Game Review: Lunar: Dragon Song

Developer: Game Arts / Marvelous Interactive
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: 27/09/2005
Console: Nintendo DS

You would think that reviewing games would be lots of fun. Well, it is. Unless you have the unfortunate circumstance to have to review a shitty game. Then you have to actually plow your way through long enough to form a(relatively) well-thought out opinion on it.

Lunar: Dragon Song is an RPG for the Nintendo DS, set in a relatively classic style, with a new twist. Still the unsuspecting teenager suddenly overcome with a mission of heroic proportions, but, pretty much the idea behind this game, is you are a delivery boy. You find ways through rain, sleet, snow, and hordes of slavering monsters to deliver your packages anywhere, anytime. And get paid well to do it.

It’s a good premise; one that promises at least an interesting diversion.

It’s not. And I won’t be displaying images, because that could entice some people to play it. I won’t be the cause of that much pain and suffering in the world.

I felt like I had to be doing about ten other things while I was playing this game just to keep from being bored out of existance. Part of this is because the battles that you fight are pretty much all automatic. You attack, they attack, repeat until one side perishes. They even have the option of fighting a battle in Manual mode, or Automatic mode at the beginning of every fight. This takes a lot of the boredom out, because I can then just set it to Automatic, and go watch TV until it finishes.

There are two combat “modes” in this game. One whereby you kill creatures, but do not receive items for your conquests, only the game’s version of experience. The other “mode” being when you kill creatures you gain items, and when you clear an area within the time alotted a mystical blue chest opens up with some pertinent items inside that you can either sell or use.

Now this choice would be quite interesting if you had to strike a careful balance between the two, always agonizing over whether you fought for money or levels. But the developers chose to make it so that you can play the entire game choosing one or the other for the most part. You need to switch between them only long enough to get the items in the blue chests in each area, and you’ll have more than enough money to buy whatever items you need, and then the next thousand times you pass through that area you can have it on Experience mode to get the levels you require.

If I wanted to understate the point I could say that I didn’t find the story particularly engaging. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the game is in a horrible form of Engrish. Grammatical mistakes abound, and I don’t think that the translators had ever even heard of that mystical punctuation device referred to as a comma.

One thing I did enjoy about the game are the graphics, and the use of the Dual-Screen. The battles are fought over two screens, as a single view, as if you were playing the game on a single screen. The animations are fluid and crisp, and there is even a relatively good selection of creatures to fight(without falling back on Red Orc, Blue Orc, Green Orc, and Orc Chieftan, all just having different colours of skin — at least not as much as some games).

One thing that really aggravated me about this game is the world map. You can’t move freely about the map, nor does it show all of the locations you’ve visited. It will only show the location that you are in, and the locations you can go to from that point. And you can only access it when you are leaving an area. You can only hop a single “square” on the map at a time, and then you have to traverse the next area, monsters and all. This makes for obscenely tedious travel. We’re talking worse than a Final Fantasy game.

I’d say that if you see Lunar: Dragon Song in the discount bin, pass it by, and buy some blank VHS tapes. Watching those would be more interesting.

Overall:
Terrible execution, more boring than baseball

Gameplay:
Uninteresting storyline, too much “filler” – walking, repeat battles, etc

Graphics:
Relatively impressive, makes good use of both screens, animations are well done

Sound:
Ranges from the uninteresting to the downright shitty

I give this game: