Lunar: Dragon Song

"Holy Althena, what in Blue blazes went wrong with this? Just who of the original team WORKED on this disaster?"

For the love of all things Elemental, who on earth decided that this was ready to ship?

OK, let's take a breather and look at this rationally. I must start with a background on me and my relation with the Lunar series: I never played the original Sega CD versions, I never played the first PSX reissuing (though I read many FAQs and saw the FMV clips), though I did play and beat the second Lunar game on the PSX and the GBA hack-job known as Lunar Legend (basically the first game with half of the plot gone - if I hadn't sold it, I'd write a review of it).

Truth be told, I always loved the humor, the artstyle, the music was usually good, and the gameplay was always worth replaying just to see the story.

Lunar Dragon Song, unfortunately, is a cosmic joke of the series. If you ever thought that Lunar Legend was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

To be fair, the game DOES have its high points. For one, the music is top-notch. If there is one thing the DS has shown us, it is that, when the developers try to, the DS can pull of CD-quality sound tracks. Remember Star Wars Episode III on the DS? Same story here - great music. What's better, every time you encounter a new track, you unlock it in the sound menu accessable in the system menu in-game. This alone is worth a couple points, in itself.

And, to be fair, the graphics are not horrible at all. Yes, they are pixilated, yes they are horrid compared to the cute chibi-characters of the old releases (even the so-so Lunar Legend) in design, but the anime-styled artwork is nice, though it would have been nice if the faces showed emotions a la virtually every other game in the series. Battles are notably pixilated, and while I'm pro-2D sprite-based games, these sprites better thank their lives that they are animated nicely, as the average modern gamer would probably hate them. At least the backgrounds are nice to view.

It should be noted that, during combat, the two screens act as one massive vertical screen. This is not really an issue, as usually foes are either above or below it, excluding the occassionally double-story boss. But there are times when a foe or character's head gets cut-off at the top when they barely cross the border. This happens only enough to be annoying.

Now, as far as non-combat interation (aka, TOWNS), you don't stroll the streets anymore, but move around almost like an old PC game: you either use the touch screen to navagate the various buildings in a list, or you use the D-pad to select a highlighted square to see which building it is, and choose to enter or move on. Inside, the NPCs are, oddly enough, lifeless and dull, with little to no interaction with your characters. What's worse, there are very few character templates per race and gender (race being human or beastman), with about a handful of color changes per each one. And did I mention that the text boxes, while showing the faces of who you are chatting with, don't show any real emotions other than possible anger or sorrow.

Nice touch to note - if you press a button while on any map, you can chat with your party. Too bad they only say enough to tell you where to go if you can't figure it out and nothing really to help push the plot along.

Oh, the plot. At first starting out kin to Lunar 2 in general concept, good GRAVEY the plot makes no sense. Neverminding the hints of Althena missing (hmm, wonder what THAT means, eh?), nevermind the way people virtually join the party for no reason other than the heck of it (assuming that a reason is even presented to suggest why they are with you), nevermind the out-of-the-blue reason your main character suddenly wants to go to a beastman town that everyone warns you of without even saying WHY (and only telling you once you are there and after you run three errands, even!), the plot is a jumbilation. Heck, Lunar Legend told the story better, and it left out half of the plot of the original! Lunar Dragon Song is like its GBA sibling in that it does not have FMV clips, but still arts, but that is no excuse for this pathetic excuse for a plot with crater-sized gaps.

Crater sized plot gaps filled with fetch quests, that is. See, you are a delivery boy and girl at the beginning, and when you start out, you loose your package (OH! The shock!), and have to go get it AFTER talking to the villagers. THEN you go get it, you go back, everything's hunky dory, you go to the next town. Later on, to even get a character to talk to you, you HAVE TO GO BEAT RANDOM FOES TO GET ONE BLASTED ITEM FOR HIM TO TALK TO MOVE THE "PLOT!" I HATE fetch quests, and they appear far to often in this game. It gets even worse when your main character (Jiam, I think is the name, I can never recall the spelling right, and my DS is charging) is crippled and can only use a weakened attack based off of his three hit combo, dragging out slow battles even longer.

Oh, and as far as combat goes, Lunar DS falls behind even PHANTASY STAR COLLECTION in simplicity. You walk around a map, foes wander around either running or charging you. When combat starts, you choose either Manual control or the series classic auto attack. Manual lets you choose among Attacks, Spells or skills, Items, or cards (the latter are items you aquire in random fights that enable you with special skills and attributes). When you finish selecting your actions amongst your team, the battle goes with the characters attacking (assuiming they are attacking) a random foe of the AI's choice, usually the one you don't want to attack.

This wouldn't be too bad, except that you have two modes of combat: Virtue and Collecting. Virtue is where you pray to Althena prior to fighting, and upon victory you gain experiance points. Collecting mode nets you random items and cards upon vicotry, NO experiance. This wouldn't be too bad, except that, while the Cards are a nice addition, the items tend to be virtually essential to either random jobs you can take from each town's Gad's Express or to move the plot. Making matters worse, the combat tends to move rather slowly, unless you hold the R button to speed it up. Oh, and blowing on the microphone while selecting attacks allows you to run. Seriously.

There is a Colloseum mode at the title screen, but I have not tried it, as I am waiting for another with the game to pop up. It may or may not be like Golden Sun's Collosium battles on the menu, but, given the fact that Combat takes a while to level up with in Story, it will be a while before I even think of trying it.

All said and done, this is NOT one of the brighter points of the Lunar series, or of the DS's library for that matter. What really hurts, though, is that the game costs US$40. I was lucky in that I had a discount on it and had it paid off, but sweet mother of Althena, Game Arts needs to get Working Designs to take the series back. Or at least see if Atlus has fixed their problems and will work on it. Ubi Soft may have been behind the distribution of a few good games (namely the PSP title Lumines), but Lunar was renown for great plot, hilarious dialog, and great gameplay. This is a shell of things past.

In short, this is not worth the time. Wait for Mario and Luigi 2, or just get Final Fantasy IV this winter. Save your cash.

Score: 3 of 10.


*Best Features: Music, being able to talk with your party (if only to a limited extent), nice stills
*Worst Features: Combat, Dialog, Plot, the fact that the other games are so much better
*If You Liked: Lunar Legend (GBA), Lunar Silver Star Story and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (PSX/PSOne)
*Guilty Pleasure: Loving the fact that the Sound Test is available from the get-go, and wanting to keep playing for the music...

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/05/05, Updated 11/20/07

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