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Lunar: The Silver Star - A Legend of (15 years) Old
cj iwakura
The Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
The Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered User regular
On December 1st, 1993, a certain little publisher brought us the game that many still consider to be the reason to own a Sega CD.
In '93, RPGs like this just didn't exist. Full motion animation, voice acting, and a timeless story backing it all up.
A young villager leaves his home town on a quest to defeat the Magic Emperor, and return peace to the world of Lunar.
Of course, Lunar's story hardly ends with The Silver Star.
First, there was the equally legendary sequel:
Then many years later, both got remade for the Saturn, then were ported to the Playstation.
The prior three are all still worth playing, but the original still has its charms, among them being the fact that it's tough as nails. While that might be a negative for some, this was an era when random battles and ridiculously huge dungeon maps were the standard.
Both of which were practically erased from the remakes, as well as a number of plot elements, but that's another story.
Whether remake or original, each still have a good story and cast going for them.
So in memory of Lunar's 15th anniversary, I'm going to go revisit a classic, and hopefully a few others will do the same.
Shine on, Dragonmaster.
In '93, RPGs like this just didn't exist. Full motion animation, voice acting, and a timeless story backing it all up.
A young villager leaves his home town on a quest to defeat the Magic Emperor, and return peace to the world of Lunar.
Of course, Lunar's story hardly ends with The Silver Star.
First, there was the equally legendary sequel:
Then many years later, both got remade for the Saturn, then were ported to the Playstation.
The prior three are all still worth playing, but the original still has its charms, among them being the fact that it's tough as nails. While that might be a negative for some, this was an era when random battles and ridiculously huge dungeon maps were the standard.
Both of which were practically erased from the remakes, as well as a number of plot elements, but that's another story.
Whether remake or original, each still have a good story and cast going for them.
So in memory of Lunar's 15th anniversary, I'm going to go revisit a classic, and hopefully a few others will do the same.
Shine on, Dragonmaster.
cj iwakura on
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If you're comparing Complete to Complete, there's not much difference, but between the two Sega CD games, the differences were night and day.
TSS only had voice acting for four characters. EB had voice acting for all the story characters and then some, and a lot more cutscenes. The game was practically four times the audio/visual experience TSS was.
The remakes don't have the same impact at all, since both basically have the same standards that Eternal Blue did when it first came out.
Which is probably also why Eternal Blue Complete didn't suffer as many changes.
Terrible, no.
Huge disappointment, yes.
Now I have that song stuck in my head.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
I had more of a problem with how every character was pretty much totally extraneous to everything in EB except like... Leo. I don't even remember what the deal was with Ranfar and Jean. She was some kind of bored gypsy martial artist or something? And Lemina was just there.
And yeah, I just played both the PSX versions, so it was a big rehash, only with a much worse cast.
I owned the complete versions on the PS1 but when I think of these games I think of them on the sega cd. And, like cj said, the difference between the two were night and day. I actually think the story of Lunar 2 was better but really you can't go wrong with either one.
By the way I think my parents had to pay $70-80 for Lunar 2 (could be wrong because I was a kid when they bought my brother and I these games). Whatever it was it was incredibly expensive for its time.
The difficulty was LONG GONE, but at that point, I kinda knew that short of paying $texas for a Playstation copy, I wasn't gonna get another shot - the charm of the game was still there, but I know it wasn't the same game.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane cj.
I heard it removes Alex's father from the story, and I bet that's just the tip of the iceburg(pun not intended).
Complete removed that event entirely.
Ronfar's girlfriend was cursed by the fake Althena and Ronfar was unable to save her and blah blah blah red dragon
Jean was trained as an assassin since childhood by the leader of Meribia who was operating a secret cabal of child assassins and blah blah blah blue dragon
And that's with ten years or so of memory between the plot and me.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Seriously.
If it's a problem of these games being sold for a mere $6, we would be willing to pay more, Sony.
It really, really was. They should just have ported the older games. Works for Squarenix
The story's not bad, but the gameplay is a choir.
