Lunar Remastered Collection

As a fan of Japanese role-playing games, it's hard not to be pleased with the way the genre has developed in recent years. And thanks to the huge success of the big series, developers have dared to take a chance on the lesser known ones and we've seen many remasters and remakes of more obscure series. Baten Kaitos I II HD Remaster, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, The Legend of Legacy HD Remastered, and Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven just to name a few from the last few years. Now it's the turn of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete from 1996 and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete from 1998 in a collection called Lunar Remastered Collection.

Both of these games were already remakes of titles of the same name, minus Complete, from 1992 and 1994. And in short, there's as much classic JRPG about these two as you can get. They are also both good games in the genre and deserve to be played, without being on the same level as the best games from that time period. They are set in the same world, but 1000 years apart. You don't need to play the first game to understand the second even if the story has a slight connection. But this is not a problem if you buy the collection as you will get both games.

Both Silver Star Story and Eternal Blue do something that is hard to do, which is to not feel boring or repetitive even though all the systems in the game are very simple. Take the turn-based combat system for example. You can choose between a regular attack with your weapon, a magic attack (or healing magic for those types of characters), use something to restore your HP/MP, defend, or flee. No complicated spells or intricate systems. It's very easy to understand. However, you can use autostrider, where the game controls everything, if you don't feel like pushing through everything. This is very handy when the enemies are not so strong and you want to plough through them quickly. To speed up the experience, it is also possible to increase the speed of the battles up to three times the normal. Something I chose to do as the battles felt unnecessarily slow otherwise.

The stories are certainly not anything revolutionary either. Random youth is 'the chosen one' and must save the world from some evil that has chosen to return after X number of years. That said, the story isn't bad by any means, it's just that it's a recurring format from other games. What makes the scales tip over in the good direction are the characters. Both games are filled with memorable characters, all of which are introduced with their own anime-style cutscene. Something that really makes the Lunar games stand out from the crowd. Nowadays, we're used to sitting through endless cutscenes where parts of the story unfold. Here, instead, we get shorter sequences that show off the characters' personalities. Because it's not always the easiest to get through personalities when the characters' appearance is basically two eyes, clothes, and hair.

Silver Star Story, the first game in the series, is about Alex and Luna. Alex idolises the former Dragon Master (one of four historical heroes) and is eager to become the next Dragon Master. This means he has to find the dragons around the world and get their approval. Easier said than done, of course. It turns out, of course, that a new Dragon Master is what's needed to save the world. Luna, on the other hand, is a talented singer who people are beginning to realise is something more special. What she really is then plays a big part in the story. They have a bunch of characters with them, who are of course hooked on for Japanese role-playing reasons. Mages, fighters, and medics are there, of course, but each has their own story that makes them easy to like. Eternal Blue is set in the same world, but a thousand years in the future. People have almost forgotten the events of the first game and we get to play again as a youngster with dreams of adventure. Of course, it's time for an evil character who wants to destroy the world. Nothing new under the sun. Again, it's a good story with content that's pretty much standard when it comes to Japanese role-playing games.

But this is a remaster, so what has really changed from 30 years ago? I mentioned earlier the ability to speed up battles, but there are also other quality of life updates. Like the characters now have a shared inventory of items to use during battles. In the original, a character had to personally have an item - medicine, for example - in order to use it. Now everyone can use the same items. If you want to play with the original system, you can do that too. Now might also be a good time to mention that both games can be played in their original versions. When you start the game, you get to choose between playing the remaster or the original of the games. Something we don't usually see. The graphics have honestly not been touched much. Which there was no need for. The remaster is in widescreen instead of 4:3 format.

The Lunar Remastered Collection is a superb example of 'don't fix what isn't broken'. There has been no attempt to rebuild the game to make it sexier for the modern audience. Everything is basically just like the originals with a few small improvements, which make for a better experience, but are also small enough that they could have fit into the games 30 years ago. Both Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete are Japanese role-playing games worth playing. There's a very high quality to them, although in the end it doesn't quite reach the level of the best games in the genre.