Lunar Dragon Song Characters

As a devoted fan of the role-playing game genre as well as the Lunar games, you can imagine my delight in finding the series make a jump to an all-ne. Lunar: Dragon Song for the Nintendo DS has.

Lunar: Dragon Song, known in Japan and Europe as Lunar Genesis (ルナ-ジェネシス-, Runa Jenesisu), is a role-playing video game developed by Japan Art Media for the Nintendo DS handheld console. The game was released in Japan by Marvelous Interactive on August 25, 2005, and later available in North America by Ubisoft on September 27, 2005, and a European version on February 17, 2006 by Rising Star Games. As the first original Lunar series title in ten years, it was also the first traditional role-playing game available for the Nintendo DS, utilizing several new features such as combat taking place across of two screens and the use of the system's built-in microphone to issue commands.

The game takes place a thousand years before the events of the first Lunar game, Lunar: The Silver Star, and centers on Jian Campbell, a young delivery boy and adventurer who must save the world from the rising menace of the Vile Tribe, a race of powerful magicians who wish to gain control of the goddess Althena and take over the world. Largely panned by critics, the game has received negative reviews due to a number of gameplay additions often seen as tedious and debilitating, such as the inability to target specific enemies in combat, as well as the decision to not include series mainstays such as voice acting and full-motion video sequences.

Gameplay[edit]

Lunar: Dragon Song is a traditional two-dimensional role-playing video game with an overhead, isometric viewpoint. Players may move the game's characters in eight directions using the Nintendo DS D-pad or stylus across of a number of different environments and completing story-based objects to move the plot forward. The game includes several differences to other games in the Lunar series, including a simplified world map that allows players to instantly travel to adjacent locations, and a condensed menu accessible from the bottom screen. A card collection system first seen in Lunar Legend is expanded to allow the cards to be used for beneficial effects, such as granting special abilities and changing game mechanics. Using the Nintendo DS wireless connection, two players can participate in a multiplayer match using cards obtained through normal gameplay called Scratch Battle. By scratching off sections of each card, a player can 'damage' their opponent by revealing numbers on its surface.

Unlike previous Lunar games that took a strategy-based approach to combat, Lunar: Dragon Song relies on a strictly traditional turn-based system where the player inputs commands at the start of each combat round with the appropriate actions taking place in accordance with a character's speed. While a player may freely select any character to use items or supportive magic on, specific enemies cannot be targeted by attacks, with the character artificial intelligence instead choosing the target itself. Game producer and Japan Art Media president Mitsuru Takahashi stated that the game's battle system was made intentionally simplistic to 'speed up' combat sequences, as well as streamline the battling process. A player's party may consist of no more than three characters, each of which are switched in or out automatically at certain points throughout the story, with no way to actively switch between them. Before going into battle, a player may choose one of two different modes: Combat and Virtue. Virtue Mode allows a player to earn experience points known as 'Althena Conduct' after winning a battle which go towards gaining levels which grant characters increased statistics and new skills. Combat Mode instead yields items.

Plot[edit]

Characters[edit]

The principal characters are Jian Campbell and his companions, a group of young adventurers who are caught up in a quest to save the world from the rising menace of the Vile Tribe. Jian himself is a headstrong delivery boy for Gad's Delivery who must often travel through monster infested lands to make his runs, and has trained himself in hand-to-hand combat accordingly. Lucia Collins is a kind-hearted yet bossy young girl who works with Jian, and has a natural gift for healing magic. Gabryel Ryan is a free-thinking young beast-woman who believes humans and beastmen should be considered equals, and fights with a combination of martial arts and magic dances. Flora Banks is a skilled marksman and healer who lives with her brother on the outskirts of the Frontier, a barren place that resembles the world of Lunar before the Goddesses' intervention. Rufus Crow is an adolescent Beastman and general of his nation's army who develops a rivalry with Jian after their first encounter, yet sees him as an ally soon after.

