Why, hello there. Yes, I am talking to you. I actually did mean to go through with this, and, as such, here I am typing up my second review.
Today, I am reviewing a GBA game. It might not be quite as old as other games, but it’s close enough for my purposes. Today’s game is Lunar Legend. Once again, it is a turn based strategy game like my last one. The battle system is the same with the exception of lacking enemy ranks (Front or back, having to kill all the frontline before hitting the ones in the back for that side). Without these, you are able to target enemies freely, and thus formulate a better attack sequence. You are also given Limit Breaks, which if it sounds familiar, it was used in a couple Final Fantasy games. Normal attacks slowly fill up an Arts Gauge, and, when this is full, you can unleash the character’s Limit Break.
That aside, we can talk about the story. You follow the journey of Alex, who’s goal is to be the next Dragonmaster. His idol is Dyne, who was the previous Dragonmaster fifteen years ago. Since then, supposed strange events have been occuring. On your journey, you are joined by Nash, a magician from the floating city of Vale, your sister, Luna, and your good pal Ramus. Along the way, you lose allies but gain new ones. The other members you end up with are Mia, the next head of the Magic Guild at Vane, Jessica, an apprentice priestess who is also the daughter of one of the companions of Dyne, and Kyle, a bandit. If you want their roles, in the Final Fantasy sense, Alex is a knight, Nash and Mia are Black Mages, Jessica and Luna are White Mages, and Ramus and Kyle are tanks.
As to the graphics, they are about average for a GBA game. There are some still shots that you can view in the gallery after viewing them for the first time. Everything else is the standard gameplay for this genre, with 2D overhead in the overworld where you control characters until you enter a random battle, and then you are shown the battlefield with yourself on the right and your enemies on the left in a 2.5D fashion. You then select action commands from a menu and proceed to attack enemies. Nothing special.
Unlike the last game I reviewed, this game has several downsides. You are given a teleportation item that let’s you visit previously visited areas without walking through the rest of the world, which is standard. However, you are given it relatively early on in the story. And the game creators find ways to make it useless for 75% of the story; you can only ues it during the middle quarter of the game, after having gotten the item and before it mysteriously “loses power” during the final three or four dungeons. What use is a teleportation item that you can’t use end game? This does not help with 100% completion as many of you might want. Also, the game is very easy. Your two frontline characters at the end of the game are extremely overpowered (assuming you do their technique combo). I was able to go through the entire game without difficulty and without powerleveling. Finally, the game has almost no replay value. One reason to play again is to get cards, which serve no purpose other than showing you character sprites and trading. They do not give you enemy stats and they can’t be accessed directly in game. They are only accessed in the Main Menu at the Title Screen.
The other reason, and the only one I cared enough about to replay the game for was because there are (only) two secret areas, which I missed the first time through. When I finally got to them, they were very difficult but made an easy game even easier. It might as well been a two person party, because I was hitting the damage cap for two characters at level 30, when the other 3 characters were only doing around a tenth of the damage. Even then, the two secret dungeons were made pathetically easy by exploiting one of the many glitches in the game, which restored me to max HP and MP at the end of every battle. In addition to this bug, there are several graphics glitches (sometimes an area doesn’t load, sometimes only half a sprite) and several save glitches.
This would have been a subpar game for the NES, let alone as something made 20 years later. I would only recommend this for someone who really enjoys this type of game, like me (and I barely enjoyed it). So for most of you, this is probably not a very interesting game.
Happy gaming ’til next time.
