"Lunar: Dragon Song is Molasses: The Video Game"

A few days before this review was written, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony was released in Japan. This release marks the sixth (or seventh, if you count the two separate versions that were on the Sega Saturn) time that this game has been released on a video game system, and all versions of the game have been slightly different. Re-releasing a game in a series is fairly common - there are numerous versions of Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy floating around in the marketplace - but what is impressive is that to date the Lunar series contains only two numbered games and two spin-off games. Unfortunately, after slogging through Lunar: Dragon Song (hereafter referred to as LDS) I have a better understanding of why Game Arts wants to stick with the tried and true than create something new.

I've read before that RPGs consist of something like 51% battle system/ 49% story and presentation or vice versa. Players either play because they like the characters and the story in which they are involved or because they have fun fighting hordes of monsters. Earthbound is an example of the former, while most MMORPGs account for the latter. A truly good RPG is able to create a system that both has a compelling story and a fun battle system. A good example of a great RPG is Mother 3 (debate at YOUR OWN RISK). LDS is unable to satisfy on either account, and the results are dreadful.

The biggest offender that ruins this formula is the combat system. There are two options: manual and auto. In manual mode, you can either attack, use an item, or use magic; auto mode causes every character to attack every single turn. In order to simplify the game, "attack" will attack whatever enemy the computer feels like attacking, and the only type of offensive magic is a spell that attacks all enemies. In theory this doesn't sound too bad - auto mode is a better solution than constantly pressing the A button to choose "attack" - but in action it just doesn't work.

Throughout the game you have either two or three main characters. One character, Jian, is really strong and will be able to kill most enemies in one hit. The other one or two characters are basically worthless. They will never be strong enough to come even close to killing an enemy on their own, and they usually cannot beat finish off enemies that Jian has finished off. If you could chose which enemy you wanted to attack, you could have Jian attack one monster and then move on to others while the weaker characters finish off the first monster, but the game won't let you. Sometimes the game even seems to refuse to finish off an enemy and have your characters attack new monsters for no apparent reason. You could try using spells, but they are too expensive to be used wantonly and the characters that know healing spells will never learn offensive spells. The developers tried to help by allowing you to speed up the battles by holding the L or R button during battle, but even holding down both buttons (which is equivalent to 6x the normal speed) led to battles that took up to five minutes in length. While I can't imagine that a battle at normal speed would take 30 minutes, it certainly feels like it could happen.

You'll have to learn to love this battle system (protip: you won't) because you'll have to fight a lot of battles in this game. This is due to the fact that there are two different types of battles: since I can't remember/don't care enough to look up their real names, I'll just call them "experience battles" and "item battles." As my made-up names imply, you have to decide if you want to fight to get experience points or items that can be traded for money. Yes, monsters don't carry money in this game, which makes sense logically, but the fact that some of them carry costumes or expensive plates that you need to collect will make you scratch your head and wonder why they didn't just use money.

So you'll walk - yes, walk, since running takes HP from your characters and it's too expensive to heal them - around the various dungeons to collect the various items that you need to take to various townsfolk in various cities to buy equipment that's too expensive. You'll spend hours trying to collect four cow bones or two crystals or some other rare items. Or, as I found out much later in the game, you can just beat every enemy in experience mode to open blue treasure boxes to get all of the equipment you'll ever need. Either way is tedious. You may want to buy multiple pieces of equipment since your equipment can occasionally break without any warning. Saving after every battle will help save time, but it's annoying to have to watch a battle that you'll more than likely be playing in auto mode because your equipment can break.

The dungeons themselves have been made without any creativity. The only puzzles in most of them consist of "look for a switch to unlock a door." Still, they'll find ways to torture you. They'll drain your HP automatically, they'll be filled with monsters that will constantly make you fall asleep or poison you or make you blind. As the game progressed I literally wondered why the developer made each successive dungeon more and more painful to play.

While the story isn't too bad (in RPG standards), it's so unremarkable that it doesn't save this game. Fans of the Lufia series, who account for the majority of people who have bought/will buy this game, will recognize a lot of the plot points from past games. It's got dragons, Dragonmasters, the Goddess Althena, the Vile Tribe, and many other familiar aspects. They star in a cliched story that can be summed up using terms like "true love", "the power of friendship", and - oddly enough - "xenophobia and racism". The translation is mostly good, albeit somewhat dry, but Ubisoft really needed its translators to agree on name spellings. This is most apparent during the fetch quests, as the name of the person you're assigned to give stuff to and the person who takes the stuff is different 25% of the time.

There are very few good points to the game, but they do exist. The character designs look nice, the music is decent in areas, and they did include the battle speed-up option. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

In conclusion, this game is slow. The battles take forever, walking through dungeons takes forever, and earning money to buy things takes forever. The story is only compelling to people who don't read books (which counts for 20% of GameFAQs readers if the Poll of the Day is true). You'll experience rage early on in the game, but if you keep playing, that feeling will be replaced with pure apathy. There is nothing worth recommending about this game, and it should be played by no-one. Just stick to the newest remake of Lunar: Silver Star Story; you'll thank me later.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/19/09

Game Release: Lunar: Dragon Song (US, 09/27/05)