Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete Review

It occurs to me that I might want to save some of those Playstation classics to review later on.... Nah, I think I’m just going to keep right on trucking. So, pointless rambling down, I’m going to make some enemies in this review. The game is Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete. I love this game. Then again, I really enjoyed shitty games like Ephemeral Fantasia, so I guess that doesn’t mean much. Anyhow, the follow-up to Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete had to be pretty impressive, since the first game was such a genuinely well-crafted project. Let’s dive back into the world of Lunar and look at what this sequel is all about.

The game is all about the adventures of the aptly named Hiro (naturally, this isn’t much of a pun in Japanese.) Hiro is a young man with a curious streak a mile long. The first thing we see him doing, stealing a jewel from an ancient ruin, shows that personality trait pretty well. Anyhow, one day, Hiro sees a strange light strike the mysterious Blue Spire. After making his way to the top, he meets a beautiful young woman who warns him that his world is in terrible danger from the ancient evil Zophar. Zophar strikes the girl Lucia down, and it’s up to Hiro to save both her and the world. Hilarity ensues. Compared to the first game, which had a relatively light-hearted plot, this one’s got a lot more darkness right up front. However, one of the cool things about the first Lunar game was precisely that it didn’t start a journey to save the world, and the villains were quite sympathetic. Lunar 2, by comparison, comes off as a little bit more clichéd. However, I will say that what it lacks in originality, it does manage to make up for with solid political intrigue and intriguing scenarios.

The characters of Lunar 2 are really pretty much all excellent. Hiro’s on the Top 10 RPG guys list, so I’ll skip him. Ronfar is a hard-drinking gambling priest, which I suppose is already moderately unconventional, but he also has a serious side, haunted by his past failure to save someone he cared for. Leo starts out as a typical lawful good/stupid who follows his god-given orders with gusto, until he starts to realize that he may have been on the wrong side the whole time. His solution to this conflict of interests is quite novel. Lucia starts off as an ice queen, but slowly starts to lose her analytical side as she learns more of the human world. Ultimately, she’s not terribly original, though it is amusing that she starts off as a super-powerful godling. I’d go on to talk about Jean, but I don’t want to dwell too much on this portion. Suffice to say, the characters are at least decent, and mostly endearing. They tend to add about one layer to a stereotypical character model, which results is slightly non-standard characters. Really, one of the unfortunate lacks is that the ultimate villain is… super unremarkable. He really is just and ancient evil working towards the destruction of all life.

The main combat system of Lunar 2 is basically identical to that used in the first game. You enter all commands at the start of a round, and characters act in order of their speed, with physical attacks requiring you to move up to your enemy first. The equipment still offers some cool tradeoffs, like choosing between a sword with huge attack power but only one attack or a less powerful dagger which grants extra attacks. Mixing things up a bit are the addition of crests. Each character can equip two crests. Crests have effects that range from increased speed, similar to what an accessory might grant, to elemental attack spells. Indeed, that’s the only way to gain access to the lightning elemental spells. What’s mega-cool is that the two crests a character has equipped interact, sometimes giving a boosted or altered effect. For example, equipping one chiro crest increases your speed, but equipping two guarantees that you act first each round. Or in another case, the seal crest normally grants you a spell that prevents an enemy from casting spells, but when combined with the warrior crest, your attack power doubles, but you can’t use any spells or special attacks at all. Experimenting with the various combinations is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.

Replay value. Huh. Well, after playing through the game twice, I really can’t say that I had any good reason to. You get crests, which are the main method of character customization, at rigidly fixed intervals, so it’s not like you can really change how you set up your character for each dungeon. Basically, the rating is much like the first game. “If you missed something the first time, play the game again if you really need a 100% complete game.” There just isn’t anything that makes a new game particularly worthwhile.

