Lunar: Dragon Song

"A Shining Example of UbiSoft Quality Assurance... or lack thereof."

Well, being a veteran of the LUNAR series, and also a merchandiser for the most prominent video game retailer in the US, I suppose I am qualified for a review on this title.

I am deeply, deeply disappointed with Game Arts when it comes to this game, but I am utterly disgusted at UbiSoft for their localization and translation job, if you could even call it that.

Within 30 minutes of turning the game on I had already encountered over 10 spelling and grammatical errors, where as it did not take away from the story that much, it is an eyesore and encourages younger players to misspell and use bad grammar (In my opinion at least). The music was nice, for what little selection there was. The stylus use was added but not necessary for game play, as a matter of fact, the only unique feature of the DS that had to be used was the microphone if you wanted to run from battle, which was awkward as I bent over and blew at my own nether regions at the break room at work. It was good for a few laughs, but totally unnecessary.

The graphics were top notch, but the variety of enemies in the game was very, very lacking, and as far as challenge, I beat the last boss in about 5 rounds without healing. The four dragons were all a joke (I know some fan boy will say they were not trying so you could take out Ignatius). As a matter of fact, after about level 10, there was no point in having anyone in your party other than Jian and Gabryel because of her multi enemy attack.

The lack of spells was also alarming as well as having to equip the ring to choose between magic, though it really didn't matter because it seemed to me that the elemental defense of monsters was like 0. UbiSoft released in my opinion an unfinished product with a $40 price tag.

Now to discuss the problems with GameArts. The battle mechanics were horrible, having your items break was a neat idea, just badly used. You could not repair your broken equipment, and it was sort of like casting the death spell in a Final Fantasy game, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I mentioned the spells were somewhat horrible. I believe the game could take 40 hours to beath instead of the mere 23 I completed it in if you did not speed up the battle animations with the L or R triggers, the battle animations, while complex are way too drawn out, and to me seems like a ploy to increase the game play time, which is probably the reason they delayed the game, to make it longer by slowing down the battle animations, it seemed to flow better and look more natural during the 3x animation increase than it did going slow and normal. The music, was good, just way to repetitive, I dealt with the horribleness of this game, hoping that the ending would be the big pay off.

I will not tell you the ending, but it is hard not to, but it was reminiscent of old school NES games that basically said "You saved the Princess, HooRay!!!"... The End. I think Super Mario Bros. 2 had a more rewarding ending than this game did. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I was peeved at the $40 dollar price tag when less than two weeks ago this game was tagged as $30 almost everywhere else.

I would suggest this game as a rental, but not a game to add to your collection unless you were a hard core LUNAR fan. It has nothing to offer newbies to the series other than the bad taste you get in your mouth when you vomit , which is what I did after I saw the pathetic ending that did not really reveal anything new or uplifting. Whatever happened to Working Designs, please guys, do the next LUNAR, we will forgive you since it will be your first foray into a non CD/DVD based medium, at least you guys know how to sell and pop Clinton jokes (Sega CD Version of Lunar EB).

Graphics: 8
Music: 6
Story: 1
Replay: 1

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/04/05