Mount and blade bannerlord release date reddit. Primary supporting characters include Gad, manager and owner of Gad's Delivery Service where Jian and Lucia are employed, and Zethos, leader of the Beastmen and one of the world's strongest fighters who follows the old doctrine that his people are superior. The primary antagonist is Ignatius, member of the villainous Vile Tribe and expert magician who seeks to covet the power of the Goddess for himself. Lunar: Dragon Song is the first game in the series to not have Toshiyuki Kubooka as lead character designer, but rather as a design supervisor who made final decisions on each character's appearance and maintain a 'distinct Lunar feel'.^[1]

Story[edit]

The game takes place 1000 years before Lunar: The Silver Star, making it the first game chronologically. The game opens with an explanation of the Lunar lore and how the Goddess Althena created a habitable place out of a barren wasteland and sent four powerful dragons to protect it. During the time of this game, Humans and Beastmen are still at odds with one another, and live in opposing towns across the world. The game stars a delivery boy named Jian Campbell who works in the busy port town of Searis delivering parcels and packages to anyone he is assigned. His best friend and partner, Lucia, often joins him in his excursions and helps him defeat monsters that litter the land. Along their journey, they get caught up in the legend of the dragons and, eventually, must put an end to an evil Dragonmaster who seeks to use their power to rule the world.

Reception[edit]

Lunar: Dragon Song experienced low sales during its original release in Japan, selling only 24,673 copies in the region.^[14] The game received a 27 out of 40 score from Japanese Famitsu Weekly magazine, whose editors found parts of the game to be 'bothersome and stressful' such as losing health while dashing and having players choose either experience points or items as a battle reward, but also remarked that the game was 'designed for people who are moved by an excellent storyline and characterization.'^[6]

Critical reaction to the game's English version was similarly lukewarm, with the game receiving largely low to average reviews. Electronic Gaming Monthly panned the title's unorthodox gameplay both in and out of battle, claiming that 'When its fundamentals are botched this badly, not even Dragon Song's semidecent story can save it.'^[4]Game Informer similarly described the game as an 'unfun and almost unplayable nightmare of gameplay design missteps',^[7] with the magazine later ranking the game eighth on its list of the '10 Worst Games of 2005' year-end review.^[15]IGN conversely felt that the game was an average handheld role-playing game, but that it contained many flaws that would require 'patience and an abundance of free time' to overcome, stating that 'Lunar is not a bad game by any means .. [it] features a bundle of original ideas, but fails to implement them in a fashion that stays entertaining throughout the course of the game.'^[11]1UP.com similarly called it 'a better-than-average handheld RPG with a likable cast, a charming story, and appealing graphics', but found it inferior in presentation to earlier Lunar titles, finding that it 'isn't really up to the thrilling and dramatic heights the series was synonymous.'^[16]GameSpot felt that many of the game's features lacked cohesion, remarking that it felt 'convoluted where you want it to be simple, and shallow where you wish it had some depth' adding that 'Even the most devout Lunar loyalists will have a hard time enjoying this game.'^[8]

In an import review of the North American version, Eurogamer ultimately declared that 'Lunar: Dragon Song could, should and would have been the DS's first great JRPG, especially considering its lineage, but, rather, what we have here is a wasted opportunity; one that turns your anger to frustration then to plain, empty sadness,' calling the game's battle system 'comfortably the worst in 20 years of RPGs.'^[5] The game maintains a 58.19% average score from aggregate review website GameRankings based on 40 reviews,^[2] and a 59/100 score from Metacritic based on 30 reviews.^[3]

References[edit]

