gaming Lunar: Dragon Song - A Raronoopan Review

[Discordian 6,015]

The long-awaited review of Lunar: Dragon Song for the Nintendo DS is here! Welcome, my friends.

 

I will start off and say that this review will be as spoiler-free as possible though the story will get some mentions as you can't grade an RPG very well without mentioning it's story.

 

Lunar: Dragon Song, referred to as just LDS from here on out, is the third game in the Lunar series. This entry is the first original entry in the series to reach NA for over 18 years, the last original release was Lunar: Eternal Blue on the Sega CD in 1995. It's also a prequel taking place 1000 years before Lunar: The Silver Star so it is referred to as Lunar Genesis in Japan.

 

 

Note that I have not played Silver Star and only half of Eternal Blue so any and all connections they might have are likely lost on me so I cannot cover for this story-wise.

 

Now onto the bulk of this review:

 

 

Story - 6/10

 

The story of LDS is probably as generic as it gets for the most part, they use old character stereotypes and events that are highly predictable a lot of the time such as Jian, the main character, being a really impressive fighter and impressing the beastmen who consider themselves superior to humans in all ways until Jian comes around and proves humans can be just as strong as they are. As with other Lunar games LDS has dragon fights as well (I dunno if you want to consider this a spoiler or not considering the series we're talking about) and it's during these dragon fights that the story picks up quite a bit. The dragons test Jian so that he may become the next Dragonmaster by both fighting him and testing his personality and mental abilities. Each dragon tests for something else and while these tests are somewhat typical they are presented in a decent enough way to be passable. I don't want to spoil the ending but needless to say that it was a little underwhelming, you don't even fight the boss you think will be the final boss at the end. As far as final bosses go the being you do fight is pretty cool and the music is decent enough but he's not all that hard so for you difficulty buffs out there you may be disappointed but don't take my word for it, play it for yourself.

 

 

Sound/Music - 5/10

 

What we have here is generic sound effects for attacks and scenery but at least the quality is good, no staticy sound or noticeable hyperlooping or anything like that. The music in the game does it's job when you are in specific areas such as towns or forests, I'd say it's actually quite fitting for the areas but they reuse every song everywhere else in the game. There is only one unique song in the game aside from the character theme songs and that's the final boss theme, everything else is basically repetitive and you will be prepared to hear it throughout the game in various places. Personally I like it but it doesn't particularly stand out at the same time except for it's battle themes which are a little better. If you can deal with music being repetitive then you'll be fine. The only thing wrong with the tracks is that when you enter a battle and come out of one the track restarts so you'll hear the beginning of a song more than you'll hear the rest of it since it doesn't continue where you left off.

 

 

Graphics - 9/10

 

The graphics in this game are entirely hand-drawn. Everything is a sprite or hand-drawn scenery and it's beautifully done. Though there are multiple forests in the game every single one will look different enough that you won't feel like you are going through the same forest over and over again. In battle the sprites are beautifully made and have great animations. I'd argue and say these are better than Suikoden's sprites which were pretty well-done themselves. Not only do characters get full animations but so do enemies. Between sitting idle and attacking they all just move so beautifully. This is one of the high points of the game for sure. The only thing wrong with the graphics is that most of the enemies are just palette-swaps of enemies earlier in the game. If you've seen one enemy, you've seen about 5-8% roughly of all the enemies in the game. The only thing that changes between the versions is the stats and what they drop but their abilities are exactly the same.

 

 

Gameplay - 7/10

 

This will be the longest section as the gameplay is obviously the core of the game but there is much to talk about. First of all, this game is extremely unbalanced in it's gameplay, not necessarily that stats are unbalanced or that enemies are super overpowered or anything but because they tried to be innovative by splicing typical RPG conventions into separate parts and mix-matching them to make something unique. They partially succeeded, of course, and it adds a sense of balance to the unbalance but it needs a bit of explaining to understand the above score.

 

 

The very first thing they did was whether you get experience (Althena's Conduct/AC) or items from a battle. There's two modes for this: Combat Mode and Virtue Mode. I know what you're thinking, yes it is a little silly, but there's more to these modes than meets the eye, they do have other effects besides separating AC and Item gathering.

 

In Virtue Mode every battle will mark a checkbox on the bottom screen and eventually the list will fill up and there will be no more enemies in that one room, the amount of checkboxes varies from room to room. The catch is that each time you finish a battle a timer starts and you have sixty seconds to get into another battle, if you don't find another battle one check is taken off of the list and the counter starts over and you have another sixty seconds to find an enemy and it will keep doing this until you run out of checks or until you beat all the enemies in the room and mark all the checkboxes in which case the timer stops completely. There are two other events that happen when you finish off the final enemy. First of all, you gain back 30% of your max HP and MP. Second, a blue box opens somewhere in the room. There aren't blue boxes in every room but when they are they usually yield items and equipment that you will find useful if you get them in your first run through an area. More often than not you can find equipment from current stores within them and never need to spend any of your money (Silver, in this game) which you do not obtain in battle at all. This will be covered a little later.

