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Nintendo DS : Lunar: Dragon Song Reviews

Gas Gauge: 66
Gas Gauge 66
Below are user reviews of Lunar: Dragon Song and on the right are links to professionally written reviews. The summary of review scores shows the distribution of scores given by the professional reviewers for Lunar: Dragon Song. Column height indicates the number of reviews with a score within the range shown at the bottom of the column. Higher scores (columns further towards the right) are better.

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ReviewsScore
Game Spot 61
IGN 63
GameSpy 80
GameZone 62
1UP 65






User Reviews (1 - 11 of 30)

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Biggest disappointment all year...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 37 / 38
Date: January 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I've been a HUGE fan of the Lunar series since the Sega CD days, and I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to this game.
But, whether you are a Lunar fan or not, this game is awful.

Now, I don't normally review games I haven't finish, but I am about at the halfway mark, and I doubt I'll ever finish this game. I am just fed up with forcing myself to play it.
The story, compared to other Lunar games and RPGs in general, is thin and boring. Halfway through the game, and nothing interesting has happened at all. I've traveled to some towns, fought some monsters, and... well... that's about the entire story so far. Once, my party entered town, and my main character decided to undertake an arena battle that was extremely dangerous and foolish, because he "HAD" to. He never explained why, and he never talked about it before... but he just "had to do it." That's about how the story works: no character motivations, no real backstory, and no real purpose for anything that has happened so far. If they explain later in the story, it will be too late, because the game story is far too random and pointless for you to WANT to find out.

The combat, though, is where they totally destroyed this game.
Firstly, the game is SLOW. Painfully, I can't take it anymore, slow. The runnining speed of the characters on the map is about as fast as characters NORMALLY move in other games. The walking speed is unbearable. Too bad, for some reason, your HP continually depleats when you run around!! And you don't get much HP to begin with, let me tell you.
Battle speed and animation is awful, as well. You can hold down R1 constantly to speed battle up to a less slow motion feel.
Random battles are eliminated, which is a good thing, because you can see the monsters roaming on the screen. But, these battles are slow and extremely boring. And you will need to do a LOT of them.
You are unable to target specific enemies any longer. I have no idea why they went with this. If there are four enemies on screen, my characters will spread their damage around to all of them, instead of focusing on one. You will get wiped out by a magic user that can kill you in 1-2 hits while all your characters focus on killing insignificant 1-2 points of damage dealing enemies. Very sloppy.
Also, as the final nail in the coffin, they introduced TWO forms of combat, that you switch between on the main map. In one, you will receive experience, and in the other you will receive items and enemy cards. WHY they would split this up, making you fight more than twice the amount of boring battles is never clear, and made me pretty much hate this game.
You see, the only way to make money in this game (and armor/weapons and healing items are VERY expensive) is by taking missions from the courier you work for. Basically, bring this person X number of Y items. Some items are really easy to get, and will get you almost no money, and some people want items that are absolutely crazy to get. 15 of an item that is dropped by one enemy maybe 1 time out of 20.
So, you will be spending hours killing enemies over and over again trying to get your mission items, and GAINING NO EXPERIENCE.
This is completely unexcusable.
The game is by no means easy, either. All the little issues (random attacks, very very low MP, weak starting characters) can make this game very challenging. Which would be no problem, except everything is this game is so unfun and unbalanced that the difficulty is just one more huge thing stacked between you, and having any fun at all.
Oh, and for some reason you have to blow into the mic to run from battles. Which, when you're looking for ONE item from ONE enemy, you want to do a lot. Not only made me a little dizzy, it rarely was successful, and then you lose a turn.

I was very very letdown by this game, and I'm sad they used the Lunar world and name for a game that is this bad...
The only good things are that the game does look good. The enemies and characters usually look nice, and there's a decent amount of variety.

There is no real need to use the touch screen, either, and the two screens are usually combined to make one big picture - this is broken in the middle and leaves thing's heads on a totally different screen... but that really doesn't make the game any worse. It probably couldn't.

It's not Lunar, but I enjoyed it anyways

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 22 / 23
Date: April 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I read the reviews and did quite a bit of research before buying this game, so I did know exactly what I was getting into. The box says that the game is by the "original creators of Silver Star Story" (a game I adore). This is, in fact, false; Game Arts, which bought the rights to the license from Vic Ireland and Working Designs, farmed the development out to Marvelous Entertainment, a multimedia company best known among gamers for the most recent portable Harvest Moon games. They are not credited for their work, by the way.