Here’s the part where I’m going to get a little outrage, I suspect. I find that Lunar 2 is actually a better game than Lunar. I mean, the latter has great nostalgic value, and the former suffers from the concept no longer being fresh when it came out, but the sophistication of both the world and the combat system of Lunar 2 is mostly superior to the relatively simple system used in Lunar. As such, I’m giving Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete an 8.7 out of 10. There are some limitations that keep it from being an absolutely outstanding game, like the primarily linear storyline of the first two discs, and the total lack of any minigames or distractions from the normal gameplay. Still, these are minor complaints, and the game as a whole delivers a highly enjoyable, classic RPG experience with a few twists and a lot of fun.

How I Broke Game: Well, this is kind of a stupidly minor one, but the normal max for number of items carried is 20. However, I managed to steal an item and get one as a battle drop when I already had 19, getting me a total of 21. I have no idea why this worked, but it displays fine on the inventory screen, so it shows there’s not a hardwired limit of 20 items.

Quick Tip: When you get to the town that’s burning down (seriously, you’ll know which one this is when you get there) make sure to go all the way back down the other side of the tower dungeon before you proceed to the boss fight at the top. There are a few really useful items awaiting you that are missable, since you cannot return to this dungeon ever.

If you liked this game, maybe you should check out one or more of these games. Um, yeah, if you played Lunar 2 first, you should definitely play Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, since it is basically the same combat system and has similarly outstanding characters. Since it’s so similar to the first game, basically all of the games I mention for that title will also be interesting to someone who liked this game, so I’ll move on to a few other titles that are fun to fans of the series. Wild Arms is another fun RPG with some great characters, a traditional but still interesting storyline, and a cool world. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is completely dissimilar in gameplay, since it is a SRPG, but the style of humor is the same, and the characters are fun.

Tales of Symphonia Review

So, it’s about time to take a look at one of those games. The one that brings a hitherto unknown series to the spotlight. It also happens to be one of the few Gamecube RPGs. Strange thing, but for a system that had so few RPGs total, the percentage of really good games is amazingly high. Or maybe it’s not so surprising. After all, I guess marketing an RPG for the PS2 was easier, and so a lot of borderline cases snuck in based on the idea that at least someone would buy it on PS2. Someone like me. Well, enough rambling. Tales of Symphonia review begins now.

The story starts off in a peaceful village school, where our protagonist, Lloyd Irving, continues the grand tradition of brave-but-dumb main characters. His friend, Colette Brunel, is a young girl who has been Chosen to be the savior of the dying world of Sylvarant. To accomplish this she sets out on a journey to revive the elemental spirits and revolutionize, I mean regenerate, the world. About halfway through, you learn that another world exists, that of Tethe’alla, which has its own set of summon spirits. If you’ve played any other Tales games, this plot should be immediately familiar. And, indeed, the foreshadowing in this game makes it such that there really aren’t that many big surprises in the plot. O at least, the big surprises come when the plot element is first foreshadowed, and not when said plot twist actually occurs. For all that, it’s an interesting tale, with plenty of fairly sophisticated issues of prejudice, balance, and redemption mixing it up with the more lighthearted character dynamics.

Good characters have been important in previous Tales games, but Tales of Symphonia features some exceptional personalities. In addition to Lloyd, who is good but dumb, and Colette, who is almost painfully bland (but still somewhat sweet), there are seven other playable characters. Zelos Wilder appears on the Top Ten Cutest RPG Boys list. Sheena Fujibayashi is the game’s resident tsundere ninja, who offers more volatile emotional makeup than Colette, partially due to quite different backstories. And of course there’s tormented-by-his-past Regal Brayant, who pulls out the stops in pretty bad-ass ways. Really, going into the other characters would take up too much time, but it should suffice to say that they are all well-developed and likeable. Really, the latter is the most important thing. You get attached to the characters in Tales of Symphonia, because you can be privy to a number of short skits, which are mostly tangential to the story. These skits involve the characters talking to each other, and give you a good insight into the character’s personalities. Quite apart from the playable characters, many of the ultimate villains are believable and sympathetic. At some instances during the game, you might wonder if you are really fighting for the right side, since the reasons the villains give for their actions are quite compelling.