 

 

Combat Mode is basically the exact opposite as Virtue Mode. You get no AC but you will find items and cards after battle. The timer and checkboxes do not function in this mode and enemies will continuously spawn rather than allowing you to clear a room of them. You also do not earn Silver in this mode but these items do have something to do with obtaining Silver. That's what we'll talk about next: Gad's Express.

 

Gad's Express is a delivery chain throughout the world where the main characters Jian and Lucia work. They take an assignment and bring it to the person on the ticket. The assignments usually contain a list of items that you get from enemies in Combat Mode. Fulfilling the assignments by delivering the package to the designated person will get you a receipt that you then take back to Gad's Express who will then pay you. You get different amounts of money for different jobs, sometimes difficult ones, sometimes not but you will usually have to farm for items. More Silver means more items and equipment and though it's possible to get current equipment from blue boxes via Virtue Mode it's not a guarantee so it's always good to have a safety net by going into shops and buying things. This is the sole way to get your money besides selling things which won't get you much as most items and equipment are worth a pittance and you'll need them more for deliveries which will ultimately get you more cash.

 

 

Now to talk of battles. Battles in this game are very different from it's predecessors, all enemies and characters are put in specific places and you do not move them around. You have two options: Manual or Auto Transmission. AT will, just as it's name suggests, run the battle automatically having your characters do physical attacks until they or the enemy falls or until you press the B button to back out of AT. MT allows you to choose your commands manually such as attacking, spells and items but this is slower than using AT so it's not recommended unless being used in boss fights or in areas with tough enemies. Battle animations are also a little slow so you may want to use the speed-up buttons (L and R) which will make all animations faster and will make the battles go by ten times faster than they would if you just left it alone. Why they didn't make it that fast in the first place is beyond me, maybe to show off those beautiful sprites? The only downside to battles is that you cannot choose your targets, your characters will choose the target for you regardless of the actions you take. The only exception is items which allow you to choose the target in your party to use them on. You can also use cards in battle too and they effect the entire party or enemy party. (Cards will be covered soon) There is only one thing in battles that is truly and honestly the only thing in this game that I give true fault on: Enemies can steal and break your equipment. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, enemies can steal and break your equipment. It's not based on any sort of endurance, it's not specific attacks that do it, it's purely by chance and is dealt out by specific enemies. There is two ways to avoid this: through cards or by saving often so that if something is stolen/broken you can reset because you don't want to spend the money to get that piece of equipment again.

 

There is only two more features to cover and we'll do these quickly as they aren't hard to explain. First is stamina. In LDS your characters' HP will drop as you run, serving as some sort of stamina that is a pain in the ass early in the game since you start out with very low stats. Once you gain a few levels the stamina becomes less of a problem and by the time you hit your mid-teens to early-twenties it isn't even an issue. The thing is, when your stamina goes below 1/4 your max health your party can't run. It doesn't matter if it's one or all of your members, if HP is below 1/4 your party cannot run. Part of the imbalance of this game is shown here as healing costs an ungodly amount of MP, you start out with about 20MP with your healers and a healing spell costs 10, healing multiple party members costs 30. Your best bet is to walk everywhere in the beginning of the game.

 

 

Now for the final bit: cards. Items are a tad costly for a long while in the game and more often than not your cards will serve you better. They basically act as items but have various special effects between healing your party, raising their Defense/Attack power or lowering the enemy's Defense/Attack power and stopping, slowing down or even drawing enemies towards your position. Cards have many effects but the only thing is you can have only one of each card and each card has a set amount of HP. Each time you use the card the HP drops by 100 and when it's done, it's done and there's no way to replenish it except to get a new card after the first breaks down.

 

Now, I know all of that is quite daunting and it's less about reviewing the game and more about explaining the game but I believe the only way to justify my score is to explain my reasons why. Between HP dropping as you run, Virtue Mode recovering 30% HP/MP, enemies being able to break your equipment and cards that can basically reverse the effects of all of these if you obtain them after battle the game has a sense of chaotic balance. What they attempted was to make something totally new as far as RPGs go, they partially succeeded but in the end it came down to being overly complicated so it comes up a little short. So overall it does a good job but it can be a tad tedious so the score is what it is for those reasons.

 

 

Finale

 

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this review and I know it's quite lengthy but I spare no words when explaining my scores for a game. I will now tally the scores, keep in mind the total score is nothing more than an average of the individual scores that I gave it and the number itself is not a solid, unchangeable fact so much as it is merely a cumulative guideline. Feel free to judge the game for yourself or on the descriptions I gave of each section, it's your call. If you hadn't noticed I intentionally made things both objective and subjective throughout my review so there's a mix of my opinion and merely explaining the game. And now for the final score!

 

 

Story - 6/10

Sound/Music - 5/10

Graphics - 9/10

Gameplay - 7/10

 

Grand Total - 6.75

Edited August 3, 2012 by Raronoopa