Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (1996)

This is technically a review of the remaster collection. I just felt compelled to write up some good words about this game because people seemed to have a lot of negative comments on it and no positive comments on the page.

There are definitely some "misses" with this game that the second game fixes. The voice lines in battle are VERY repetitive. This was an era where voice lines in games were insanely rare. They hadn't yet realized that there should probably be a frequency adjustment for how often the voice lines trigger. Nobody was really thinking about that at the time and voice acting was cheap but noone was really using it.

There is no sprint button so it's pretty hard to avoid encounters in dungeons. However you really want to face a good deal of them anyways because you'll need the money and the exp to keep pace.

There's definitely a lot of characterization that's kind of left on the table. This is a very focused story about love and almost everything else is axed to keep the scope narrow.

Those are the true unfortunate aspects of the game which there is no getting around. However the rest of this game is great. A lot of jrpgs of this era were copying final fantasy conventions. This one doesn't fully branch out but it definitely tries to set its magic systems apart. You've got various range on spells and abilities. The hero has interesting dragon powers. His ultimate equipment is delivered in a fun way and actually changes his appearance.

The music is absolutely beautiful, same composer as Inyuyasha, the opening theme is timeless. There is almost no other Jrpg that has music like this. Honestly one of a kind. It just has this timeless 90's nostalgia sound to it thats hard to describe.

Working Design scripts are also not nearly as bad as is being portrayed in comments. Yes there are dicey jokes. But that's what made all these jrpgs great. Every jrpg that has removed these types of translations in favor for very literal translations have literally lost their soul. At least in terms of western appeal.

The japanese developers of the era had some interesting takes on topics. Like other posters had mentioned. They love to do brother/sister type romance. They also love overly sexualizing the woman characters. You can't literally change the game as it's made. So working designs perfectly pokes at these topics constantly. As they would obviously conflict with how most western fans would feel on those things.

There are some actual moments that made me laugh HARD. A lot of the dialogue is made to be heavily tongue in cheek. It's not meant to be taken seriously. Some of it is like meta commentary on what the actual original characters writing said. This was the case for all jrpgs of the era.

The FMV anime scenes are also absolutely gorgeous. FMV's are definitely a missing art.

This is a great classic that has a bit of outdated combat design.

Beat at level 47. I completed Lunar 2 back in 1999 by loan exchanging my Final Fantasy Tactics to a friend of a friend, and I greatly enjoyed that game. Lunar 1 has been on my wishlist since and I am glad I finally got around to it. The story was a little spoiled for me because I remembered some from Lunar 2, so I knew that Luna was the goddess reincarnated as a human and that she decided to forsake divinity so that when she died as a human there would be no goddess. But it was not difficult to figure that out. The intro movie gave away what Nall was and this was one of the few anime settings (maybe the only one) where the cute annoying mascot character was a positive. I was immediately impressed with the game; the excellent characterizations and dialogue, the little touches of personality for even the most minor of npcs made the world feel more alive and made me want to go back and visit them to see what new things they had to say. The developers really went out of their way to add new dialogue to the npcs to encourage revisiting each town at multiple points in the game. Though it could be a bit tedious to make another run through every single town and find every npc to talk to again, this was wonderful optional content.

I really liked the picture based inventory where you saw what the item looked like rather than just a string of text. It reminded me of Secret of Mana only without the clunky interface. I did not like the limited inventory for each character. It made it annoying to get new equipment and be forced to trade things around to make room, and it made recovery items less useful. By the end game Nall was getting full and I had to start throwing stuff away. I never used any status recovery items. Herbs were important for the few times there was no healer. Healing nuts and mana restore items were very useful and I bought a few starlights mid game. I don't think i needed them. How well I conserved mana through the dungeons seemed to be the most important factor for beating bosses, so buying extra starlights would give more leeway for going all out in normal battles. Not sure how I felt about the bosses scaling with level, which I only knew about after by reading a walkthrough. On the one hand it maintained a fair challenge, but on the other it took away the option to grind and win via numerical stat advantage. I prefer to win via tactics, skill and planning, so I usually do not grind in rpgs anyway. The only boss I had trouble with was the 2 fire dogs because I kept losing track of which one I was damaging. The game really needed a way distinguish enemies; alphabet or numerical names, cursor memory, a way to show enemy hp, or something. I did not actually lose that fight but when I lost track I decided to restart. Most bosses were challenging, though I felt they had too much hp and that they were balanced with respect to Alex being far overpowered compared to the other characters.

