A couple of days ago I had a horrible nightmare. I dreamt I finally started my beloved Phantasy Star Portable 2 and it sucked. When I woke up drenched with sweat a few minutes later, I was still depressed. I tried to recall what made the game so bad and it hit me: it had Lunar‘s battle system.
All right, dreams do have a way of making even the mundane seem terrifying. But this is the first time a game has backed me into such a corner that I can only find release in my dreams. Why don’t I stop playing? Because I’m actually liking the game. It’s just the battles. There are too many of them and they’re terrible.
– They’re slow. Nowadays I can end most fights in one turn, but even then it takes a while to for the battle to play out. What just kills me is that shrill little “skreeee” sound your party makes and the “pwiiii” sound the enemies make as they take 5-10 seconds to charge up the same old specials. Add up several such attacks every turn for 5-12 characters/enemies on the field and you can see how painfully the battles stretch out.
– They’re repetitive. Alex uses Flash Cut, Nash uses Electroshower, Mia uses Flame Circle if there’s anyone left standing. Kyle and Jessica run around making nuisances of themselves while Nall hovers helplessly at the top. Physical attacks seem to be all but useless compared to magic and specials, so every battle is made up of the same attacks, same animations and same noises every single time.
– They don’t seem to make much difference to my strength. Level ups are frequent enough, but it’s only the specials you get that make a real difference. I even wonder if I’m wasting my time when I spend money on weapons and equipment.
– There are way too many encounters in dungeons. My preference is for visible enemies, but I don’t mind random battles. What I hate is enemies that look avoidable but that will catch you 9 out of 10 times anyway.
– They’re inescapable. Good luck getting away from all but the weakest enemies – and sometimes not even those. To add insult to injury, instead of simply running away your characters will flop around hopelessly for 10 seconds, wasting precious time and pissing me off.
The only forgivable thing about this whole misadventure is that the developer, GameArts, later went on to develop the Grandia games, which have some of the best turn-based RPG battle systems ever. I can only assume they learned a bitter lesson from how rotten Lunar was and applied it to their future games. If this is the price gamers had to pay to get Grandia… yeah, I guess it was worth it.
Apart from the whole battle thing I’m cool with this game. It’s a real shame that the dungeons are such a chore to slog through, because I either like or don’t especially mind everything else about Lunar Silver Star Harmony
(Speaking of originality, does anyone who’s played Dragoneer’s Aria suspect it was “inspired” at least in part by the elemental dragons in this game? Especially their tendency to meet sudden and messy deaths right after your party shows up.)
Character-wise I like Nall, I like Nash, I like Mia. I don’t like Jessica or violent tomboys in general. I don’t like Kyle or drunken playboys in general. I’m okay with Alex. Don’t like Luna, don’t wanna rescue her, don’t like the fact that people talk about them being “raised like brother and sister” and “being in love” in the same breath. And people wonder why Japan’s birth rate is so low -_-. But I really like Nall, Nash and Mia so I have no problems toughing things out for them.
I’ve played about 13 hours right now. I’m in Lyton, trying to solve the puzzle of the Wind Shrine with little success. I must have fallen in about 50 holes and fought 500 enemies by now and I’m not getting anywhere. I hate to do this, but it’s time to bust out the FAQs. Once I clear this dungeon and meet the Blue Dragon, I’ll have met 3 out of the 4 dragons, which should put me around the 50% mark, maybe? It doesn’t seem to be that long a game so I’ll do my best to finish it.
Related posts:
Dragoneer’s Aria – Very long and very slow
Lunar Silver Star Harmony – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Little Sisters
In which I criticize Phantasy Star Portable 2 for being harder than Phantasy Star Portable
In which I moderately praise Phantasy Star Portable 2 for being a very good game, objectively speaking
“don’t like the fact that people talk about them being “raised like brother and sister” and “being in love” in the same breath.”
Oh man, I love bringing that up amongst Lunar fans. Mostly because I dislike Lunar for just plain boring me and the game is always described as some kind of “timeless classic love story RPG” and I’m all like “in which states?”
Yeah. You know, sometimes I really, really wonder about the kind of people that write stories like this – and the kind of people who enjoy them.
Nall, uh?
Man, if you ever play Eternal Blue, prepare to be depressed.
Eternal Blue? You know, I’m having a hard time imagining there’s more than one Lunar game out there. Like, it’s nice and all but why would anyone make any more? Wai u spoil me, btw? ;___;
It probably did commercially well in the past to warrant a sequel.
The interesting thing is that Lunar’s selling point back in the days was that it was one of the first games to do “accurate” Anime graphics (in comparison to really old pixelated sprites that most RPGs use that don’t look that Anime-ish). I think it coincided with the Anime boom at the time and that’s how it became successful.
Of course trying to sell a game now “because it has Anime graphics!” seems kind of silly nowadays and that’s why I kind of think this PSP revival of the series is silly.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. Despite all I wrote, I don’t think it’s a bad game at all, battle system and confused teenage hormones (I refuse to call it ‘love’) aside. Maybe if I’d played it 20 years ago I would have fallen for the gimmick too.
Dragoneer’s Aria was reaally bad… like, 1/10 bad. Just saying lolz >_>
Normally I feel a twinge of guilt when I drop a game, no matter how bad. Not with Dragoneer’s Aria. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.
Hahaha. I gave up on it halfway too. The game looks promising and all with it’s pretty visuals and everything, but what underlies beneath is really just a below-mediocre, crappy game. I vaguely remember all the common mobs (right down to the weakest ones)had an entire library of skills, each of which had a pretty lenghy animation span. It got me thinking: why would the developers put in so much detail in the normal monsters, I just want to rough them up, get the EXP and be done with it. It seemed to me as though they were trying too hard to impress. The boss fights were horrendous. It was bad enough that there weren’t any tactics whatsoever involved in them, but their amount of HP is just simply ridiculous. Pressing the same buttons and executing the same attacks over and over again for over twenty-forty minutes isn’t fun at all in the slightest bit.
Then again, the game was done by the same people who did Blade Dancer and The Last Rebellion for the PS3, two other crappy JRPG titles. My cousin tossed The Last Rebellion aside after what, 5-10 minutes into the game. Bottom line, do not ever trust games developed by Hit Maker lolz.
The worst part about the boss fights isn’t the length or tiresomeness but the absolutely pitiful EXP they drop at the end. If I spend 15 real-time minutes hitting X, I want a corresponding payoff. It’s only fair.
I quite liked Blade Dancer until the terrible, terrible ending cancelled out all the goodwill I’d built up. If I managed to finish that, I’m sure I can finish Lunar SSH with no trouble at all.