1. ^LunarNet staff (2005). 'Interview - Toshiyuki Kubooka'. LunarNet. Retrieved 2007-02-21.
2. ^ ^ab'Lunar: Dragon Song for DS'. GameRankings. Retrieved 2009-05-18.
3. ^ ^ab'Lunar: Dragon Song for DS Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
4. ^ ^abEGM staff (November 2005). 'Lunar: Dragon Song'. Electronic Gaming Monthly. Ziff Davis Media (197): 162.
5. ^ ^abParkin, Simon (2006-01-05). 'Lunar: Dragon Song'. Eurogamer. Retrieved 2009-05-18.
6. ^ ^ab'New Games Cross Review'. Weekly Famitsu. Enterbrain. 2005-08-10.
7. ^ ^abMason, Lisa (November 2005). 'Lunar: Dragon Song'. Game Informer. GameStop Corporation (151): 178.
8. ^ ^abMueller, Greg (2005-09-28). 'Lunar: Dragon Song Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
9. ^Scantleberry, Chris (2005-09-27). 'GameSpy: Lunar: Dragon Song'. GameSpy. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
10. ^Zacarias, Eduardo (2005-10-23). 'Lunar: Dragon Song - NDS - Review'. GameZone. Archived from the original on 2008-10-05. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
11. ^ ^abClayman, David (2005-09-28). 'Lunar: Dragon Song'. IGN. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
12. ^'Lunar: Dragon Song'. Nintendo Power. 198: 114. November 2005.
13. ^Metts, Jonathan (2005-09-27). 'Lunar: Dragon Song'. Nintendo World Report. Retrieved 2014-11-24.
14. ^'Nintendo DS Japanese Ranking' (in Japanese). Japan-GameCharts. 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-08-08. Retrieved 2009-04-29.
15. ^'Game Informer's 10 Worst Games of 2005'. Game Informer. GameStop Corporation (153). January 2006.
16. ^Nutt, Christian (2005-09-26). 'Lunar: Dragon Song'. 1UP.com. Retrieved 2014-11-24.^{[dead link]}

External links[edit]

• Official North American website at LunarNET
• Lunar: Dragon Song at MobyGames

Lunar: Dragon Song

by Jonathan Metts - September 27, 2005, 10:51 am PDT

The first RPG for Nintendo DS is plenty long, but is that a good thing?

Lunar: Dragon Song is the first original game in the series in over ten years, but RPG fans who haven't played the originals, Silver Star and Eternal Blue, may wonder why the series is so famous after playing Dragon Song. The Lunar games have never been very fancy, but they strike role-playing gold by combining tender storytelling with tense battles. Unfortunately, Dragon Song fails to deliver either one.

The story surrounds Jian, a human teenager with a heart of gold and jack squat for brains, and his friend/sister/girlfriend Lucia, a seemingly normal girl upon whom Jian lavishes affection and concern throughout the game. But we're never told of their history or even the exact nature of their relationship, and the other characters are developed even less. The plot does draw in some interesting themes, including religion and racial oppression, but the specific chain of events is so poorly explained that you sometimes have no idea why a new character has joined your party or why you're going to the next location. On the positive side, the text itself is well written, occasionally funny, and even thought-provoking. It just seems that there was not enough effort put into writing the overall story elements into a cohesive work.

The battle system, in which at least two-thirds of your playing time will take place, is equally disappointing. Foremost among the problems is the fact that you can't select which enemy to attack, and your characters are not smart enough to attack the most dangerous enemy or finish off the ones that are almost dead from magic spells. This issue and the extremely limited magic system combine to suck virtually all strategy from the battles. Ironically, the game includes an auto-battle feature that can be safely used in nearly all battles except against bosses, since you'd end up doing the same thing (attack, attack, attack) through the menus at a slower pace.

But even auto-battle can't help the unbelievably slow pace of the game's battles. At normal speed, it's not uncommon for a battle to last over five minutes, and you'll need to complete hundreds of these battles to get through the entire game. That would be fine if the battles were interesting, but again, there's little for you to do but watch the attack animations and heal if a character gets too low on hit points. The L and R buttons can be held down to double and triple the battle animation speed, respectively. Even at triple speed with auto-battle skipping over the menu choices, the battles are still agonizingly slow and uneventful. Fighting battles in Dragon Song feels more like babysitting than anything, and I really can't stress enough how much the game suffers for these problems.

The game does deserve commendation for its innovative experience/money system. In Dragon Song, you can only win either experience points or money from any given battle, forcing you to decide which one is more important at that point in the game. Yes, this dual system does mean you have to fight more battles to keep your characters leveled up and properly equipped, but you tend to earn experience points very quickly, so it's not as bad as you might think. If you choose to get experience from battles, the enemies will be eliminated one by one in your current area, and it's possible to completely exterminate them. When you do, the party gets a partial HP/MP refill, and special blue treasure chests will become unlocked. There's a time limit in this mode, and if you can't get to the next enemy before time runs out, the previous enemy will be regenerated. The timer keeps you moving and adds some tension to the proceedings while being lenient enough that you'll rarely have to redo a battle.