I used different accessories for regular enemies vs bosses. Alex used a healing ring and white wings for regular battles, swapping out the wings for the dragon ring for bosses. The range boost from the wings allowed him to pretty much cross the entire battlefield without losing attacks, so I could target further away enemies. He was by far the most powerful character. I mostly used regular attacks for normal enemies and sword dance for bosses. His area specials were useful in some battles but the dragon magic cost too much mana to use much. Dragon fire was great for wrecking enemies when a shrine was nearby, and I used the heal once or twice in the final battle. Kyle used a healing ring and gale ring for an extra attack to take advantage of his high strength. For bosses I swapped the gale for wrath, but he took a lot of magic damage in the final battle and I should have given him magic resist. He used his specials like Alex. Jessica used the ice mace for ranged attacks; I avoided meleeing until the enemies moved closer. I gave her Ghaleon's tear, which allowed her to hit every enemy without moving while sacrificing her 2nd attack. Worthy trade off, especially with her weapons that inflicted status effects; like sleep from the judgement mace, though it did not work on end game enemies. I swapped the tear for the hell ring for sweet half mp healing on bosses. Her other accessory was defensive; at the end I gave her the spirit amulet which said it halved damage from attacks. I am not sure how effective that was but it seemed like she was having some attacks hit her for yellow numbers (reduced damage). She healed in boss fights and in between battles. It was rare to need healing to win a regular battle. Nash used barrier or protection rings because I found he took a lot of damage. Part of this was cheaping out on armor upgrades as I did not always buy the newest stuff for the 3 cloth wearers. He was probably the least effective character but he was versatile with his very high speed, decent bow attack and magic. Lightning bolt for bosses, thunder bomb for most regular battles, and the hit all for the biggest battles. I occasionally used his paralyze and sleep for crowd control during the mid game. Stone never ever worked and I never bothered with silence. I preferred him to wear a weaker head armor that boosted wisdom, but went for max defense for bosses. Mia used the wisdom boosting amulet (probably should have bought 1 or 2 for Nash) and the speed boosting accessory. With the lowest speed in the group, I wanted her to go before the enemies broke their formation to hit them all with that sweet nuke damage. Her weapon was a mid game wisdom boosting staff, though I kept the speed boosting wind staff on hand just in case. For bosses I switched that for magic resist and used her buffs; ice armor seemed to not protect vs magic so I did not always cast it on everyone. Good on the game for making buffs last the entire battle, though there was nothing that clearly indicated this. The area effect ice wall was the most used nuke in regular battles, while I used flameria more often at end game, and flame bomb for single targets. The other 3 nukes were weaker and only useful before learning the better ones or to exploit elemental weaknesses. Everyone had their best equipment by the end game, though from reading a walkthrough it seems I missed a 3rd healing ring. I had fun with Luna while she was in the party early game, using her sleep magic and a staff that could cast sleep which I lost when she was kidnapped and was not happy when she rejoined without it. Mia and Nash used flame staves from the inventory as a free ranged attack but I never purchased other staves with spells to see if they were better.

