Lunar Legend

I've taken much criticism from many other staffers here at netjak regarding RPG's. In fact another writer IM'ed me stating: "There is life beyond Square." While I'm sure that this is fact and not opinion, I rarely come across a current RPG that ever matches the appeal of the classic Final Fantasy games.

To be honest, I’ve never played Lunar on the Sega CD or the PSOne; and the obsolete Sega CD is one of the few systems that I've never owned. Even though the console wasn't quite popular, the legacy left by Lunar was. Before delving into the handheld version, I was told of great storylines, subtle humor and top-notch graphics. For the most part the fans were right. But for some reason they failed to mention anything about the pathetic battle system, bobble headed NPC's and horrible management system...

I'm sure you can just taste my cynical nature here, and even with sarcasm aside Lunar has many positive features. One of Lunars’ better sides combines strong plot accompanied by some wonderful humor. While the storyline has been done dozens of times in countless RPG's (goto "X" number of critical points and obtain "X" to save/become "X"), the awkward humor keeps it interesting. At first I thought the humor was just bad "Engrish" or a bad translation. Later I discovered that the developers had a great sense of humor about them, thus inspiring the comical nature. The personality of the designers truly shown through Legend, and it was one of the few things that made the game playable until the end.

Plot and character development is arguably the most important factor in creating a successful RPG. As much as I tend to agree with the statement, it's not everything. You can't expect to enthrall gamers with story alone, and without a solid battle system and well developed management system the game is nothing more than a "choose your own anime adventure". I'm not an RPG purist at all, but the ineptness of both the battle sequences and management system is downright embarrassing. Lunar Legend is your coach-class, entry level RPG for the GBA, and has truly been dumbed down for the popular portable. I think what irritated me the most was this horrible battle system (if you could call it that). While fighting relies on your standard turn-based play, controlling the events are totally impersonal and anything but fun.

The first and most obvious flaw within the battle presentation is the annoying overdone random battles. In the very first 30 minutes spending traveling in circles to complete a "puzzle" ( I say that tongue-in-cheek), I can't remember how many battles I encountered. It was completely unnecessary and irritating. Not only did it stop the flow of the mission, but also it was far too easy. After about the tenth battle, I didn't even look at the screen. To add insult to injury, after only 30-40 minutes into the game my characters already reached double digits in experience. I was totally shocked. But wait! There's more! If you weren't annoyed by the onslaught of random pointless battles, the mechanics of the battle system definitely will.

Luckily Ubi-Soft incorporated a way to trudge through the never-ending random battles: It's called auto. I'm not sure if this "feature" was in other Lunar games, but I find it to be the most enigmatic feature ever introduced in an RPG environment. The "auto" feature simply tells your characters to go ahead and keep attacking until everyone is dead. Kind of ruins the point of role playing, don't you think? Oh but wait! You can use the "tact" feature if you prefer. The "tact" option supposedly uses AI to attack the enemies. In theory it's function is to have stronger allies attack stronger enemies and weaker allies to defend or finish the baddies off. Sure it sounds good, but in reality it just takes yet another aspect of RPGing out of the picture. Aside from "tack" and "auto" you can choose "man"; which let's you play the old fashioned turn based way.

A competent management system is crucial to not only the development of your characters, but also keeps the game flow fluid. Without hesitation, this system is probably the clumsiest one that I've ever come across in an RPG. The menu system is lifeless, and equipping items is uninspiring. Clunky and lifeless is the best way to explain the management system, and many improvements must be made for Lunar to become successful for future releases.

If you are keeping score, that's one out of three on the requirements for a successful RPG (story, battle system and management). For a casual RPG gamer like myself, I'm shallow like that and can deal without an intriguing story. But skimp on the other two factors makes me a very very sad button master.

Once you swallow your pride and get around the idiosyncrasies of the mechanics of the game, Lunar Legend dovetails. On one hand the character development and interaction is enjoyable, as well as the much needed comic relief. But on the other hand, small annoyances just rub salt in the badly wounded gameplay. One of the most irritating annoyances was the "jumpiness" of the NPC's. <gripe>Walking into a house, NPC's look like they are jogging in place, and are having a crack fit. While it took me some time to accept the "emoticons" in Golden Sun, this caffeine-like withdrawal jumping made me twitch every time I saw it. Spastic NPC's is something that can't be ignored, and leaving the scene isn't always so easy. Transitioning from screen to screen is quirky at best. Nearing the edge of certain "scenes" must transition to another screen; thus hindering the flow. This happens far too often, and the continuity of levels was totally ruined. </gripe>

Playing off of the Golden Sun topic; one of my most obvious gripes with the second in the series was the overall "open-endedness" of it. Lunar Legend, however, keeps the flow of the game running nicely. Sure it's quite linear, but that isn't always a bad thing... especially when it comes to story-based RPG's. I always knew what I was doing, and where I was going; and there were very few times that I had to backtrack to find something I lost or forgot. This is a blessing and a curse for most whop are considering buying the game. I was able to finish the game in 20:13. I never had to go to gamefaqs (you know you do too sometimes, so don't give me crap) and rarely stumbled for the chain or pattern of events.

With little replay value, Lunar Legend obviously focused more on media rather than gameplay. Actually, I had mixed reactions to the visuals... There were plenty of nice cut scenes (single frames) that portrayed some respectable anime, and the color scheme of the game was top-notch. To be honest, if you are a back-of-the-box-looker the game looks amazing. The contrast of color patterns and the detail of backgrounds look wonderful. I would agree, but the animation of these pretty graphics needed much more life. Battle scenes were choppy and lacked any sort of fluidity whatsoever. Battle visuals were fairly bland, and spells were laugh-out-loud out of proportion (either too big or too small).

So yes, looking at screen shots the game seem worthy of accolades; but in reality it just doesn't pan out. Fortunately, one of the strongest assets to the game has to be the well-developed soundtrack. I thought Golden Sun had some great tunes, but Lunar truly takes the prize out of the two. My only gripe goes hand-in-hand with the before mentioned poor "transitioning". The soundtrack changes from loaded screen to loaded screen. This just puts the exclamation point on the inadequacies of the screen transitions...

Great sound and story can't salvage any game that doesn't include solid fundamentals. Lunar Legend slips through the cracks of living up to its name... a legend. This doesn't mean that Lunar is a horrible game, but its definitely not for RPG veterans. This would be a great game to introduce younger gamers to the RPG scene. The simplistic battle system, elementary character building and straight forward linear play should cater to those gamers yearning to dive into the role playing genre.

The true tell-tale sign of a great RPG compared to a good RPG is how you feel after completion. With other great RPG's over the years, I had a true connection with the characters and was always a bit saddened once my adventure came to a halt. In this case I felt nothing. In fact I felt that over time I was playing the game simply to review it. That is something that I never wanted to feel and it goes against every wire in every netjak staffers body...

For the day that we succumb to play games for reviewing purposes and not for the love of it all, is the day we should retire our weathered controller…