Wonderful characters, a charming story, a lively world and a good battle system make Lunar an unforgettable experience.
The story is relatively simple and gets off to a rather familiar start, but manages to be both great and charming. Alex lives in a small village with his very close childhood friend Luna, who has a singing voice with mysterious powers. He constantly dreams of being just like his hero, Dragonmaster Dyne. Dragonmasters and the four dragons are the protectors of the Goddess Althena, who created a habitable region on a barren moon and always does what is best for her children. Naturally not everything is as perfect and harmonious as it seems, as Alex quickly discovers as he travels to become a Dragonmaster. He certainly gets sidetracked a bit, but he is always accomplishing something towards his overall goal, no matter how minor. And yeah, there's the whole standard save the world and save the girl moments you'd expect from an RPG, but the world and characters pull you in so much that you'll have more motivation to do so in Lunar than in your average RPG.
In terms of the characters, the development of the cast and some of the primary NPCs simply blows its competitors out of the water. Part of this is due to the wonderful translation by Working Designs, which brings each character's personality to life. The quality of the translation really stands out given that other RPGs of the era have lots of grammatical mistakes and wooden dialogue. There are many instances in the game where your party members stand around and give their detailed thoughts on the current events. And not only do they give a few text boxes of their thoughts if you talk to them, they'll usually give another relatively lengthy exchange if you talk to them again. They certainly do not give the generic motivational one-liners like in other games, which is definitely one of its biggest strengths. From a spunky daughter of a hero who skips classes at her temple to head out on adventures and her incorrigible on-again off-again boyfriend to a self-absorbed young mage, it's nearly impossible not to be drawn in by the characters.
The battle system takes an interesting spin on the traditional turn-based RPG. Instead of enemies lining up on each side of the screen and trading jabs, Lunar's battles takes relative position into account. If you attack enemies you'll run up to it and hit it, but if it's too far away you'll only make it part of the way there and tire out, using up that turn. This obviously gives ranged weapons an advantage, but they tend to be weaker. The fact that enemies spread out affects your use of area spells and abilities. Enemies packed in a cluster will be hit by a spell with a circular area, but if they're spread out it will only hit one. If an enemy is quicker than the casting character they can even move out of the area before the spell is cast, making a character's speed more important than in other purely turn-based games. Each character gets a limited set list of spells or abilities that are gained at specific levels (except for a few story-based abilities that Alex gains), so advancement is automatic and your arsenal rather simple but effective. Sure there are fewer spells than in other games, but in said other games you tend to use the same number of spells as in Lunar as the rest are nearly worthless. The downside to such a setup is that the same strategy works on every boss fight, causing a little bit of a lack of variety.
Random battles are largely eliminated, as all enemies appear on the map. However they ambush you in a few places, making it impossible to avoid them. The dungeons also seem to be perfectly paced, as you go through them relatively quickly as to not overstay their welcome and reduce to grinding. A good 30-45 minutes on a dungeon keeps the story and the scenery moving along, so you'll always feel like you're getting somewhere in each play session even if you do not have a lot of time. Overall this results in the game clocking in at less than 30 hours, but you always get the feeling that you are doing more and accomplishing more than in longer RPGs. The fact that you can literally save anywhere at any time also prevents you from having to replay sections over again if you get wiped out in a battle.
The presentation of the game did suffer a bit, as it was essentially a generation old when it finally released in America. At a time gamers were experiencing the incredible 3D visuals in games like Final Fantasy VIII, Lunar is a game of sprites and generated dungeons from the 2D era. On the plus side this resulted in the game aging better, as some of the early 3D games found on the PlayStation certainly show the inexperience of the programmers with 3D. The character portraits in the dialogue boxes of the major characters each show the mood of the character speaking, adding to the experience. Throughout all of this there are some anime cutscenes at key story points and when characters are first introduced. The soundtrack is very good at conveying the general lighthearted atmosphere and tense moments, but can get repetitive a little bit as certain tunes get recycled a little too much. There's voice acting in the anime cutscenes, a few other key sections, and in the battles themselves. Most of the voice acting is passable, which makes it immediately better than the dreadful attempts in other games of the era. Some characters overact or deliver a flat line here or there, but most do a rather good job of fitting in with the character.
If you enjoy Japanese RPGs, it's pretty much impossible to play Lunar and not enjoy it overall. There are a few things to nitpick, but these negatives are relatively minor. It is the game's key strengths, like the world itself, the characters, and the battle system, that draws you in and does not let go. If you play Lunar and are not captured by its charm, then there must be an empty void in your soul. Many aspects of the game were relatively outdated when it released and didn't hold the game back at all, and the same holds true today. Forget flashy HD graphics, full 3D engines, and full customization options - those are just shells masking the lack of a soul in most modern games. Lunar is a Japanese RPG in its purest form, and developers should look towards it as an example of how to do things right.