I loved the core gameplay mechanics. Being able to save anywhere outside of combat or dialogue was amazing, almost as good as save states. I hate when games restrict saving. No battles on the overworld was great for exploring, safety and just setting up the world building that monsters were only in their lairs. And having the enemies on screen to chase the party was better than random battles. I was immensely impressed with the 1st dungeon; the way different enemies moved around the level. The flies that moved too fast to avoid so might as well charge them, the elementals that slowly flew over obstacles and could surprisingly get you, and the gorillas that charged ahead and could be tricked into breaking ice blocks. There was a whole level of tactical depth around which enemies to fight and which to avoid. With the goal being to reach a boss in the best condition possible, there was strong incentive to try and avoid fights. But go too far with that and you could end up in back to back battles without a chance to heal in between. Battles were fairly challenging too and I got game over a few times. I made a big mistake at the volcano by not buying ice weapons beforehand, but at least the flame sword gave fire resist. It would have been useful to be able to move the characters to specific spots on the battlefield to spread out and avoid area attacks. I was disappointed that there were no puzzles around manipulating enemy movement after the 1st dungeon (not counting the trivial bit at the end dungeon), and sometimes the tight areas of the dungeons made the enemy movement type irrelevant. I did not like the point of no return near the end; you really should be able to explore the entire world right up until beating the final boss. Or even better after beating the boss. There were no vehicles to get around the map or optional secrets beyond just talking to people. Though I don’t believe all rpgs need extensive side quests, mini games and ultra hard dungeons.

Comparing this game to other playstation rpgs (like FF7 and 8, Chrono Cross, Xenogears), it seemed more like a SNES game with its more basic graphics and mechanics. It also seemed to be less exciting for some reason, maybe because the story was more grounded and focused on drama rather than mind boggling sci fi, though there were definitely some sci fi elements. Like is the goddess actually a goddess, or some kind of advanced technology? Despite lacking some of the bells and whistles of other jrpgs, it has so many excellent features and is such a pleasant experience that it is one of the best jrpgs of all time. And the music is awesome.

9.4/10

This might be the most disappointed I've ever been in a game. I've been looking forward to this for literally 30 years. Back in my youth, I would lust over ads and features for Lunar, its fantasy RPG world, the anime aesthetic, swords, magic, dragons, dudes in big capes!!! I bought a dang Sega CD for this game!

Oh, sweet summer child.

So fast forward, I never did find a Sega CD copy, I got SSS complete as a birthday gift in highschool, never played it, until now many years later. And holy shit this was not enjoyable.

Graphics are okay for a redesign of an older game. I think more effort could have been put into sprite, battle, spell animations, that kind of stuff. And oh my goodness, why do characters in these games need to be constantly walking in place? Is it a limitation of the hardware? Coding? Laziness? Does this really bother anyone else??

Music is utterly forgettable, not even one tune stands out to me, and the sound design is just lackluster and dated.

Battles, despite enemies being visible on the map, are mostly unavoidable and way too frequent. Forgiveable if fighting was interesting in the least, but from battle one to the last boss, fights are boring, tedious, repetitive, and just plain not fun. There were only a couple difficulty spikes that grinding a couple levels would fix, but it was all over the place. Many monsters could one shot my weaker team members. In the same dungeon, I could just auto battle melee my way through it with no thought. Heal up and worry about MP conservation after every fight because no matter how strong you think you are, you're taking a lot of damage in every single fight.

Gameplay is reduced to the most formulaic quest possible. Town, dungeon, fight and heal 800 times, boss, next might-as-well-be-identical town, same feeling dungeon, same 800 fights and navigating the annoying as hell menu 800 times. No side quests, no mini games, no puzzles, no secrets (more on this in a bit), no hidden characters or locations, nothing much special at all to see or do, just go through a dozen boring towns and a dozen boring dungeons, kill a hundred interchangable enemies, and that's it. Not even the last boss is cool.

I think that's it for the technical stuff, so let's move on to the plot and storytelling. The plot is flimsy and threadbare. The protagonist, Alex, wants to become a Dragonmaster. He idolizes the previous one, Dyne, from his village, who died fifteen years ago. We never do quite learn what a Dragonmaster does, except serve the Goddess in... some way. Everyone on earth (well, Lunar, so, the moon) worships (and well, not really worships, more like talks about and perhaps respects) a goddess, who, for some reason you never learn, genocided an entire race several hundred years prior, for something they did. We're never told what they did but it was bad enough that they deserve a slow, hundreds of years long extinction because of it. Oh, in the moon part of the moon. There are cloudy details about an extinction event on earth, so Althena, said goddess, brought humanity to the moon, used her magic to make some of it inhabitable, but not all of it, because apparently she's not a very talented Goddess. So for some reason, beastmen (wherever they came from) and humans get to live in the earth part of the moon, and the "Vile Tribe," who are really just humans with pointy ears, live in the Frontier, the moon part of the moon which is not super habitable. Things are real shitty in the Frontier, so not unexpectedly, the Vile Tribe decides to get a piece of the good land. That's basically the plot. Everyone does stuff around that with little to no reasoning, because I guess just no one thinks about it.

