff the town has to offer to arm your party, then you head to a dungeon and kill an insanely strong monsters to be allowed to move on to the next part of the game where you get to do it again, but with stronger monsters and weapons. As with any good RPG, though, it's how exactly that's done that makes Eternal Blue worthy of a perfect ten.

First off, Eternal Blue was the first RPG I played that had characters I cared about, and came to care about more the more I played it. I worried what would happen to Ruby when Lucia and Hiro started to get closer, I worried about what Leo would do when he realized that everything he believed in was a lie. Even Silver Star didn't have that kind of effect on me, though it was a cut above most RPGs too. The rerelease was, if anything, even more endearing with the additional material it's able to provide for character development, such as new anime-style cut scenes that weren't in the original game.

Each of the main villains is a fleshed out character. They're not evil just because they can be (except the head honcho). They have their own wants and goals and personalities. Each is a character you will meet and enjoy toppling, not just a name with no motivation you will be fighting. And nobody is the hero's evil twin brother.

The game came with a number of extras, like a CD soundtrack, and even a replica of the necklace Lucia wears (though I'm a little too self conscious to actually wear it myself). There's plenty of extras in the game itself, too, like the bromides, which are items that let you see poster art of of the lovely ladies of the Lunar world.

Lunar: Eternal Blue is a game that does nearly everything right that an RPG can. If you can find this, you won't be sorry for picking it up.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/13/04