Lunar Legend

"A Portable Silver Star Story"

Ever wonder when you are going to get a portable version of your favorite RPG in the palm of your hands, well if you own a DS or PSP you might had that wish fulfilled already with such awesome classics like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, Star Ocean: Second Evolution, and Dragon Quest V with endless hours of re-living your childhood everywhere you go. Now that's classic, but back at the time when there's only one popular handheld in the market unlike two of today where there's no true portable Final Fantasy yet and Dragon Quest is still Japanese secured, how's the RPGs back then. Look no further than Lunar Legend, a unique 2D sprite based anime console RPG from Game Art crammed together inside a bite size cart for the Game Boy Advance. Unlike any other RPG ports or remakes that make its leap over to the GBA, Lunar Legend is not a 16-Bit Genesis or Super NES port but a portable remake of the PlayStation remake of the original Game Art RPG classic, "Lunar: The Silver Star Story."

Story:

Lunar Legend like the original Silver Star Story retold the origin of the new Dragon Master and the legend of the Goddess Althena. It starred a young boy name Alex of the town of Burg who dreamed of becoming a Dragon Master carrying on the legacy of his late hero before him as well as a young orphan girl name Luna whose dream of becoming a great singer and a young cat-like dragon name Nall. Together, their destiny unfold after a surprising visit from a young wizard of the far away kingdom of Vane. After learning of the whereabouts of the White Dragon Quarks and pledging to take the trial of the Dragon Master, the young heroes then embark on their most epic journey yet. As the plot carry through, surprising events usher, evil emerge out of thin air, separation between friends and love ones occurred, new allies come and goes, and the awaken of a new world order resurface to claim chaos over the land of the once peaceful planet. Soon the fate of the entire world is in the hands of one Dragon Master and five followers who must do what they can to end the chaos for good and rescue their love ones for a better future. Though it's not as emotionally epic as Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, I had to admit for being a portable RPG, the storyline here does make for a good playthrough.

Graphics:

While not as beautifully presented as the CD-based console versions, this portable remake does had its moment of good animated presentation. The opening clips of the game's intro is a bit catchy but the in-game visuals and sprites looks faithfully reproduced complete with detail environments throughout both interior and exterior of housing within a location as well as colorful cloth design, facial expression, and hair style for every characters. New animations for the larger sprites are also a plus, seeing Alex giving a thumbs up or how Luna's ponytail hair and clothes wiggle with the wind after a battle or seeing how your enemies react after their upmost defeat are exciting enough to wow any RPG player, it's definitely something better than just seeing sprites doing jumping jacks all the time or enemies disappearing like ghost after a battle. This game also feature anime clips of several scenes from the console versions throughout the game, while they are nothing but just picture clips, it's interesting for a portable RPG like this since FMV cut-scenes are practically impossible to produce here.

Music/Sounds:

Not really bad in some aspect but also could had being a bit better. A lot of the tunes were taken directly from the PS1 remake, so memorable themes like the victory fanfare and Nash's betrayal tune makes a return here but now in midi quality. It would had being great if these tunes were pitch up a notch like those heard in Golden Sun and Breath of Fire but as it is, it's acceptable, it just doesn't sound that clear enough especially since it does had its own music player within the game. Heck, even with a headphone, the music is still in the low, best play it through a Game Boy Player if you're desperate to hear the louder side of it. The sound effects on the other hand are decent enough, they aren't annoying or bothersome just regular tone such as explosion, sword swing cling, and all that stuff, also besides Luna's short vocal song, there are no voice-overs at all throughout the entire game. It's acceptable though since this is on a cartridge after all but damn Luna's vocal song sure did make me wish for this game to include voice-overs.

Gameplay:

It's not surprising that the GBA is indeed a portable Super NES and with it came RPGs that plays similarly like those found in that legendary console so the gameplay feature here isn't so different. Like many 2D RPGs (especially Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest), Lunar Legend features an engaging turn-based battle system as well as a random encounter style of exploration. You still travel from one location to another though like the PS1 remake you could no longer random encounter battle on the world map like you would in the original Sega CD version, fight battles randomly, and leveling up characters in the process. You could also visit town, buy, and equip weapons, armors, and items for your characters, and even collect and trade animated sprite cards with another player.

One new feature that did make the game a bit enjoyable was the new special skill that your character could unleash during battle. These skills unlike the ones that requires Magic Points (MP) could only be perform once the special meter on the bottom mid-screen (where your character's name is located) reach it's max. When chosen, a very brief clip of your character would be shown and the skill would then unleash whether if it's a physical attack or a healing spell, after used, the meter then reset and could be perform once full again. Now having this new special meter and the new skill is a plus but a few minor downsides to this was how awful it is trying to max out the ever struggling meter. This special meter would only advance if you use regular attack so any skills that require MP or any attempt to use item doesn't count, another bother was that if your character falls in battle even when they did build the meter close to its fullest, if the fallen character is revived, the meter itself would then reset requiring that character to rebuild the meter again from the start which is disappointing considering how struggling it is to just build it the first time. Though building the meter for your advantage could be a pain, it's good to know that it doesn't reset after battle meaning that even though you didn't had the chance to use it on your previous battle, you could do so in the next one.

Another great feature for this game was a save anywhere load anytime menu feature. At anytime during gameplay, you could potentially pause and save your game and also reload it without ever resetting your system. This is good for when you're on the road and just want to play a few short quest or battle. Also having two save slots is okay unlike Pokemon where there is only one save game throughout, having only two is enough for this kind of RPG.

Replayabilities:

While the main game itself is 20 hours worth of your time, there are still a few unlockable goodies you could check out such as a music player and an anime gallery to unlock. Besides that you could also challenge yourself in unlocking the many viewable animated sprite cards in the game. Though the objective of collecting animated sprite cards offer no real reward what-so-ever, at the very least it's something you could had fun with just by collecting them.

Is this game worth buying?

If you want a portable classic RPG for your GBA, then go for it but if you are like the many others who only prefer the more bigger better version and don't care much about portable water-down version then you could take a pass with this title. Although it's a faithful remake, it's still essentially the same game just with shorter length and portability gameplay, there's nothing to hate or love about this game other than a few changes like the new animated character sprites, new special meter, and tone down musical scores, but besides that this is a decent RPG and is well worth the money for your GBA library.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/09

Game Release: Lunar Legend (US, 12/08/02)