Well, things are still going very well in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. The storyline is still all cliché and silliness, but honestly it's okay.
It took me a while to realize that I've been through (and probably still going through) what is most likely the most productive gaming period I have experienced. I'm still working out why exactly my nerdy little wheels have decided to start churning out so many successive--and successful--campaigns thus far. Some of it is pure escapism; I beat Tales of The Abyss the same day my mom's cancer diagnosis was confirmed, and buried myself in Tales of Vesperia that very night. Some of it is pure bloodyminded, nerdy determination to sit down and beat some damn games instead of faffing about in open world wanderlust.
But what was the X factor, the catalyst that keeps me actually picking up the controller and seeing things to the credits? I'm still not 100 percent sure, but I think that it's the fact that I'm spacing the 'serious' games out with 'mental palate cleansers' like Lunar.
Objectively, this game should totally suck, especially stacked against some of the heavy fare I've been tearing my way through. But! The guys at Working Designs did a wonderful job of taking a cookie-cutter JRPG and making into something special. They went so completely nuts on the jokes and references and double entendres that even the glorious kooks at Gearbox Software probably weep in envy. Seriously, "I am the eggman, I am the walrus" is probably one of the tamer ones floating around in here. Throw in references to movies and cartoons, plus things like a snippet yanked and slightly sanitized from a corny sex novel and we have a wonderful, wonderful medley of hoots left and right.
A lot of the actual gameplay is actually very fun and refreshing too. The combat mechanics are fairly basic in theory, but have a level of intricacy and polish that RPGs two or even three generations ahead have a hard time matching. It's turn-based, but with interesting twists like characters actually moving across the battlefield to smack enemies, higher-level characters being able to make multiple moves and attacks a turn making basic attack commands viable throughout the game, monsters have different attacks and animations acting as 'tells,' giving you a chance to anticipate and respond. This is all in an early PS1 game that is a remake of a Sega CD game, mind you.
The dungeons are similar. They look like something from the 16-bit era that's been slightly jazzed up (which is what they are), but there's this air of polish and craftsmanship to them. The towns are even more fun; Lunar stands as that rare early JRPG where the towns actually feel like towns. They're still pretty small, but they're chock-full of things to look at, people with interesting dialogue (a lot of the gags come from random townsfolk) and objects to find and poke (even more gags). There's no real wonder that this game (and its sequel) have such an affectionate fanbase, and my only regret is not playing this the last time I had a copy on hand. But now it's time to go, The Harvest Never Rests!
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