Lunar: The Silver Star

"I can't believe how overrated the game is..."

Story: 6/10

The storyline begins where a young teen named Alex is worshiping at the shrine of the late Dragonmaster Dyne. His selfish flying cat, Nall, is with him, and reminds him to practice his song with Luna, Alex's girlfriend. After that, a friend of yours, named Ramus, wants to go to a cave to pick up a mysterious ring from a white dragon and sell it. And your adventure begins there, with numerous plot twists to come.

Gameplay: 6/10

This is mostly your average RPG. Lunar: The Silver Star brings nothing original in the genere, but at least it gives the RPG fans what they expect. You walk around the overworld to reach to different towns and caves. Among the way, you'll get ether spare or frequent battle encounters. At first, the battle system is pretty fun, but it gets repetitive after a while. In the turn-based battles, you may ether attack a certain foe, attack any random foe, use magic spells, use an item, or run away from the battle. All the creatures you defeat vary in terms of their attack patterns, their speed, and their defenses to ether normal attacks or magic attacks. After defeating all the creatures, you'll win, get silver (the game's currency) and experience points. This is all pretty typical for an RPG.

When you are in towns, you can expect most casual RPG elements, such as a shop to buy items for healing methods or power ups, a weapon shop, and an armory shop. In each town you visit, there will always be an important person you need to meet in order to proceed the storyline. When you travel in caves or bases, you pretty much just walk through going up and down the floors and encounter numerous battles. Unlike some RPG's, Lunar: The Silver Star contains very little puzzles to figure out when it comes to going through caves and such. You'll also have to fly back to the same towns over and over again as you proceed as well.

This all may sound like a pretty good RPG, but sadly, there're some faults to point out. The battle encounter ratio is so messed up. You'll have times where you rarely have any creature appear to take you down, or you'll get extremely frequent encounters that become a strong annoyance. Sometimes running away from battles is such a pain too. Some of your allies you meet on your journey are very slow, and are often the last ones to leave, and often the ones to get attacked before they leave with the others. Most of the battles are easy and repetitive, so there's no point in sticking around to take them down, so it's best to run away. Another annoying flaw in this game is the game's lack of guidance in the storyline. There are a few areas in the game where you get very little clues on what to do next. There's also a lack of description on the items you use. You won't know if the item restores HP, MP, or if it increases strength unless you try it out. It'd be so much helpful if there was a description on each item you obtain.

Lunar: The Silver Star's gameplay would've been solid and decent if those mistakes didn't bury the experience badly.

Graphics: 6/10

As a Sega CD game, Lunar takes advantage of the FMV and sound capabilities of the system. The FMV's are nicely detailed and have an impressive color layout. Since the Sega CD's graphics are powered mostly by the Genesis, Lunar's other graphics are Genesis quality. This isn't a bad thing though. The game has a pretty nice colorful look for an old school game. The game does start to look a little bland when you go further through, and there is occasional flickering in intense battles, but the graphics get the job done.

Sound: 7/10

The music is supposed to be spectacular, according to fans of the game. While I agree the music is impressive, a couple songs feel out of place, and some of the songs are played over and over again throughout the game, and they become pretty repetitive. As a result of the repetitiveness, it's a little hard to bear with the songs if you don't like them. Still, there's sure to be a good amount of songs for anyone to love. The voice acting, however, is top-notch. In a couple FMV's, some important characters speak, and when they do, they are never a grudge, because the people at Working Designs picked out good actors for the necessary roles. The sound effects can be both good and weak. The weak sound effects are mostly the attacks in battle, which kinda sound like someone's scratching on a chalkboard. So the audio has a mixed feeling.

RPG Length: About 15 hours long. (And it's not really worth playing it again)

Conclusion: 6/10

While the game has a pretty good storyline, it lacks in the character department. Alex, like many heroes in RPG's, never really talks, and his allies aren't very original. You get a magic user, a brainless idiot, a mysterious girl, and so on. With flaws in the gameplay and presentation, Lunar: The Silver Star is only recommended to die hard RPG fans or Sega CD fans. Otherwise, it's a little boring to others. After beating the game, there's nothing to really come back for. You'd have to wait for a year or two in order to get interested again. The only saving grace of Lunar: The Silver Star is the story, some of its gameplay, and the music.

Pros:

-At least this game gives most of what RPG fans expect
-Good music
-Cutscenes are pretty good.

Cons:

-Very little help in some areas of the game
-Music is sometimes repetitive
-The battles become repetitive and sometimes a nuisance
-Uncreative characters
-Feels boring at times
-After completing the game, there's really no point in playing it again.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/12/06