In a fairly noticeable change from previous games in the series, Tales of Symphonia does not feature any random battles. Instead, you can see enemies on the overworld map or in the dungeons, and avoiding battles is as easy as avoiding touching the enemy. Unfortunately for those people who find random battles annoying, the battles in Tales of Symphonia are actually quite fun. Like in previous installments of the series, you can control one character at a time, and issue orders to the others. The action this time takes place on a 3D stage, though you can only move in two directions: towards and away from your currently targeted enemy. It looks pretty cool, and somehow feels a bit different from a strictly 2D perspective. An added bonus is that it’s actually quite fun to play this game with friends, and because it’s on the Gamecube, you don’t need a rare piece of hardware to play with three other friends (unless you count friends as rare. Or hardware.)

Quite apart from battles, some significant puzzles crop up in this game, and for perhaps the first time, the sorcerer’s ring is properly utilized. In basically every dungeon, you change the function of the sorcerer’s ring from shooting fire to shrinking you, shooting sunlight, or something like shooting even more fire. Naturally, the puzzles related to these changes are complex, and if not overly difficult, at least strong enough to keep your attention.

I may have said that Chrono Trigger invented replay value, but as far as I’m concerned, Tales of Symphonia perfected it. Not only does it have multiple endings, based on which character Lloyd has the closest relationship with, but there’s also a new game plus feature, where your grade accumulated over the course of the game can be spent on carrying various features over into a new game. Each character has two different skill trees, which you can only explore one of each playthrough. There are alternate costumes for all of the characters, and you can’t even come close to getting all of them during one game. The titles, allow you to customize what ability scores characters gain when they level up, which allows you to customize how you play each character in a multitude of ways. You want to make Genis, the squishy mage, into a close combat monster? Well, it’s tough, but you can do it. There are even multiple difficulty settings, which can give you quite a challenge on settings higher than normal. Basically, this game is “maybe not the only game you’ll ever need, but not too far off.”

Obviously, a scale is pointless if you never have an example of both the end-points. I don’t even bother having values less than five, because as far as I’m concerned, no RPG is ever gonna be worse than a mediocre game in the overall scheme of things (oh, the hubris). On the other hand, I can’t ignore problems with an otherwise perfect game. Tales of Symphonia is excellent, and pretty much as close to the perfect game as I’ve played, but I can still imagine that it might be better. It clocks in at 9.9 out of 10. The story, while quite good, is a little heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, and isn’t hugely original. But it’s enjoyable, so that’s not the main issue. The biggest gripe I have with the game is that none of the “minigames” are even remotely fun. Button pressing minigames all, and not even particularly sophisticated ones. Basically, if there were even one solid minigame that I would want to play more than once, I might be able to assign that perfect score.

Fun Fact: In Japan, they released a PS2 version of this game. It had a few extra costumes for characters, but was mostly the same. But, of course, they never decided to bring this game stateside.

Quick Tip: If you want to end up with anyone besides Colette at the end, focus all you attention on the one character you choose. Colette’s starting affection is very high, and basically anything you do will increase it.

If you liked this game, you might want to try some of these games. Tales of Destiny II and/or Tales of the Abyss are very good, and have many significant similarities with Tales of Symphonia. Wild Arms 3, for some reason, has a similar feel, and has a comparable amount of optional material to complete. Star Ocean: The Second Story was made by many people who had worked on the Tales series, and it shows in the relationship systems, the Action RPG battles, and to some small degree in the storylines.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl Review

I’m a huge fan of crossover, so it comes naturally that I would play a JRPG that focuses on this. Super Smash Brothers: Brawl features characters from a number of different games, a few of which aren’t even RPGs. I’ve been excited about reviewing this game for quite a while, so I’m just going to dive right in.

