OK, so to start, I'm playing the Un-Worked versions of the Lunars. This isn't too big of a deal for Silver Star other than introducing a proper mixed case font TO SOLVE THE INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS ALL-CAPS ORIGINAL, but it will be a big deal when we get to Eternal Blue, where the Un-Worked version is practically necessary unless you're a masochist or a sad dysphoric 13 year old in 1995.
Two more notes:
- I'm not going to mark spoilers or anything. The game is over 30 years old.
- I'm going to use the tag #GretchenLeighPlaysLunar if you want to follow and or mute these.
This whole thing is probably going to be more of interest to people who already have some familiarity with the games, but the basic gist of Lunar: The Silver Star is this: The protagonist is Alex, a teenager from a small town named Burg on Caldor Island, far from the mainland. Alex worships the legendary hero Dragonmaster Dyne. He has a small winged companion, Nall, who likes to talk a lot of sass. His childhood sweetheart is Luna, who also was raised by Alex's parents and lives with them, which you'd think would result in some kind of Westermarck effect, but the story is clear that they're absolutely ~soulmates~. Rounding out the early cast is Ramus, Alex's neurodivergent-coded buddy who kicks off the whole adventure by suggesting they go on an adventure to the nearby cave, where supposedly a dragon lives or once lived.
Burg is stuck in a mountainous corner of the island, and the only bridge to leave the area is somehow inconveniently out of order. So you pretty much have no choice but to head to the cave to move the plot forward. Some initial exploration and grinding later, you'll find your way into the White Dragon Cave. After a few floors of intro dungeon, you'll meet Quark, the white dragon. To the surprise of no one who has ever played a JRPG, he senses a great power in Alex, much like the power he sensed in Dragonmaster Dyne. And double surprise! He feels a deep connection to Luna as well. And then Ramus asks for the Dragon Diamond, and Quark gives him one, with a remark that I can only assume was added by Working Designs that the diamonds are his turds.
So far, this sounds like a pretty generic JRPG plot, and it is. Lunar: The Silver Star is a pretty straight shot of an RPG. So what makes Lunar so special? The parts that would generally be compressed down to "it has a good story" in 90s Western JRPG discourse don't really have much to do with the story beats themselves. For one thing, the characters are fantastically well-written and contain depth that goes way beyond almost any other JRPG of the era. They shine through even when Working Designs makes clumsy localization decisions. The world-building is also spectacularly rich. It says a lot that I still remember almost every character in this cast and many locations decades later. Remember, this game was released in North America in December 1993!! Its only real competition in this regard was Final Fantasy II/IV, which is obviously a classic, but its broad-stroked characters don't really stand up to Lunar's personality-rich cast.
Lunar: The Silver Star's secret weapon, though, is that the battle system kinda fucks. It's very basic in most respects, but your characters and the enemies move around the battlefield and need to be within range to attack. So you can have a character be overwhelmed by enemies surrounding them, pick off enemies with ranged weapons, and even have characters flee from enemies to the other side of the battlefield. It's ultimately fairly simple and a little chaotic, but it makes for a much more enjoyable turn-based battle system than the Dragon Quest-esque systems that most non-Square RPGs were still clinging to at the time.
The dungeons are unusually complex and clever, especially as you get deeper into the game. They are windy and occasionally a little too easy to get lost in, but they're leagues above most contemporaries. Combined with the ability to save almost anywhere and plentiful free healing spots in the form of shrines, it makes for an unusually brisk-paced 16-bit JRPG.
Having now gotten through the first dungeon, I've found that the game's charm is intact. I cannot wait to get further into this game and blab on about it.
A few more notes:
- Maybe the one disappointing thing that I forgot about is that the game really lacks in modern QoL. You cannot see item stats at shops or even compare stats in the equip menu.
- I don't really like the opening song, especially the English version, but the rest of the soundtrack still slaps.
- Outside of a few bits like the thing with Quark saying the diamonds are his shit, I haven't hit on any Working Design-isms that are too bad yet. My recollection is that they don't really start to get bad until Eternal Blue, but we'll see.