Furthermore, Square-Enix declined to publish the game, even though the company had already published Game Arts' Grandia Xtreme (or rather, Enix had) and would go on to publish Grandia III. The French company Ubisoft, which frequently publishes games like this in the European market but only rarely Stateside, picked it up and published it with little fanfare, releasing about 50,000 copies (my estimate, based on sales to date) to the North American public in cheap shrink-wrap at an MSRP of $39.99. Put all that together, and it's safe to say that this game's credentials are more than a little suspect, and that probably predisposed a lot of people against it. Nonetheless, while this is not by any means an adequate entry in the great Lunar series, it is an interesting and very non-traditional RPG which may appeal to a small and specially tuned audience.

Not since Unlimited Saga has an RPG taken such an aggressively avant-garde approach to gameplay, and every element of the long-established formula has been twisted. Right from the beginning, you can buy a weapon that renders the main character, Jian, ridiculously overpowered and able to slay nearly anything in the initial dungeons in one turn. Nonetheless, the early dungeons will still be hard going for a number of reasons: you cannot run, either in the field or in dungeons, without bleeding about 1 HP per 2 seconds, and you cannot run at all below 1/3 HP; you cannot choose which enemy to attack (though thankfully, you can choose which ally to heal); the statues of Althena heal HP/MP, but not status effects; and weirdest of all, you must choose between battling to gain experience and to earn key items for the courier's quests, which are the only real source of money with which to buy new equipment.

That all sounds really bizarre on paper, and the what-the-heck-is-this factor is strong in practice, too. That such an experimental game should bear the weight of being Lunar 3, the newest entry after 10 years to one of the best traditional RPG series ever, is more than a little perplexing. Taken with an open mind, though, there are some definite merits to the dissonant choices Marvelous made, and the net effect is a curious kind of equilibrium.

Here's what I mean: if you concentrate mostly on experience and leveling (Virtue mode), then you get some bonuses from that decision. Each monster-populated area has a special blue treasure chest, and you can only unlock it by clearing the area of all monsters in Virtue Mode. These chests often contain an expensive weapon or piece of armor that has only just been unlocked in the shops. Also, since your characters are leveling up and getting extra HP, after just a couple of hours you can start running all the time without worrying about HP depletion at all. For the fastest way through the game, I recommend playing it like that, clearing each new area in succession and only switching to Combat Mode when you have to backtrack. If you choose to play mostly the other way, though (Combat Mode), then you have a totally different kind of game. You'll be stuck at whatever level you stop leveling up at, but you will also be able to upgrade your equipment much more often, and you will gain cards from battles, which have wonderfully helpful effects in battles. Bosses also have lower HP when you are at a low level, so the game is not completely impossible, though it is considerably more challenging this way because you will have a lower HP stock, meaning you can't run as much, and a lower MP stock, meaning you can't heal as often and you will need to stay well stocked with items. (Of course, if you dedicate significant time to both modes, the game will become quite easy, but few people will be patient enough to sink that much time in.)

The decision not to allow targeting of enemies is harder to justify, but it does force you to be able to withstand the most powerful attacks for long enough to pick off the small fries (and you will usually go after the small fries first, because that's how the AI is programmed). I would have found it less annoying if it used Eternal Blue's approach to combo attacks: in that game, you slashed once, then if the enemy died from the blow and you still had another slash, it could be used on the next sucker in line. In Dragon Song, Jian, who attacks 3 times per turn is stuck with kicking one critter's butt all 3 times, even if it only has 1 HP. I suppose if he could roundhouse 3 creatures in a row it would make most battles even easier than they already are, but as often as you have to fight, a pathway to shorter battles would have been highly welcomed.

The storyline is a bit unusual, too. Think of Chrono Cross: the humans were the dominant species, and the demi-humans were enslaved and castigated. The main villain, Lynx, was a demi-human who resented this treatment and sought to exact revenge. That's more or less the usual order of things, where such themes are concerned. Dragon Song reverses the roles; you are human, but it is the beast-men who have the power, and they hate your guts because you are a puny weakling human who can't run without draining HP. No more spoilers beyond that; suffice it to say that while it takes the game a while for the story to get interesting, there is a good narrative here, and Lunar: Dragon Song overcomes its initial faux pas to feel much more expansive and satisfying as it goes on.

