Lunar: Silver Star Harmony

If anyone has ever played Lunar before then this version is no different. The characters are the same, the gameplay is the same, and the story hasn't changed. So what makes this version a worth while game? Well the simple answer would be that it is Lunar.

For those new to the series, Lunar is a turn based rpg. Players control a total of five characters with their own strengths and weaknesses. Fighters for example have high defense and attack while mages have low defense and high magic. Battles takes place turn by turn and this is traditional rpg at its best.

The game takes place in the fictional world of Lunar governed by the benevolent goddess Althena. The adventure starts when young adolescent Alex decides to pursue the career of being a dragon master, a warrior who guards the goddess residing within the goddess tower.

What's great about this new remake is the over haul in the graphics, animation, and to an extent script. Players are able to play a new prologue explaining about the previous six heroes, new dialogue from npcs giving insight on the world, and a new script modified to modern times. The two songs within the game are given new lyrics, and though the most controversial part of the game, fits with the theme of the new remake. Character voices are also new with the exception of Luna. Oh and for fans out there, GHALEON's voice is much much improved. No more lipsy "Oh it's not bother" liner!

The one complaint with the game is its loading. The UMD version has a slight pause when players enter towns and houses. These pauses could get infuriating at times and distract from the overall flow of the game. Of course I am playing this game on an original PSP-1000, so the loading pause could be missing from past iterations of PSPs such as the 2000 and 3000 models with the extra memory allowing for faster loading times. What is for certain is if you decide to purchase the digital download version, the game is much better and load times is almost non existence.

This is a new version for the psp and it's a welcome improvement for both old and new audiences to the series.

Firstly allow me to say that I have never played any other version of Lunar, or Lunar: Eternal Blue, this review is literally from a unbiased perspective. With that said lets begin the review.

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony (From here on just Lunar) Starts out by letting you play/watch the final events of Dragonmaster Dynes adventure, Dragonmasters are people who have passed the trials of 4 legendary dragons to protect the goddess Althena from danger. After this scene the game focuses on Alex, Alex is a 15 year boy who idolizes Dyne and one day dreams of becoming a Dragonmaster himself, due to Dynes death 15 years prior. Alex is soon able to start this quest to become a Dragonmaster when his best friend Ramus tells him the white dragon cave can now be explored due to some ice surrounding the cave melting, although the adventure initially starts out with them looking for a very rare dragon diamond. Before Alex and Ramus go on their adventure, Alex has to find a way to tell Luna, a girl who has been living with Alex since she was a baby that he wants to go on this adventure, eventually Luna agrees to let Alex go on the condition that she is able to come along, due to her being worried sick if she lets Ramus and Alex go alone. This ultimately sets in motion a tale of, love, friendship, and betrayal.

That's really just the tip of the story in Lunar, the story told here is an enjoyable one and I found myself liking each and every character introduced, the story never does stray and it does not blur the initial purpose of the game, it just keeps getting more and more interesting the further you get in Lunar. The graphics in Lunar have been completely redone, if you look at some screen shots/videos from the first Lunar, to the Saturn and the Playstation remake, you will see that everything has been updated, this was not just a quick port, and it shows here, towns/sprites are all hand drawn and very detailed. From my understanding the combat has not changed at all in this version of Lunar, and that's a good thing. Lunar mixes up the traditional turn based combat by actually making you make sure your character has enough distance to attack a foe and vice versa, if you are on the other side of the screen from an enemy your 3 hit attack my dwindle down to a 1 hitter, although this does not apply to most special attacks/magic. Music in Lunar is really good, I found myself humming most tunes and I still have a few of the voiced songs stuck in my head XD. Loading time on my PSP-1000 is really good, there is a 2 second loading interval when your going into just about anything (except the menu) but I was un-bothered by it. When your going into different towns or a long cut-scene is coming up you will get hit with a loading screen but it is not overly long (its about 10-15 seconds.)

Lunar does have quite a few anime cut-scenes (done in a really nice style I might add), and most of them are well over a minute long (there are around 20 or so if I recall correctly, although you do have to do certain things to get the ones that are unrelated to the main story). One thing I found strange with Lunar would be that when you first start playing you are treated to a healthy number of cut-scenes near the beginning, within the first 4 hours of gameplay I had at least seen 7 anime cut scenes most of them being generous in length, then Lunar tripped up and you only got a few bones thrown to you once in a while in terms of some anime. Near the end of the game however Lunar rewards you with at least 5 cut scenes all being well over 3 minutes long, I think in total there is around 30 minutes of anime to be seen here, I'm not complaining, I just wish there would have been more cut scenes in the middle portion of the game. It should be noted however that the cut-scenes are all in their original 4:3 presentation, they do not take advantage of the PSP's wide screen, however I do believe that this was done so that all the cut scenes could be added in, due to the video files taking up less space (and you can also compress the videos more without noticing). The voice acting in Lunar is spot on with the exception of Nall who is spotty at best, although I have read/heard that Nall's voice has always been spotty and that this Nall is an improvement!

The thing I really enjoyed about Lunar was that it was not too hard, but it did kind of border on easy, I read that the difficulty was actually lowered from the PS remake, and that the characters got somewhat overpowered with the addition of special abilities (especially Mia's ice wall she casts on the party which make them invincible for 3 turns, even on the final boss!) If I wanted a hard, level grinding RPG I would play my home consoles, but for the PSP the difficulty was perfect for me. Overall this is a must have in your PSP collection.

I have bought every version of Lunar when it comes out because I love it so much (Sega CD/Saturn/PS1/GBA), and I bought a PSP for this game alone. The characters are very fun to play with, and you end up caring a lot about the characters.

I will say there seems to be a few seconds load time problem when you go though houses/rooms. It makes exploring the towns a bit of chore...but its not something that is a game killer (I put up with Lunar 2's terrible loading times on the Sega CD for battles...so I can put up with this).

All of the songs/voices have been changed from the PS1 version, which is disappointing. I really liked the boat song in the PS1 version, but this one is okay.

The cut-scenes are all taken from the PS1 version (the aspect ratio changes from widescreen to 4:3). Why they didn't remake them for the PSP version?

Overall the game feels WAY easier then any other version of the game. You can bypass a lot of enemies and still have no problem killing the bosses. So if you like turn based RPG's that easy to play and beat you will enjoy this game.

So with all of those downfalls I mentioned earlier why should you bother playing the game? Because the game is fantastic! Plain and simple. If you have never played a Lunar game before you are missing out on a great series. The first one is a classic and its so well loved its been remade over and over again. You should buy it now!