Lunar: Dragon Song Review

Now you might be saying as early as now, I'm just using the word "review" as an excuse to bash another product I passed by once for a few minutes to kingdom come. You're wrong. I'm currently playing the game with a lot of hours invested with full intention to write an objective review. Id est, if I'm bashing, I don't need any excuses.

Expectations:

Now I've never really played the original Lunar games for the Sega CD but I was fortunate enough to play the remakes for the PSX back in 1998. The original Lunar is still one of the few benchmark games by which newer games are measured. Featuring AI for automated battles to avoid the grind of leveling up, a tactical location-based fighting system years ahead of its time, CD-quality voice and music tracks, animated sequences - Lunar The Silver Star Story was one helluva game. Its sequel, The Eternal Blue, failed to break the mold of its predecessor, but it nonetheless lived up to the original game. Then, here comes Dragon Song. It's been 9 years since the last game, so my reaction when I got the game was just HOLY SHIT.

Many hours into the game, I conclude that I may have overestimated a bit. A more apt reaction would have been without the HOLY part.

Story:

The story occurs 1000 years before the original Lunar game. To the developers, 1000 years before a game means they can pretty much change every single detail from the world and still say it's the same shit. Apart from Althena, the Vile Tribe and the dragons, Dragon Song has nothing that will connect it to the previous games. It's kinda like saying Sarao and Ferrari are one and the same because they both have horse emblems.

However, if you played the original and play long enough, you'll notice something is in fact common between the two games. Dragon Song's plot is Silver Star's Story repackaged - minus the colorful characters, minus the plot twists, minus about 3/4s of the involved characters, minus the coherence of the original story. Seriously. As a matter of fact, I'd like to sum up the story right now in one sentence:

Kid tries to become dragonmaster to destroy evil dude who kidnaps his love interest because she's a goddess in disguise with the help of his friends - and succeeds.

If you think the original story was pretty straightforward, Dragon Song's story is about the equivalent of premature ejaculation.

To make things worse, UbiSoft, translators of the game has turned what little dialogs there is in the game to a badly edited term paper, with retarded lines like "We have to go to Cathedral of Althena" and "You must become a dragon master and have the mental prowess of a titan." News flash, Ubisoft, we don't look up to the titans for mental prowess. Last time I heard, Zeus tricked them into getting stuck in another dimension.

Characters:

The characters of this game is about as lovable as the occasional rugby boy you pass by on your way home. One a lighter note, the protagonist might very well be the first console RPG character modeled after the players who he'll be representing - dull and with no real skills whatsoever. (8 hours in the game and you still cant use a single MP)

With very sparse dialogs throughout the game, the characters are badly underdeveloped, with some characters such as the swordsman introduced and taken away from the game in less than 30 minutes of gameplay (and he's supposed to be a "main character"). This halfbaking of introductions lead to the development of characters with the personality depth of a muppet.

One other character, the archer was recruited with this sort of dialogue (approximated):

Protagonist: I don't know you. You saved me once. My girl, who you've never really met got kidnapped by a guy who could turn you inside out with just the tip of his penis. You now have to bring me to his castle by battling through hordes of enemies whose sole purpose in life is to end yours just because I say so. Now.

Archer: Sure.

If we were to use dialogs as indicators for personalities, we'd think all the characters in this game are catatonic. In the RPG reunion party, these guys would be the people characters from RPG games would avoid talking to.

And then there's just the overall character design. The protagonist uses kung-fu to fight, with damage 3x that of somebody who's using a huge sword. Am I the only one who finds problem with that? To really show that balance isn't something the developers had in mind, another character uses an umbrella to fight, with damage 1/6 that of the protagonist. An Umbrella. Wow. Why not send somebody who throws sanitary napkin instead?

Sprites are also badly done. The best example is probably the Archer girl who assumes a kung-fu stance whenever she fights. Nobody probably told the sprite artists beforehand that she uses a fucking CROSSBOW.

Gameplay:

If gameplay is the heart of every RPG, this game would've died of cardiac arrest a long time ago. For a game released 9 years after its predecessor, the gameplay actually feels like a step back - back to Atari. To make things short, I have the following notes about the gameplay:

- Every dungeon has a secret item that you can get if you beat all the enemies within an amount of time. The items are usually critical to the next boss fight. So what happens is half of the time you're playing, you're trying to "catch 'em all" while the vast majority of your enemies will try run away from you. Am I the only one who think that's the most retarded dungeon gameplay ever?

- And while we're at the topic of chasing, running around in this game drains HP. Remember your momma telling you not to run right after eating because you might get sick? This is probably the RPG equivalent of it. Running around will actually KILL you (yes, even in towns). The only option is to walk, making every second of moving around feel like wading through knee-deep shit.

- Even the mapping of the dungeons are insane. Sometimes, something as small as a pebble will prevent you from crossing a very wide passage. Serious case of smallshitscarephobia, perhaps?

- AI was the strength of the previous Lunar games. Now, the developers decided to go a step further by automating EVERYTHING, including choosing targets. You can't aim. You now have the mind boggling tactics-driven gameplay akin to Snakes and Ladders. (Protip: You can't call taking the steering wheel out of a car as revolutionary if you don't give the driver something else to use to turn the vehicle.)

- You blow at the mic to escape. Nice creative usage of the DS interface there. Cowardice is rewarded in this game by making you look shit stupid.

- When fighting enemies, you have the choice of earning experience points or items that can be sold for money. You can't have both at the same time. This means twice the grind for higher stats and higher items.

- Your main source of money is doing jobs. By doing jobs I mean collecting item sets as required by your job. By sets I mean, assembling sometimes hundreds of rare item drops from at least a dozen different monsters for a measly thousand bucks, while the really good equipment costs several thousand to purchase.

- And if ever you are able to buy the really expensive equipment which are vital for combat in the later rounds, they have the chance to BREAK without any reason, rendering you without either a weapon or an armor or both. And you cant repair it. 5,000 for Shoes? They're gone after one unlucky "weapon break". Walking around weaponless in a dungeon is like going partying in Africa without a condom. The only workaround is to save after every fight which is very inconvenient and well, retarded.

Conclusion:

I loved the first two Lunar games, man. I really did. And this game is part of the family so I tried hard to love it. Really hard.Publish Post The many hours I spent finishing this game is proof of it. But I guess even love can only do so much. This game sucks right down to the core. I'm surprised it was able to bag a 6.1 rating in IGN.

Many years from now, teachers lecturing how to make RPGs will be using Dragon Song as an example of what will happen if you really screw up a prefectly good RPG franchise.

The only way for you to enjoy this game is to do what the developers did while making this game - get a big bag of weed and try to get as high as possible without killing yourself.