Of course, you have to be able to stand it first. Rent or borrow this game if you can; otherwise, just be prepared to suffer a little to earn the payoffs.

A Slap in the Face to All the Loyal Lunar Fans

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 20 / 24
Date: October 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm a big fan of Lunar. I loved Lunar Silver Star Story Complete, and I loved Eternal Blue. Hey, I even picked up Lunar Legend on the GBA, but this game--the first original Lunar game to come out in ten years--severely disappoints me by missing what makes Lunar so enticing in the first place. This to me does not feel like a Lunar game, but rather an RPG trying to be Lunar.

Anyone who has played Lunar knows that Althena created the world of Lunar. In Dragon Song there are two races: The humans and Beastmen. Humans are trained more in the arts of healing, while most beastmen are warriors. There's a powerstruggle between the two, one group thinks they're better than the others. But when the Vile Tribe threatens the world, the two races are able to put their differences aside and work together to stop them.

Gameplay in Lunar is simple, but it has changed. For one, all dialogue actions take place on the touch screen. The problem being that nothing happens on the top screen. You wouldn't think this to be a big problem, but when you're used to playing RPGs on the console, you're not used to having to look at a bottom scream for messages and a top screen for gameplay. There were better ways to utilize the touch screen in this game. Likewise, the menu is not very well crafted, and it's difficult to use upon first playing the game.

And as if the gameplay on the field weren't enough. In battle is terrible! When one decides to battle, one must keep in mind what "battle mode" they are in. Combat Mode and Virtue Mode. The difference is simple.

In combat mode you will defeat enemies for prizes. Glorious items that you'll sometimes need on your quest. Some you'll need to progress. The downside to Combat Mode is your characters get no experience. That's a shame!

Virtue mode is just about the opposite of Combat mode. You get experience, but you get no items. However, the other part about Virtue mode is after each battle a clock starts ticking down. When it reaches zero all the enemies in that particular area will respawn.

I honestly couldn't figure out why the developers made two combat modes. In all other RPGs they seem to intertwine getting experience points and items together really well. In other words, the "unique twist" in battling is a waste.

And that's not even the worst part of the battle system! Battling is boring. You can either use special moves, attack or use an item. It doesn't matter what battle mode you're in, each battle plays out the same way. You can't choose who you want to attack however. Your characters attack at random and the enemies on the top screen can't be reached by your characters! This takes the fun out of battling and leaves you with doing nothing but holding down the "A" button. Battles with say... seven enemies take a long time, and they do a fairly large amount of damage.

Even outside of battle has its quirks. In order to execute battle you must touch an enemy. OK, I can deal with that. What I can't deal with however is the running part. If you hold down the button to run and you run for too long, your HP begins to drop!

You also only get three characters in battle at a time, which in and of itself is a crime to Lunar, in which they usually produce a challenge and let you use all five characters in battle. And you can't switch characters either. The three the game gives you are the three you get. Like the early days, useless characters just leave the party and come back whenever.

Cards are also used in this game. Some enemies turn into cards. You can "play" that card in battle to do things such as enhance your strength, poison other enemies and more. And you can run from battle, by blowing into the microphone but chances of you actually escaping are rare.

However, there are two positives to this game, but unfortunately because of the big hit it takes with gameplay, it's positives aren't enough to save it. The graphics are stunning! Incredibly bright and colorful and full of warmth. The character sprites and animations are also a beauty to behold. It works on so many different levels. The music is also good, giving the game a good feel at least.

Despite the graphics and sound, you can't shake the fact that the game is just boring and lacks creativity. Battling is limited to you doing nothing more than holding down the "A" button, and I'm not too keen on my HP dropping simply because I decided I wanted to run through an area instead of walking.

Even Lunar fans will have a hard time getting into this game. The story doesn't pick up for hours, and even when it does it's nothing compared to the two games before it.

There's no real way to say this other than this game is not for anyone. Even the die-hard Lunar fan will have trouble getting into it. Even the hard-core RPGer will have a hard time getting into it. There are better games to spend your money on. But spending your money on this is like throwing it into a paper shredder.

