"Not so bad RPG, but unfortunately plagued with many strange shortcomings"

I stayed away from this game for a long time, kept away by the many bad reviews it got. Then one day I saw it for cheap, and decided to give it a try since I was craving for a new RPG, regardless of how bad it was said to be. What I retained from this is that it's really not that bad. In many regards, people were right, it's not a very good game. If you're not expecting anything, however, and are simply looking for a generic RPG to fill an empty moment, then Lunar Dragon Song does the job well of providing just that.

I'm not too familiar with the Lunar series, but in Dragon Song, you're introduced to the game with the goddess Althena giving life to a dead world with the help of the four Dragonmasters, who protect the land. The two races living in this world, the humans and the beastmen, started to distance themselves, adding tension in the land. Dragon Song starts with Jian and Lucia living in a quiet village by the sea. They both work at Gad's Express, which carries an important role in the game. In each village, you'll find one of those post offices, where you can take on a package and deliver it to another town for quick money, or take on quests which have you gather items for villagers.

This delivery system works well, but it's a pain to get money that way later in the game as it has you traveling between very faraway locations or getting items by battling monsters that only very rarely drop the item in question. This makes for a lot of useless backtracking to areas you don't necessarily want to revisit. Traveling on the world map isn't really a problem, it's a point-and-click one, so you don't have to do any walking, but it shortens the game a lot since it's also an extremely small world map with only a few locations to visit, apart from a decent number of towns. The towns also are just like the world map, you simply click on which shop or house you want to enter. It's sort of disappointing as this means no village exploration, but it's a quick method of going straight where you want.

Along their travelings, Jian and Lucia meet up with various friends who will join your party at times. You'll never have more than three party members at a time, however. You can't switch between them as you please either, as the other characters will simply tag along with you at specific points in the storyline, then leave you and be replaced by another (though you always get to keep Jian, as he's the main character obviously). The objective of your quest is to seek the four legendary dragons' help to defeat the evil forces. You'll need to travel from village to village, going through areas crawling with monsters along the way. Just like any story-driven RPG, you walk around these areas, going from forests, deserts, valleys and caverns to imposing castles, looking for hidden chests and battling your way through enemies.

Dragon Song makes traveling very uneasy, however, and for no good reason. Your character is extremely slow; you can run, but every step you take drains 1 HP. This is not a problem later in the game when you have over 500 HP, but with only 20 HP at the start of the game, it's either you put up with the slow walk, or you make 20 steps and die after an enemy ambushes you. It's definitely a strange idea coming from the developers. Another very frustrating aspect is how the enemies can break your equipment with their attacks. You'll most likely find yourself saving the game after every battling you do, to make sure you can reset if an enemy breaks your gear in the next battle. I have no clue what on earth the developers where thinking but this is probably the worst idea to get the player raging over the game. Not to mention the way to run away from a battle is to blow in the DS microphone. Not a game you'll want to play in public.

Aside from these few major flaws, the game plays fairly well. The battle system isn't bad, you can choose to control the fights or simply put them on Auto so the game fights for you while you watch. You can even hold the L and R buttons to speed things up. It's a welcomed option for when you're tired of battling in an area full of enemies. The computer handles the battles well so it's not a problem to rely on it. If you want to fight yourself, it's also pretty fun if you like turn-based, except that some might dislike how you can't target the enemies in this game, and your characters aren't the smartest in deciding what enemy to attack. Otherwise, it's your standard Attack/Defend, but the game introduces cards to help you. The cards are dropped from monsters and have various powers like increasing your stats and healing. Not really a big implementation to the gameplay but you can also collect them as a sidequest.

This also leads to another strange idea. Normally, you'd get money and experience points from defeating enemies, but in Dragon Song, it's one or the other; you don't get both. When you enter an area, you can choose if you want to be rewarded with money or EXP from the battles. Here again, it's a bizarre choice from the developers that makes the game even more frustrating. You'll need the EXP to level-up your characters, but you'll also need the money to buy good equipment for them, so it's a tough choice. Since you can also get money from the Gad's Express sidequests, it's better to focus on leveling-up your characters, but it still makes very little sense. It seems the developers where trying to add a layer of complexity to add some depth to the game, but all they managed to do is a mess of pointless and annoying limits imposed to the player.

Moving on to something else, I must say that from a technical point, Dragon Song really is a mixed bag in production values. The graphics are downright ugly compared to other DS games and look straight out of another generation. Rather odd considering what the DS can handle. The world map and towns look are the only things that look nice. The character sprites might be a bit too big, but the monsters look good and some bosses are very huge, filling up both of the DS' screens. It's just weird how the locations in the game look so outdated and unattractive. Nobody's going to convince me the graphic artists couldn't do a better job than this. It looks like a home-made game. Thankfully the music makes up for it in this department, most of the time catchy and fitting to the mood in more serious moments in the storyline.

Dragon Song is a pretty short game, with barely any sidequests aside from the card collecting, but if you can get over the shortcomings, then it's a pretty fun adventure. Obviously I'm not saying anyone will like it, the flaws are pretty big and will make most gamers hate it, but as an hardcore RPG fan I still recommend it if you want to fest on a quick and decent RPG. It's hard to tell about the game's good points, but it has likable characters, a good storytelling and a quest that feels rewarding and compelling at times. It's just a waste the developers tried to tweak things that didn't need any tweaking.

Breakdown

Presentation Nice enough storyline to keep the game going, although nothing special. Likable characters, good menu system that works well with the touchscreen. 7/10
Gameplay Fun adventure that could have been great but is brought down by a lot of odd shortcomings. The flaws make the game frustrating, but challenging. The battle system is neat, but simplistic. 6/10
Graphics Unappealing graphics that look outdated. Even the huge bosses aren't all that impressive. The world map is the only thing that really looks good. 5/10
Music Great musical score that contrasts with the game's graphics. Varied tracks for each location and good sound effects. 8/10
Replay Value Very short quest with few sidequests, but is replayable. You can use the cards to battle with a friend through wireless. 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/07, Updated 01/22/08

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