The money system is quite unusual as well. Enemies don't actually drop money, but rather they leave items called sundries which can be sold at shops for cash. The real way to make money, however, is by filling out detailed order lists and delivering the sets of requested sundries to specific characters throughout the game's villages and cities. This courier feature can be pretty involved and fun, and it is easily the fastest way to earn money to buy new weapons and armor.

While I enjoy both of these systems and appreciate their originality, they could have been combined so that battles yield both experience and sundries. As it is, advancing through the game and building up characters takes a lot of time and work and puts you through way too many of the awful battle encounters. And all this 'grinding' for level-ups and cash takes its toll on the game's pacing. I knew there was a problem when the game clock showed fifteen hours and the story had yet to show any signs of ballooning to 'save the world' proportions (that happens closer to thirty hours in).

Dragon Song makes good use of the Nintendo DS's 2D power, at least in regards to the beautiful map/area graphics on the upper screen. The menu system, which always appears on the lower screen and is touch-sensitive, is borderline gaudy and unnecessarily complex, especially if you prefer to use the D-pad for menu selections (since you won't need the stylus otherwise). Battles, meanwhile, look positively awful. The character, enemy, and especially boss sprites are blown up far too large, so they look grainy. The battle graphics engine uses sprite scaling and rotation effects much like Camelot's Golden Sun series on the GBA, but Golden Sun's battles use these tricks far more effectively and combine them with sharp artwork and flashy special effects that are nowhere to be found in this DS game. There is only one battle animation per character, which you'll get really tired of seeing by the end of the game, particularly since the animations take so long to play out. Battles are depicted on both screens at once, with flying enemies usually taking up the vertical space over ground-dwelling enemies. Okay, that's a neat idea that sort of takes advantage of the dual screens, but it ends up being completely pointless because a) the battle system doesn't give you enough manual control to make the flying enemies strategically important, and b) most ground-dwelling enemies are too tall to fit on the lower screen, so the tops of their heads wave around at the bottom edge of the top screen. It looks completely ridiculous.

If you are utterly starved for an RPG to play on your DS, rejoice my pitiful friend, because Lunar: Dragon Song is a traditional, predictable take on the genre that will last forty or fifty hours. If, however, you have anything less than the patience of a statue, this game will bore you to tears long before the anticlimactic ending sequence.

Score

Graphics

Part of the game looks good. Part of the game looks bad. Part of the game is so ugly you could use it to scare away rodents. The overall impression is therefore quite poor, but you can't discount the clean field/map art and the humongous environments.

Sound

The main problem here is that the music doesn't change much over the course of this very long game, but the composition and fidelity are more than adequate. Fans of traditional RPG music will latch onto these tunes right away.

Control

Battle controls are fine, since you usually just need to select auto-battle and then go watch TV for five or ten minutes. The menus are too slow and too hard to navigate, though optional touch screen selection is a nice feature. Moving around in the fields takes some getting used to, since the environments are drawn isometrically, but it's no problem after a while. Why isn't there a menu option to triple the battle animation speed so I don't have to keep holding down the R button?

Gameplay

Blech. Battles require almost no thought and are dragged out by absurdly slow animations, and remember, battles make up the majority of the game. The remainder does fare better. Dungeons are big and fun to explore, and the unusual experience and money systems work well. The story and writing may be enough for younger players, but fans of the previous Lunar games are unlikely to be satisfied, especially if you cut your teeth on the remarkable Working Designs translations (as I did).

Lastability

The game is plenty long, that much is indisputable. My game clock shows 52 hours to reach the end. How much of that was entertaining? Maybe ten hours, split up throughout the entire experience. A wireless multiplayer card battle mode may give you something to do if you actually find someone else who suffered through this game.

Final

Other than the battle graphics and animation speed, Lunar: Dragon Song isn't exactly bad…it just isn't nearly engaging enough to be worth the considerable chunk of time needed to play through the entire game. There are too many great RPGs for the GBA to settle for something so mediocre just because it uses both screens.

Summary

Pros

• Innovative experience and money systems
• Nice field graphics
• Pretty music

Cons

• Horrific battle graphics
• Split experience/money systems lead to excessive grinding
• Unbearably slow, moronic battles
• Weak story and character development

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