Worst Lunar Ever

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Oh the joy I felt when playing the original two Lunar games. I remember both games fondly, despite the quickly dated Working Designs humor. I liked the battle system, the story was good, and the FMV was magnificent. So when I heard there was a new Lunar game, I reserved it immediately. I purchased it sight unseen even though I had a chance to check it out first. I thought, "This is Lunar! How could it go wrong?"

Well, it did. It's pretty bad when the game has a spelling error on the menu screen. This I can forgive, but not what followed. The first thing I noticed was the annoying flashing icons which can be unreadable due to the scaling effect used. Next is the worst aspect of the game: you cannot run without losing HP. Your character normally moves like molasses, so running is a must in order to keep your mind from exploding or breaking your DS by pressing the D-pad down so hard in a futile attempt to make yourself go faster. So, why would the designers punish you for running if you move so slowly? To admire the "lush" enviroments? To teach you patience?

No, the reason you lose hit points while running is to keep you from avoiding the visible enemies on the field easily. I dislike visible enemies unless they aggressively target you. However, these enemies do not target you. They wander aimlessly about the field, so running past them might decrease the chance of running into one. Great balancing, designers.

Instead of battles on the field like Chrono Trigger or modern adventure/RPGs where visible enemies are prevalent, you go into a special battle screen like traditional RPGs like the Final Fantasy series. Battle is turn-based, not active like today's RPGs, but much like the original Final Fantasy. Select your attack and then the round begins; you attack and the monsters attack. However, this is where the similarities with old school RPGs end. You CANNOT select which monster to attack. You must attack whatever monster in right in front of you, even if that bird in the sky is doing more damage to you. This is when I turned the game off, took it out of the system, put it back in the box, returned it to the store, and got Trace Memory instead.

So take this as a warning. Lunar: Dragon Song is utter crap. My dream of a good RPG on the DS is shattered. I'm really hoping that the remake of Final Fantasy III and Children of Mana are good.

Oh, Lunar. Where for art thou?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: November 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am decimated by the failure of this game to live-up to the proud legacy, which is Lunar.

Music is fine, and while the graphics are essentially GBA enhanced moderately, the physical attributes are acceptable. However, the story is somewhat mediocre, but still passable.

However, the mental requirements necessary to play this game are absent.

A strategic battle system is non-existent. Attack, use a spell, or use an item with no selection as to which enemy to attack. Aside from the lack of the Lunar renowned semi-tactical battle, there is so little input required, that the game is downright awful.

Truly, a lack of exercise in futility!

Please kill me...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: April 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I rue the day I asked for Lunar: Dragon Song for Christmas. I rue putting it in the DS and turning it on. I rue the fact that once I start a game, I am bound to complete it.
Most of all, I rue the fact that this game is so bad. And it could have been good! It should have been good!
I think the biggest problem is that they tried to add a lot of weird game mechanics, and wound up adding too many bad ones.
But for whatever reason, Lunar DS is a nuisance to play.

STORY: Standard. Boy meets girl. Girl and boy hang out. Girl gets kidnapped by evil monsters. Boy teams up with...um...two other girls to save her. Some other characters fade in and out, and it gets a bit annoying when you don't know when someone will suddenly vanish and take your valuable accessory with them.
Those who are expecting the other Lunar games' heart-filled characters and spirited dialogue are going to be disappointed. And don't give me that "you can't compare handheld to the console" garbage. Maybe not in terms of graphics or sound, but it's more than possible to make loveable characters and witty dialogue on a handheld. The Golden Sun games are proof enough of that.

GRAPHICS: Decent! Some of the character designs are pretty cool, particularly the dragons. Oh, if they had messed up the dragons, this review would be even more scathing. There's some pixelation in the combat screens, but nothing really istracting.

SOUND: Not bad! There's a lot of praise for the sound, and it's really not undeserved.