The characters have some cutscenes and out of battle dialogue that's voiced. It's not great. And oh man, in battles when you cast a spell, they say a little phrase. So you hear the same five sentences thousands of times and they are so poorly acted, like all of them were bored and couldn't be bothered. Except, here's one compliment I'll give, the villain's maniacal laugh is one of the best VA maniacal laughs I've heard.

The cast in Lunar is awful. Every person is terrible for some reason or another. Here's a rundown of our playable team.

• Alex - he wants to be a Dragonmaster for some reason. His personality is he likes Luna.
• Nall - a flying cat thing. We don't know why he exists, what he is, where he came from, or why he hangs out with Alex, but he's around to carry items and make comments.
• Luna - she's a girl. Her personality is liking Alex even though he's basically her brother.
• Ramus - he's fat and greedy. The game reminds you of this constantly.
• Jessica - she's a loud, bossy girl. The game reminds you of this constantly.
• Kyle - he's a lecherous, alcoholic dickhead, who somehow is Jessica's boyfriend. He would be the worst video game character ever, if not for...
• Nash - the worst video game character ever. He is a huge asshole. His personality is being a whiny, snobby, condescending, traitorous little shit and saying awful things.
• Mia - she's a quiet, demure girl. The game reminds you of this constantly. For some reason, she returns Nash's affection for her, which is really only expressed by him owning a naughty picture of her.

Everyone else in the game falls into one of three categories: mysoginistic men; quiet, demure women; and loud, bossy women.

This is the impetus of Working Designs' localization philosophy with this game. They don't allow for anything else. There's very little grey area. In the world of Lunar, if a woman doesn't submit to her husband, she's a loud, bossy bitch. There are very few, if any, men in the game who don't talk about women as sex objects. The quiet, demure girls should constantly doubt their ability, and need a man to be worth anything. Men are rude, lecherous, drunks. There are, of course, some outliers, but they're the exception.

The translation is riddled with errors, typos, and mistranslated things (good old "antorion" instead of "antlion"), and a couple instances like I noted in an earlier status update, bits where they forgot what has or hasn't happened yet in the plot, and give spoilers away.

On top of this, the localization is truly awful. I get it, companies need to make things understandable and accessible for American audiences. But this game constantly, incessantly, unrelentingly goes overboard in every facet. There are so many product, commercial, and pop culture references, that the game bloats itself with outdatedness. We've got 90s Milk ads, M&Ms, Wheaties, Mountain Dew, Star Wars, James Bond, Tootsie Roll Pops, ABBA, and it just goes on and on.

For some reason, WD decided to give country accents or affectations to a few towns' citizens, even when absent in the original. And it's never done for clarity, to show some regionalism, or any valid reason, it's just always done for laughs, in the form of the team treating everyone like idiots and making incest jokes. Also, there are like five characters in the game who speak with super awkward speech patterns, totally unlike everyone around them. Their grammar almost seems machine translated. I wonder if this handful of characters had some delay or something and someone with a poor grasp of English translated their dialogue.

There are non stop jokes almost every character makes insulting others around them. We've got some degree of everything - fat shaming, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, and a general, negative otherring of everyone that's not that person. You can call me an SJW and that's probably true, but I really do value free speech, and I enjoy my fair share of edgy, immature, maybe even questionable comedy, as long as it's done with wit and knowledge. There's no such thing in Lunar. Pretty much none of it is funny, it's all punching down, or the most basic, vulgar, crass insult comedy you can think of. Who doesn't love a good fart joke? This game can't even get that right. And it's constant. Kyle never stops objectifying women. Nash is never kind to anyone unless he wants something from them. Every dude oggles every woman he sees. A woman thinks her son is a crybaby idiot. Some guy's defining trait is he's a jerk who smells bad. Random dude hits on a party member and, being rejected, talks about putting the moves on his cousin. It just NEVER. STOPS. Even saving the world, WD makes sure there's always time for a put down or quick masturbation joke.

