"Objective Review from Lunar Fan"

First, let me preface this by saying that I have played and beaten this games, as well as the original two Lunar games. Needless to say, I was looking forward to this game since I bought my DS, and when I bought it, I expected some high quality stuff, since they make such a point to say some of the original team worked on the game. The janitor, maybe?

Gameplay: 3
The game plays a lot like the old Lunar games. You run around the fields and dungeons, avoiding or fighting the gray enemies. The neat thing about this now, is if you beat all of the enemies on a given "screen," you sometimes get a treasure from a blue treasure chest, and you always recover 30% HP/MP. The cool thing is that the treasures are actually really good, most of the time. Around town, you see an overhead view of the town, and you can use the stylus to quickly take you to a particular place, some people complained about this, but I thought it was pretty efficient.

The fighting is ridiculous though; you can't target who you want to, and enemies can break equipment or steal things if they get a good hit on you. So it is a good idea to save often. Why? Because equipment is crazy expensive, and the only way to get money is to do jobs, which is normally finding items and delivering them to someone for cash. How do I get said items? There are two fighting modes, in one you get experience, in the other you get items you can use in the jobs. Later, you can buy these items (thankfully), making the process a bit easier. But in case you missed it, you don't get money from battles! The second worst part of the game! As mentioned before though, the blue chest will generally give you the good stuff you can't afford.

Now, for the worst part of the game, which is what you will here most people rant about. You lose HP when you run around BOTH towns and dungeons. Why, oh why, did they thing this was a good idea? Maybe to make it more realistic? Yeah, thats what I want, realism in a game where three teenagers can beat the crap out of a giant, ancient dragon. Terrible, just terrible.

Story: 6 (SPOILERS IN THIS SECTION!!!)
It is basically the same story from Lunar: Silver Star Story. Guy likes girl, girl turns out to be the human form of a Goddess, guy loses girl, guy tries to become Dragonmaster to rescue girl. Couple that storyline with a whiny protagonist and you've got your story. It is a bit cliche, and the characters have a tendency to chatter on for too long, but the heart is there, and it drives the game on a very basic level.

Graphics: 8
For a DS game, the animations are pretty good and the character designs are pretty colorful and clean. I wanted more from it though, and the magic all looked the same after awhile. Thats about it.

Touching: 6
When the DS is built around a concept, that concept deserves a section in the review. What is cool about this game is that, you can make you character do just about everything with on hand. Including walking, going to shops, selecting options, saving, etc. But that is about it, and since you can't run with the stylus, it was a little pointless. They could have made more use of it, but they didn't, so there you have it.

If you are a lunar fan, you might like this game, if not, avoid it at all costs. Especially since it costs $40.00. But if you want a throwback to the last games, and need to add another DS game to you collection, buy Castlevania, if not, get Lunar. Not the worst thing on the planet, but really flawed from the start.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/05