The story of Brawl starts with Mario and Kirby having a friendly competition. However, a weird airship shows up and spawns these purple thingies that start attacking. From there an epic quest begins to find the source of the seemingly unending swarm of shadowy creatures. One cool thing is that there’s next to no spoken dialogue in the whole game, which leads to a pretty unique style of storytelling. Overall, it’s a pretty good story, with lots of surprising twists, and a staggering number of characters.

The characters in Brawl, though they may hail from a large number of different games originally, are portrayed quite well. Not having played all of the games that they’re originally from, I don’t know for sure if they’re portrayed faithfully, but at least their interactions in this game are believable. King Deedeedee is an ambiguous enemy who actually manages to pull off a surprisingly authentic heel/face turn. Zero Suit Samus is a great strong female character who, refreshingly, isn’t some kind of sex symbol at all. Fox is a nice stand-offish character who actually ends up being pretty sympathetic. The only problem is that the characters are broken up into strict tiers of usefulness, where a character in a lower tier, like Metaknight, is strictly worse than a higher tier character, like Ganandorf. You can still have fun playing as a worse character, but the game obviously wasn’t meant to be balanced.

The battle system in Brawl is an action RPG type of thing. Each character has a number of normal attacks, which can be performed by pressing the “a” button and a direction. If you press the directional button and the “a” button at exactly the same time, you get a smash attack that is better in every situation. This takes a lot of practice, but it is worth it. Each character also has special attacks, which are triggered by pressing the “b” button and a direction. Most characters can perform a double jump, and a few characters, like Jigglypuff, can fly. You explore a mazelike set of rooms in two dimensions, height and length. Enemies appear on the overworld map, so no random battles. There are segues to boss fights, but that’s all that breaks up the action.

The only place where this game falls flat are the graphics. When it came out like three years ago, the graphics were pretty good, but that was like, three years ago. When you compare it to new games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, or Dragon Age II, it’s really kind of shitty. So, yeah, the level of realism in the graphics didn’t seem like a big deal then, but looking back on it now, it really decreases my enjoyment of the game.

The main story has a number of branches to it, based on which characters you choose to control/save, and a number of optional characters who can be pretty hard to find the first time through. You can even customize your characters by attaching stickers to them, which gives you a number of different ways to play the game. There’s even a couple of minigames to extend the playtime. The target hitting minigame is pretty fun, but the fighting game one is pretty bad. No one wants to play a fighting game with characters from tons of awesome games, so I don’t even know why they bothered to include this one. Anyway, the replay value on this game is “two should get you all of the story segments.”

The overall rating on this game is a painful place to go. I really want to give this game a high rating, because I think it’s a lot of fun. I still enjoy playing it, even if I’ve beaten it about two or three times. But, those graphics… Okay, if it had better graphics, I suppose I would give this game a 9.1. But, given the graphics as they are, 2.6. Really, in the world of RPGs, graphics are the most important feature. That’s why no one wants to play RPGs that came out even last year, because the new ones have much better graphics.

Fun Fact: If you get Mr. Resetti before you’ve reset the game even once, you get a different conversation.

How I Broke Game: So, apparently while you’re using Metaknight’s “b”-down attack to teleport, if you mash up on the “c”-stick quickly enough, you can stay in the teleporting mode indefinitely, and continue moving. This is pretty much only good for committing suicide, considering that Metaknight is such a shitty character to begin with, but it’s a fun little glitch.

If you enjoyed this game, you might want to try some of these other games. Tales of Symphonia has a pretty similar control scheme to this game, and an equally good story. Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, also play with the silent characters trope, though mostly just with Mario. And, of course, Call of Duty: Black Ops has much better graphics, so you’ll obviously like it a lot more. Super Smash Brothers: Melee, the predecessor, is also a good choice, though going from Brawl to Melee is a jarring shift, as the former is a much faster paced game than the latter.