Lunar: The Silver Star

"Did somebody say 'Overrated'?"

Lunar is bad. Yeah, I see all the 10s on this page, and I still don't believe it. I mean, come on, you have to be joking here. This game lacks...errr...good qualities. Let's break it down into categories.

Graphics - 5/10

On one hand, it has very pretty pictures when a character is introduced. Awwww... Too bad every other graphic in the entire game is bland, and the dungeon graphics are plain dumb looking. My roomate described some of them as looking like 'stacks of tires'. Okay, I admit, it sometimes deviates from the tire dynamic, but come on. The town designs also suck. They're big, boring, with the style of a run down, inbred, stereotypical, Arkansas trailer park. And every one of the boring NPCs looks dirty. Also, some of your characters don't look like their concept art at all. In general, aside from the odd pretty picture, the graphics suck.

Music/Sound - 7/10

It has some good tunes. About 10 of them, I think. And it has perhaps the sorriest variety ever. There's the 'Dungeon' music, the 'Slightly more mysterious music', the 'world map music', the 'ANNOYING AS HELL character intro music', the 'Sad theme', the 'happy town' song, and a battle theme. Such great variety! Oh, and when a villain shows up, there's a REMIX of whatever generic music is playing at the time. HOW AWESOME! There's voice acting too. Ghaleon's VA seems genuinely bored when he acts. I feel your pain...

Gameplay 3/10

The battle system is kinda...errmmm...inter...no...there?

Really, it's just boring. Maybe one boss has some strategy, while regular enemies are just tap tap tap while you read a good book. Most RPGs have elements of this, and I still enjoy them, but they have good dungeon designs.

See, Lunar doesn't have that. Lunar has long, meandering dungeons which define boredom. They're set up to be 'maze like', and that generally means going down many similar looking paths before you randomly get to a door. And they're long enough to get genuinely bored with about midway through. GRAH!

Story 4/10

Predictable, boring crap, with boring characters, a cliche villain, and bad writing. When the writers effectively spoil a potentially shocking plot twist, you know it's just not good. And this just isn't subtle foreshadowing, it's 'clubbing you overhead with what the twist is going to be'.

Challenge - Easy

No challenge save maybe one boss. Otherwise, just tap tap tap while reading a book. I once did homework while playing this game. It was more challenging, also more fun. Did I mention it was Calculus?

Replay - None

It's bad the first time, bad forever.

Seriously, I don't see the appeal here. In fact, I don't see any appeal here. It's just a bad game, pure and simple, and the only reason I played to to end was so there could be at least ONE negative review.

In the end, it sucks, hard, avoid.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/03