GAMEPLAY: EWWWWWW!!! Too many novelties spoil EVERYTHING. Let me explain: you've got a pretty basic RPG system to start with. You wander around the overworld until you hit a monster, then go to a turn-based battle screen. This is where things first go wrong. The battle system's biggest flaw: you can't choose which enemy to attack. Ever. It's just randomly selected. I have NO IDEA what purpose this is supposed to serve, but it's extremely annoying and makes strategizing your moves all but impossible. It's doubly irritating when you consider that certain enemies can steal and break your items (and no, you can't get them back. Replacement is possible but irritating) and so you'd want to kill them before they have the chance.
Also, that whole "turn dark enemies to light" thing? LIES. What they're actually talking about is nothing more than gaining experience (called Althena Conduct, but EXP by any other name...) It's something to do with the two combat modes.
See, you've got one mode, called, um, Combat Mode. After a battle, you gain no experience, but you might get items. Useless items that you have to go on irritating delivery quests to make money off of, but I digress. The other mode is Virtue Mode, in which you get no items but do gain experience. The story explanation is that you're converting the enemies, or something, but that has no actual effect on the game.
The stupid delivery quests are the only way to make any significant amount of money.
You can only take one at a time, and it involves a lot of tedious running around and remembering where people are. Oh, and running drains HP. ANNOYANCE.
There's a card collection system, which is actually fairly cool because most enemy cards can be used in battle for some effect, like healing or stat boost, and they can be used multiple times. The bad thing? Getting a card is not guaranteed, even for one-of-a-kind enemies. And I, sir, am a collectionist. That means I feel a deep inner need to collect everything possible in a given game, such as cards. I did it in Lunar Legend. I did it in Baten Kaitos. My patience in these matters shocks and amazes my friends. But I'm not going to do it for Dragon Song. At least not for several years.
Also, there are several times during the game in which you have to pass through three or four dungeons in immediate succession with no access to Althena statues (this game's equivalent of Inns; provide total healing.) The powerful cards offset this a bit, but SOME of us like to be a little conservative with our cards please.

To be fair, I must admit that SOMETHING in the game kept me playing all the way to the (highly disappointing, confusing and anticlimactic) end.

METAPHOR-LADEN VERDICT: When you think Lunar DS, picture a standard RPG, maybe just a little above average. Now add a really weird dual battle system, in which you can get either items or experience or both. Now add ridiculous fetch quests. Now add a card collection system that doesn't always give you the cards from one-time enemies. Now add the fact that your weapons and items can be broken or stolen at any time with no way to retrieve them (though replacement is - sometimes - possible.) What you have now is a twisted, misshapen mass, barely recognizable as a game, its eyes glistening with unbearable pain from the burden of these unasked-for grafts. No, there's nothing you can do for him, Travis, but put a bullet through his head.

We need to send a message to GameArts that this kind of atrocity is NOT ACCEPTABLE. Even if it weren't a disgrace to a popular, well-done series (which it is), it would still be a bad game in its own right, and there are more than enough of those out there to be getting on with, thank you.

Simply put... awful

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: June 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

So I did a bunch of research into this game before buying it. I'm one of those big "Lunartic" fanboys if you want to put a label on me, but I decided to let my expectations drop when I heard the bad reviews. Okay, so maybe this is gonna be another Lunar Legend. Maybe it'll just be a Final Fantasy-ish Lunar game again with a neat little plot with fascinating characters.

That's... not what I got. I got a horrible, God-awful video game with no way to choose my enemies (which I've never, ever seen in a video game before; stupid idea), no character or plot development whatsoever ("It's a sasquatch let's go chase it into this dangerous temple and see what happens!"), nor so great music... etc. It's a horrible game in all aspects, even when I DIDN'T compare it to the other Lunars. I sit down every day with my DS convincing myself it will get better only to find myself not seeing anything.

...also something I find funny is that the box says "From the original creators of LUNAR: SILVER STAR". Not only are Ubisoft and Marvelous Entertainment NOT the original makers, but "LUNAR: SILVER STAR" is an incorrect title. There was Silver Star Story and The Silver Star. If Ubisoft had half a brain they would have tagged on the right title.

I suppose this game will ruin Lunar for the generation that has never played the Sega CD or Playstation Lunars, which saddens me greatly.

god awful

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: December 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

ive been a fan of the lunar series for years, i had the original sega cd version plus the subsequent remakes. god this is the worst one yet. there are so many things wrong with this game. the battle system is so 1 dimensional. there is zero character development. almnost no interesting dialogue. the artwork is nice but not innovative in the slightest. the level design is botched. and its so disjointed that i had to refer to an online guide to figure out the next step at one point.cant pick the monsters you hit when fighting, there is NO magic system, and instead of walking from town to town your a little icon that you just move to get there... very poorly done, please please please dont waste your money on this game, buy the playstation version as it was the closest to the original games ive seen to date. ubi + lunar = bad idea

if your looking for a decent rpg for the gameboys check out the golden sun series. much better done and much more interesting.

