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.
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