What Makes Lunar Special? What Needs Work?

[racketboy]

What aspects of Lunar Silver Star make it stand out from the mediocre RPGs? And what things do you think needed the most improvement?

I haven't been able to spend as much time on the game as I would like, but the things that stood out to my mind was the fact that just doing random battles all the time doesn't help you as much as in a typical RPG. First of all most of the monsters seem to do some relatively serious damage. I would find myself either running from battles a lot or using up items to re-charge. Also, as someone mentioned in the main Lunar thread, leveling up a bunch / grinding doesn't necessarily help you with the bosses as the boss power is calculated based on your own power.

The other good thing would be the humor/dialogue. It wasn't always lol funny, but there was plenty of clever stuff in there. Gotta love Working Designs (RIP)

I did think there were a lot of random battles though -- and I thought Skies of Arcadia had too many....

[NebachadnezzaR]

What I liked the most (I'm near the end, by the way, of at least I think I am) was the story, full of interesting twists (so far, at least) and interesting characters. The setting itself was also appealing, with lots of usual Japanese high fantasy stuff but with a certain unique feeling to it. Oh, and the humour is great. What I didn't like was the high number of enemies in each area (the PSX version doesn't have random encounters). Many times I found myself bored to death because all I wanted was to see the next development in the story but I had to kill dozens of enemies first. The option to let the game handle the battles eases the bore, but it's still annoying.

Also, in many occasions we're given the option to make a choice regarding the story, but like any good old JRPG, the plot is completely scripted. No matter what you choose, your characters always end up doing the same thing, you're just given the illusion that your decisions can actually make a difference when in the end all has been decided by the programmers.

Still, I'm really enjoying the game, so in the end Lunar indeed stands out from other JRPG's.

[peace4myheart]

No matter what you choose, your characters always end up doing the same thing, you're just given the illusion that your decisions can actually make a difference when in the end all has been decided by the programmers.

This is off topic but I just wanted to have your permission to use that quote. I was discussing with someone about free will and was arguing along that line. I just couldn't put it into words as well as you did. I am going to change your quote up a little and send it to my friend.

[NebachadnezzaR]

No matter what you choose, your characters always end up doing the same thing, you're just given the illusion that your decisions can actually make a difference when in the end all has been decided by the programmers.

This is off topic but I just wanted to have your permission to use that quote. I was discussing with someone about free will and was arguing along that line. I just couldn't put it into words as well as you did. I am going to change your quote up a little and send it to my friend.

No problem

[executioner]

The battles get boring after the hundreth time. I run about 50% of the time.

[Posted from a PSP]

[Ivo]

I finished the rather mediocre Lunar Legend (GBA), and am more or less at the start of Disc 2 in PS version. The PS version is being a rather enjoyable experience all in all in all aspects, which is nice as I was mostly disappointed with Lunar Legend.

Graphics, music and videos are rather obviously better in the PS (by quite a lot, in fact)...

The difficulty is better balanced in the PS version (in that it is not as easy as the GBA)

The absence of random encounters and being able to avoid a bunch of them is probably the biggest plus - and I don't even avoid many of them, I just enjoy being able to clear the enemies and then being able to freely explore for chests in places that are sometimes confusing, and backtracking knowing that unless I leave the dungeon I don't have to put up with more and more fights.

So far I don't think there are TOO MANY enemies (maybe this won't be the case anymore in the endgame), but I agree the game would be better off with slightly less.

I also notice that even regular enemies tend to have damaging attacks, and boss battles are not a cakewalk (with few exceptions).

Still, the battle system is interesting, with positioning and with different area effects (Kyle's horizontal line attack, Kyle's "roundhouse slash"), although it's as fleshed as it could be as you can't manually move (for example, you can't place Kyle in the middle of enemies to roundhouse), but this isn't a tactical RPG so it's not bad as it is.

Practically the only thing that is superior in the GBA version is the inventory - but might be me personally finding it annoying to swap items into each person inventory, particularly when you need to "guess" whom to give an item you got in a chest - often it's easy to figure out who it belongs to, but sometimes I give one of the girls a robe that is actually for the other and I need to swap it twice. In a way, the PS inventory makes more sense as in a battle it doesn't make sense all of them can access all the Herbs / whatever out of the common pool.

The story also makes more sense in the PS version (the GBA version is based on the PS version, but misses out on some parts so ends up not making that much sense). It's hard to talk about this without at least implicitly having spoilers, but here goes (I think spoiler free)...
I enjoy the PS's story, but I think it had a good deal of room for improvement... I don't intend to play the Sega CD version (twice is enough, particularly when the original has random encounters).
I'm curious what others thing about this, but from reading up on the differences between versions the Sega CD story it is actually quite different from the PS story and makes the most sense (there is at least one inconsistency in the PS version, and also some decisions/motivations feel a bit odd in the PS version). It seems to me from what I read that the original version has more character consistency, particularly for Luna, Nash, Ghaleon and Xenobia (precisely where the biggest plot deviations seem to be) - the whole deal of what happened to Dyne also seems to make more sense in the original, as well as Alex's progress to become the Dragonmaster. I actually would like to hear the opinion of someone who has played the original.

Ivo.

[NebachadnezzaR]

The story also makes more sense in the PS version (the GBA version is based on the PS version, but misses out on some parts so ends up not making that much sense). It's hard to talk about this without at least implicitly having spoilers, but here goes (I think spoiler free)...
I enjoy the PS's story, but I think it had a good deal of room for improvement... I don't intend to play the Sega CD version (twice is enough, particularly when the original has random encounters).
I'm curious what others thing about this, but from reading up on the differences between versions the Sega CD story it is actually quite different from the PS story and makes the most sense (there is at least one inconsistency in the PS version, and also some decisions/motivations feel a bit odd in the PS version). It seems to me from what I read that the original version has more character consistency, particularly for Luna, Nash, Ghaleon and Xenobia (precisely where the biggest plot deviations seem to be) - the whole deal of what happened to Dyne also seems to make more sense in the original, as well as Alex's progress to become the Dragonmaster. I actually would like to hear the opinion of someone who has played the original.

Ivo.

Indeed, for me the story was the only let-down of the PSX version, because otherwise it's superior in everyway to the Sega CD. I only played that version for, like, 10 minutes, and I really didn't felt compelled to play more because after finishing the PSX I just couldn't go back. Unfortunately, judging from the wikipedia entry, there are some rather incomprehensible changes in the plot. I can't really understand why they changed such crucial things, like the aforementioned case of Dyne, or Nash's true motivations later on.

[nateup2]

I played this one when it was re-released on psone from a hospital bed. I had been anticipating the release and was not disappointed, although I did think the story/character development/... and actually the whole game, was a bit on the simple side. Overall I really enjoyed it. It was a bright and colorful remake with lots of extras and I loved that you could actually see the enemies, sort of like the greatest console rpg of all time - Chrono Trigger.

[NebachadnezzaR]

On another topic, the soundtrack was just great. Right now I'm completely hooked to Luna's boat song and the "main theme" of the game, Luna's and Alex's song, is just so catchy that I don't think I'll forget it so soon.

[marurun]

I just have to vocally disagree that Chrono Trigger is the best console RPG of all time. So NYAH!

Yeah, the GBA Lunar port is turning out to be kinda lame. It's such a stock RPG. The character interactions are pretty good and the dialogue is OK, and the game is more fun in some ways than the FF remakes for GBA, but there are better GBA RPGs like Golden Sun that just make it seem pointless.