My adventures through this prequel to the world of Lunar weren't at all what I had in mind.
The last time I played Lunar it was a rental copy of Lunar 2 for the Playstation. I never even got to finish it before I had to take it back, and I never found it again. I have fond memories of the Lunar games, even if I didn't go far in the Sega CD one (but completed Silver Star Story Complete on the PS), so I was happy I could dive in once again into the magic land created by Goddess Althena.
The adventure in Lunar: Dragon Song takes place 1000 years before the events of Silver Star. The world is much different, with humans and beasts living separately without getting along. Once at peace and under the Goddess' protection, the balance of the world is now threatened by demons. An invasion is underway, Althena is missing and the magic is fading.
Our hero is a human boy, Jian, who believes humans and beasts are equal. It will be up to him and his friends to save Althena and the world from certain destruction.
Lunar DS shows many similarities with previous games. The music will strike you right away as familiar although it is new, some of the monsters are already old acquaintances and you can still see them on the world map, and statues of Althena are placed all over the world for your healing convenience.
The new features (especially those concerning the combat system) are what might either attract or completely turn off fans of the older Lunar titles.
The first change is the number of party members, you are limited to only three. You can't arrange their positions in the battlefield either and you can't pick a specific target to attack. Battles begin by walking into a monster at any given time, as they used to. You can run to avoid enemies by pressing the B button, but unfortunately it uses HP as you run, and you get to a point where you can't run anymore when your party members' HP reaches a certain low (I'm not sure, but it might be about 1/4 of their total HP).
The battle system is a little odd: you either fight for items or experience, but you can't have both happening at the same time. To fight for items, you use the Combat Mode (on the bottom screen, Jian's picture will have a blue background). To fight for experience (which is called Althena Conduct) you need to go into Virtue Mode. Tap Jian's portrait and it will change to an orange background, the stopwatch will start ticking and below it there will be a number of checkboxes. The checkboxes represent the number of fights in the area. Every time you attack a monster, the stopwatch will reset, and you will need to engage in another fight before it completes a full rotation, or another monster will appear. Once you have killed everything in the area, your party's HP and MP get restored (but not fully) and you are able to open any blue chests in that area.
While in combat, you have three options: Attack, Special and Item. Attack is your regular hit and it doesn't use up MP (although it did for Lucia). Special are your spells and skills, they all use MP. Item is where you can use your Tools (recovery items) and Cards. Cards are obtained from monsters and they have their own HP. For example, if the number on a card is 800, you get 8 uses of the card's effect before it's gone. Cards have many uses (defense, attack, recovery); some can be used in and out of battle and others can be used only while on the world map (make monsters slower or being them towards you).
Furthermore, once you find your first card, you unlock the Coliseum. The Coliseum lets you use the DS wireless connectivity to play a Scratch Battle against someone else, but first you have to acquire cards if you want a good chance at winning. In a Scratch Battle, both players pick a card. There is a 6x4 grid that you scratch to find out which type of attack you will inflict on your opponent's card. When the HP on your opponent's card (it's a P on the card) reaches zero, you win and take his/her card.
But back to the fighting system in Lunar: Dragon Song.
The battle spans across both screens; the top one shows your party's HP, MP and effects as well as any airborne enemies, while the bottom one shows enemies on the ground and your pary members. Airborne enemies will descend once you kill the ones below them. The dual screen view works fine for large monsters, but with small monsters it tends to split some in half, which makes it look a little awkward.
With the animations for each party member and enemy (especially when it comes to special attacks), the way the screen changes perspective from one side to another when there's really no reason to and not being able to pick a target to attack, battles can become long and boring. Fortuantely you can press the trigger buttons to speed up animations.
You can also escape from battles by blowing on the microphone, although that doesn't guarantee that you will get away. When you do escape from a fight, the monster will flash for a while on the world map, which means you can run away safely for a little while, then it will go back to normal.
I'm not very fond of this "items or experience" concept, as it's something that forces you to backtrack a lot. Items are needed to complete quests, which are the main way of making money, and equipment is pretty expensive (not to mention it also breaks without any durability warning). The whole thing just seems unecessary.
Quests are found at the Gad's Express outposts, which host the game's job system. As you will notice, the first task Jian has is to deliver a package to another town. Deliveries can be Gad's Express packages going from town to town, but there are other jobs needing delivery, which will require you to find the items first and then find the person who asked for them. If you can't complete a job, you have to pay a fee to abandon it. Once you deliver the items to someone, you get a receipt that you must take back to Gad's Express to receive your payment. Payment is awarded according to the job difficulty (measured by a four star scale), and the rewards sometimes aren't worth the time spent hunting for the right items.
The storyline is good, with your regular guy stepping up to save the world. It's mostly linear and you can always check in with your party members to know what to do next (you press the Y button to hear what they have to say). The characters are interesting and each has their own personality, you can bond with them right away, especially with Jian and Gabi and their feelings of unity between beasts and humans.
Graphically, the game is bright and colorful. Key characters and important story sequences have been rendered in colorful anime-style artwork. The world is shown in an isometric view and there are many little details in people's houses that are worth looking at (for example, some leave their shoes at the door) and lots of people to talk to, represented by cute little sprites. The continent is fairly big and there are many different places to travel to and from: forests, caves, temples, ports, villages, large cities, even the Cathedral of Althena. The palettes differ from area to area, as do the monsters.
The music is a strong point in the entire game, I quite liked it. It sets the mood for the different situations, with themes fitting for a stroll on a town or a boss fight. The sound effects get a bit repetitive and I wish there was some voice acting.
I have to mention it though, because you know I nitpick it, but the dialogs had some spelling errors and the words weren't even hyphenated, just broken in half, a piece in one line, a piece in the next line. The "Engrish" comes through in the form of badly-translated NPC names. I can't tell you how long I searched for a Paolo from one of my delivery quests, and all I found was a Paoro. It was the same guy after all...
As far as the controls go, and although you can use the stylus to navigate menus and move around the world map, everything is just so much easier if you use the D-pad and the buttons.
Overall, Lunar Dragon Song is not that bad of a game but the new features aren't all that appealing. It seems like some of them were put together "just because", as they really don't do much for the game. There's no point in using the stylus just as there's no point in having two separate battle systems.
As you can see, I have some seriously mixed feelings about Dragon Song, but it was really the story that keept me going. Knowing that I would be be fighting the four dragons and eventually become the Dragonmaster and save Althena and her world from the evil intentions of the Vile Tribe is the ultimate reward I would expect from any Lunar title. But even then, being the Dragonmaster wasn't what I expected. The magic power that comes with it is limited, and Jian will only be able to use one type of magic at any given time if – and only if – he equips one of the dragon rings for that type of magic.
My adventures through this prequel to the world of Lunar weren't at all what I had in mind, and that is why I will still hold any of the previous titles in higher regard.
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