I've never encountered an RPG I didn't like...until now

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: October 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm in the middle of the game right now, and I'm only forcing myself to finish it for the sake of finishing it; it's such a tedious game I wonder if anyone tested it before putting it on the market. I could understand if there was one or two aspects of the game-play that was flawed, but Dragon Song has several.

For one, the normal animation speed of the game is painfully slow. The game-makers give us the option of holding the R button to speed up the battle animations, and I find myself using this all the time. Why is there no setting to automatically increase the speed of the game? Does anyone out there ever play the game at normal speed? I get finger cramps from playing. The walking speed in the field animation is at snail's pace, too, and if you dash you lose hit points.

The problem of slowness is compounded by the fact that there are no shortcuts to get from Town A to Town B. In order to get anywhere, you have to go through a maze of screens each time. Do this just a few times and it gets really boring.

My second biggest complaint about the game is that you can't choose which enemies to attack. The instruction manual says the computer chooses the "most appropriate" target, but of course it doesn't. All characters, weak or strong, gang up on weak targets instead of distributing the attacks.

Other things I hate about this game: Your equipment gets broken rather easily by enemy attacks. This is really frustrating, especially considering how expensive equipment is, and how hard it is to earn money. In addition, the characters are weak and don't level up in strenth or skill at a good pace. Case in point, I'm at level 30, and some of the magic-using characters still cannot kill beginning-level creatures with one blow. What's worse is that max MP is low, and healing spells take up a lot of MP. Restoration points are far and few in-between, and there's no "Return" spell to get back to a town. Plus, the HP and MP replenishment you get when you level up or clear an area is so low I find myself having to return to restoration points often.

I also hate the stupid pocket-watch timer; in order to open special treasure boxes in the field, you have to clear all the enemies in an area. But there's a timer that goes off after your last battle, and you have to find your next target before time runs out. Of course, the walking pace of the characters is so slow, and the field is so full of dead ends, that this gets really, really frustrating.

Overall, a horrible game. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Pretty cool, with a retro feel

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

DISCLAIMER: I haven't finished the game yet, so I can't really rate the storyline. I haven't even played any of the previous games in the LUNAR series, so I don't really have much to compare it to or context to put it in.

That being said, I've really enjoyed this game so far. Sure, there are a few shortcomings, such as the relatively slow pace of movement, and the HP cost for running on the field map, but otherwise this is a pretty good game.

Unlike other RPGs that give you money for defeating enemies, this one actually gives the main character a "day job": working as a delivery boy for a courier service. This is a great feature, since I find that it's a lot of fun to fight monsters to collect stuff requested by clients. It's kind of like letting you choose when and where to do your own side-quests. I certainly find that it's more fun to quest for items for a delivery than to randomly fight anything and everything that moves for a few coins.

Another thing I like is the ability to fight battles in Auto Mode, which sets your characters to attack automatically, letting you set the DS down, sit back, and watch the action. The only thing I really DON'T like about the combat system's manual mode is that you can't select which monster your character will attack, taking some of the strategy out of combat. It's kind of frustrating to see a powerful character take out a monster that your weakest character could take out in the same turn when there's a full-health, stronger monster that he could have eliminated in a single hit.

While the graphics certainly aren't the latest technology in CG, they have a sort of retro feel to them that harks back to the days of the old SNES RPGs. If I had to compare Lunar: DS to another RPG, I'd say it's much like Chrono Trigger, another game that I enjoyed immensely. While the battle system is simpler that CT, Lunar has somewhat nicer graphics and music that actually makes me WANT to make use of the "Music Hall" feature (Lunar: DS's answer to Final Fantasy X's Sphere Theater or other games' sound test).

I especially like that the game allows the use of the touch-screen as the game's primary controller, but doesn't REQUIRE it's use. In fact, I've yet to find a situation that has forced me to draw my stylus. This is a great improvement over some other UBI games that have centered around using the stylus. It lets you use whichever input method you prefer, which is great for us old-school gamers who grew up with the old SNES-style controllers.

Overall, it's a cute game that I really enjoy playing. There are a few shortcomings, but nothing really major that I've seen so far. Maybe it's the nostalgia of someone who remembers as far back as the original 8-bit NES, but the sprite-based graphics are really well done, and the music is memorable. I would definitely recommend this game.


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