I picked this one up out of the "used" section many, many moons ago because it had the name "Lunar". Anyone remember the fantastic "Lunar" game and sequel from Working Designs?
In fact, does anyone know what happened to Working Designs? They made the best RPGs for a while and were wildly popular. their rep was akin to Blizzard's or Valve's. Then they just disappeared...
Anyway, this "Lunar" didn't have Working Designs' logo anywhere, but had the standard Nintendo and such, plus the artwork was exactly like the original Lunar's artwork.
So by now you're expecting me to tell you what a piece of shit this was and how they were using the name to sell units, etc., right? Well, you'd be kind of right and kind of wrong.
Lunar:Dragon Song is not a horrible game, but it's not a great game. Overall, I guess the storyline is kind of ok, although the logic of the Japanese sometimes boggles my mind. Either something gets lost in the translation or they just can't write flowing dialogue. The overall chit chat between characters is mind numbing dull.
And really, that's the overall problem with the game, it's mind numbingly dull because they changed the design to make it seem like it was longer than it really is.
Here's how:
-You don't earn gold in fights. You only earn gold by selling items and by doing delivery runs.
-To sell items you must get them, and they're very rare in the wild. I should note, that I mean armor and weapons, not items used in deliveries which are pretty much worthless in terms of selling them.
-To do deliveries, you must get the items to deliver. To do so, you must get them in fights or buy them from vendors (the vendors that sell these items are rare and don't carry everything you might need).
-There are two combat modes: Virtue and Combat. In combat mode, you fight the monsters to receive cards (for use in battle and such) and items for deliveries. In Virtue mode, you fight the monsters to get experience. Did you get that? When fighting monsters, you either choose to receive experience or items.
Taking that last item there further, deliveries require multiple types of items. All the items are associated with certain monsters, which you wouldn't know unless using a game guide of some sort, and the item drops are random. Thus, you may need to go to an area with a specific monster and continue fighting them until you get the 8 acorns you need to get a delivery job that pays you enough to make 500 out of the 800 as the rest went to healing supplies.
It's a VERY poorly designed system. However, there is a way around it that I didn't see in any game guide, so I'll share it here. Save every piece or armor and weaponry you get until you get to the village right above Vile Castle. There's a shop there that pays a ton more than any other shop. It's a general store or something like that. You'll know the village because it's made up of a bunch of caves. If you sell everything there, you'll do fine in the money department.
Also, when you hit a town for the first time, do not buy all the upgraded armor and such. About half of the stuff for sale will be found for free in blue chests on the next part of your journey.
I should note that blue chests are hidden throughout the world and to open them you need to kill all monsters on a screen in virtue mode.
Oh, and I almost forgot the best design decision...
Weapons and armor are rare. Money is rare. So, of course, the logical thing to add to the game are monsters that destroy armor and weapons in a single hit and they're everywhere. SAVE OFTEN. For a time, I was literally saving the game after every fight I survived without losing a piece of armor. Just a fucking ignorant design decision.
To sum up the rest, 95% of the fights, you'll just choose auto mode and do something else while your group is fighting. The storyline overall is fine, but the dialogue is soooo bad that it destroys it. The combat system itself is quite boring with only your main character able to deliver punishing blows and effects (blindness, silence, poison, etc.) occurring WAY too often, etc.
One more design decision, and this is a spoiler (as if anyone cares), you only fight the main bad guy once, and that's early in the game when you have zero chance of winning. The big finale comes in a cinematic and not in combat. You spend the ENTIRE GAME building up skills and traveling the world preparing to fight this one guy, and the fight never occurs.
Just. Fucking. Stupid.
I can't really recommend this to anyone to be honest. There isn't a horrible game here, but it's just so boring. I only got through it because it's easier to take to the office bathroom than a magazine. Really.
3 out of 10.
Lunar: Dragon Song - DS
Lunar: Dragon Song (called 'Lunar Genesis (ルナ-ジェネシス-, 'Lunar Genesis?) in Japan and Europe) is a console role-playing game for the Nintendo DS developed by Japan Art Media and published by Marvelous Interactive and Ubisoft in 2005. In addition to being the first game in the Lunar series for the DS, it is also the first original game in the series since Lunar: Walking School in 1995, and the first new Lunar title (excluding remakes) released in North America since Lunar: Eternal Blue for the Sega CD.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Search is hard.
Honestly? I never even thought of looking in wikipedia. I don't use that site as much as I should. I guess because you can't ever be 100% about the info you get, you know?
As for the rest, like I said, they tried to jump on Lunar's bandwagon, but without that core Working Designs team, it sucks.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell