The Video Game Revue

Lunar: Dragon Song

I've played it for less than an hour so far, but I'm quite disappointed with Lunar: Dragon song. I feel that the IGN review is charitable, to say the least. The fact that there's a "mode" that you need to toggle in order to get experience from combat, or that you lose HP simply by holding the B button to run (even in towns and other areas without enemies), or that you can't actually target enemies with your attacks in combat--it's all a bit much to take. Any one of those things on its own would have been a strike against the game, and the cumulation of all of them reflects very poorly on the people responsible for directing and producing Lunar: Dragon Song. What really stings, though, is that Lunar is a legendary RPG series with deeply loyal fans--it is a name that invokes a great deal of respect, and Lunar: Dragon Song is now something of a blight on that name.

All that having been said, I fully intend to slog through the game and try to finish it. It might be flawed, but it's still an RPG, and it's still at least somewhat playable. I just really wish that instead of having tried to take the game in a new direction, they'd just have copied the traditional Lunar formula letter for letter.

In other exciting RPG news, I read over on Joystiq that in addition to the FF IV remake coming to GBA, there are going to be GBA versions of FF V and VI as well. A lot of my friends (and myself) have wanted this to happen for a long time, so it's a reasonably big deal to me. After all, I've said before that FF VI is the best in the series, and I stand by that--it has the most interesting plot, the best characters, and the darkest, moodiest setting. Not to look down too much on FF VII, VIII, IX, and especially X, of course.

Also, is it just me, or is it more than a coincidence that games like Lunar: Dragon Song and Advance Wars: Dual Strike are conveniently abbreviated as Lunar DS and Advance Wars DS? It's like the whole Nintendo 64 naming convention (Mario 64, Zelda 64, etc.) all over again, but with more creative flair this time. I think that's pretty cool.

posted by Parappa @ 8:41 AM