I'm still hoping one day they'll do a next-gen Lunar 3, but it's looking bleak for that. Maybe they're just better off leaving it be.
I never had a Sega CD so I never played the originals, but I know I didn't miss anything important.
That ain't right.
Some of the other changes are kind of weird
It also looked fairly good.
Eternal Blue Complete didn't have many changes compared to SSS, aside from the world map and dungeons being cut into a quarter of their original size(same with SSS).
There were a few, though:
Only happened once in the original if I remember right.
-The Star Dragon Guardian, an uber boss that stalks Hiro and co. everywhere, was taken out. He also had a big role in the Epilogue.
Silver Star on the other hand... in the original(serious spoilers):
-Ghaleon murders Quark in cold blood on the spot; no capturing.
-Luna never goes to Meribia; she stays behind.
-When Alex comes back from Quark's murder, all of the Burg villagers are gone and were replaced with demons, including his parents.
-No Royce or Phacia.
-Ghaleon has a demonic final form. In SSSC, he basically just comes back looking like he did in Eternal Blue SCD.
It didn't matter because Leo was just that damn awesome.
Anyways, I never played the originals, which makes me kind of sad. I do own both of the PS Complete versions, however (Which I paid $texas x2 for). And now that I know it's the 15th anniversary, it's time to go play them again.
Well, I think I've read about the changes before, but thanks for summing them up because I know I didn't remember. I still don't think there would be any particular reason to go and buy a Genesis, and a Sega CD, and both the damn games just to play technically inferior games with slightly different plot points and such.
Really the only thing it needed to be better than SSS was for EB to not have Nash. And it didn't. So it wins right there.
Agreed. Every week I look to see if Lunar has popped up on there somehow and every week I'm disappointed.
Lunar on the SegaCD was my first foray into RPGs and I still rank it as one of those 'must play' games. Can't believe it's been 15 years, I was playing it at 11. Heh. Still have my SegaCD copies.
I suddenly feel old.
We're getting more PS One classics soon, but they're very vague as to what they are. I'm praying for Lunar one day.
Each of which were just brought up for about one dungeon and its miniboss and then quickly forgotten again.
The biggest flaw in the original: all the magic is trial and error.
But the dialogue is still golden.
One of these days I'm going to have to hook it up and play through it. Never really had the time/bothered hooking it up. I would take the sega into work to play through it, but we'd always just pop an old version of NHL and make gretzkys head bleed lol.
Loved the hardback instruction manuals.
One came with a replica medallion, as well, right?
She could have just said no in the first place. sheesh.
When I was finally able to get the game myself it was worth it.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Pity the sequal after EB for NDS is unspiffy.
The scene where Alex transforms into a dragonmaster gave me shivers the first time I saw it. The build up to that moment was done so well that it was overwhelmingly rewarding to see it happen.
I never got through the epilogue in Eternal Blue, however. By the time I had reached the end of the game, the combat system had worn thin and I just couldn't subject myself to however many more hours I needed to finish all those extra dungeons. I wish I had've finished it, but my memory card corrupted a long time ago and I lost my clear save
Yep, EBC came with a replica of Lucia's Pendant.
It's held up pretty well.
Also, I remembered one huge benefit to TSS on Sega CD : the game is the soundtrack. To everything. All the music and dialogue tracks on it can be played in any CD player.
EB only had the two theme songs, unfortunately, but that's still good to have.
I loved both Lunar games on the Sega CD. Eternal Blue had that weird save system, but I got used to it. I also thought it was amazing when I watched the credits and got that playable epilogue.
I have the remakes on the PS1, although sadly (or perhaps this is a good thing) Eternal Blue Complete has remained uncompleted in my collection.
My Backloggery
SSSC was painful to me because of all the changes.
Well, one thing I dislike about EBC(aside from the Star Dragon's removal), the final boss.
Also, there's no challenge at all in Complete, but this applies to pretty much any boss in the remakes; especially Borgan. He was such a nightmare in EB that Working Designs' hint line had an option just for players getting murdered by him.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970