"Not the best RPG..."

Intro:
Being the first true RPG on the DS, Lunar Dragon Song had alot of expectations. The fact that it was also the ressurection of a fan-loved series only added to this. I'm a great RPG fan, although I'd never played any other Lunar games before I still decided to try this. My aim for this review is to be as truthful as possible, without blinding anyone by fanboyish disappoinments or lies.

Storyline: 6/10
You are Jian, a delivery boy who enjoys working for Gad's Express with his best friend Lucia. One day, Jian and Lucia are attacked during a delivery and their package is taken. This starts your first quest in the game and as you can tell it isn't very interesting. Unfortunately, things don't get much better from here. The game tries to force an intense storyline on you, but fails miserably. The characters are generic, and most of your party members seem to join you for any random reason, without explanation. There are many events in this game that occur without much explanation, and this causes the player to question the significance of any story/event scene. Overall, the story feels rushed, in that the motives for your various quests are hardly explained and players will likely end up feeling unsatisfied with the dull storyline for the work put into the gameplay.

Graphics: 8/10
Suprisingly one of the better aspects of the game. While the sprites definately don't represent the DS' full potential, the vibrant colours and clear quality are certainly entertaining. The dungeons and levels hardly feel reused, each being unique and beautiful in it's own way. The only problem here, which applies more to the presentation than the graphics is that the greater majority of the NPC characters are reused. There is roughly only two different sprites/pictures for each sex of each race and then they're just recoloured, Regardless of their importance in the storyline. Something else that may be a little strange is the incredibly pixelated battle sprites for any party member that joins you.

Gameplay: 5/10
There are many problems with this area of the game that are most likely to turn off any experienced RPG players. First and foremost, a problem most complained about is the lack of option given in battle. Turn-based battles themselves are generally boring, but those companies skilled enough are able to back them up with strategy, a large variety of spells, characters of varied abilities and most importantly, THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE WHICH ENEMY YOU WANT TO ATTACK. Lunar Dragon Song does none of this. There is no option to choose which character you want to attack, the game even realizes how boring this makes the battles by giving you the option to let the CPU fight for you. There is an extremely small variety of spells. With the main healer learning about 8 different spells and the other main fighter (excluding the main character) only learning one special attack throughout the entire game. What's even worse is that you'll hardly be using either of these characters through out the game. For some reason, the developers decided to give Jian an uber advantage over his teammates. Jian is able to cause 3x the damage of his party members, even more depending on who you use. While this may not seem too bad (they're all on the same team right?) it is made so much worse by the fact that you cannot choose which enemy to attack. The intruction manual states that the game's AI chooses the most appropriate enemy to attack but this is not the case at all. There are so many cases where you use both your weaker characters to weaken an enemy, only to have Jian waste his uber attack power by completely overkilling it afterwards. Battles are basically long extended wait periods of waiting for Jian's turn to attack, by pressing A. If that isn't enough, the only character to get any decent black attack magic is... Jian! That's right! The only character who can do any damage is so much better than the others that the battles are simply dragged out far too long. It's horrible!

Sound: 8/10
The sound is somewhat decent. Sound effects are well achieved, background music gives each dungeon an appropriate theme. My biggest gripe with this game however is the lack of variety in battle theme music. There is one, count again, ONE song for all the normal battles in the game. So, this means that you have to listen to the same repetitive drony tone for just about the entire game! If that wasn't enough, the tune isn't even that good. There are a few boss themes thrown in here and there but they really don't help.

Conclusion:
Lunar Dragon Quest is really and average game at best. The game is long, with plenty of sidequests to boot... but it's really up to you how much pain you want to put yourself through by playing it. I only sticked with the game for the storyline, but that isn't decent enough for me to reccomend a purchase.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/27/06