Did I mention that Lunar: SSSC makes no attempt to hide that women are objects intended for the male gaze and that sissy gay dudes are jokes? Oh okay, well here's another example. The only secret/side quest in the game is accumulating naughty images of female characters. Most of them come in the form of bromides found around the world, that shows your girl teammates or villains in various stages of undress when used as an item. In addition, there are two hot springs areas where, if you have a bar of soap in your inventory, you're treated to watching your team bathe in the springs. But there's a catch - without telling you, the first hot spring turns out to be males only. "Haha, surprise gaywad! Dude, you're so gay!" is what I imagine Working Designs' staff saying to me in this moment. So you're treated to two scenes of cartoon dude butt. Eventually, you find the spring for women, and get to see underage anime boobs if you have soap still. Oh, but you have to work your way through one of the hardest dungeons in the game to get there. Lest you think I'm a hypocrite, I skipped over these... adventures.

That's not all folks, WD puts its charming humor all over their support materials as well. Here's a few doozies from the guide:

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete is awful. It's mediocre in every way, and in case the gameplay wasn't bad enough, Working Designs has covered it in a thick layer of pure, juvenile shit and outdated references for you to really get a laugh. L:SSSC'S worst sin of all, though: it's just not fun, AT ALL, to play.

Lunar SS is one of the reasons I spent all of my birthday money one year on a Sega CD, only to have Sega announce shortly afterwards they wouldn't be supporting it anymore. I never did get the original for Sega CD (or really, any of the games I wanted) but luckily I got this deluxe version as a gift in high school.

So far it's fine, typical grindy 90s fare. The game looks very nice, and the cut scenes aren't bad at all. It has that Working Designs stink all over it, though, even in their strategy guide (which I'm not using but I had to look up what the "inn" system was).

The Lunar series occupies a strange space in the greater videogame cannon. The series, released cautiously throughout the 90's, quickly garnered a cult following. If you google "best jrpgs," it's difficult to find a list that doesn't include at least one of the two mainline games.

However, unlike most revered fantasy rpgs of the Playstation era, the series remains unreleased on current consoles (at least outside of a couple of substandard ports for PSP & iOS). Much like Valkyrie Profile and Azure Dreams, this hallowed series is slowly becoming harder and more expensive to play.

Lunar: Silver Star Story is perhaps the most sincere game I've ever played. It constructs a world devoid of irony and often devoid of cruelty. It's characters say what they mean, often coating their language with saccharine sentimentality. That's not to say the game shirks elements of humor, but the comedic elements grow from innocent exploration of the characters rather than the self-aware tone found in most contemporary JRPGs.

It's execution almost feels predictable. Town, dungeon, boss, repeat. What makes the world seem refreshing is the game's confidence in it's own mechanics. Towns are vibrant hubs, full of amusing NPCs. Dungeons, while often repetitive in design, feature enemies that punish arrogance. The bosses test the players' ability to plan ahead, often proving to be impossible unless MP was strategically preserved during a dungeon run.

I did not "finish" Lunar. I got to the final boss. I fought valiantly, but my spunky crew of magic-wielding young-adults perished. Staring at the game over screen I felt a sense of curdled peace. How fitting, I thought. A game about optimism and love, ending tragically with the heros' cadavers lying on the cold marble steps of the villain's tower. I decided I liked this ending. It provided a poetic contrast to the game's somewhat cloying intent. It's an ending more JRPG's could use.

I looked up the real ending on youtube. It's an upsetting ending where everyone lives, everyone dead returns to blissful life, and the blue-haired healer realizes she doesn't have to choose between the responsibilities of being a reincarnated god and being a normal teenage girl in love with her adopted brother. Yeah it sucks. I like my ending better too.

Lunar: Silver Star Story update

I now own both of the good Lunar games!

Attention nerds,