Lunar: Sanposuru Gakuen (Walking School)

The Lunar games were regarded as classics on the Sega CD, and probably even moreso when they were remade for the Playstation 1.  But what not too many people know (or care to discuss) is that there was a third Lunar game in between those two generations, released exclusively in Japan for the Game Gear.  It actually isn't a bad effort for the platform, either - it's relatively well-paced and even has some decent graphics, with the expressive character portraits and animations carried over from the other Lunar games.  The writing also captures the warmth and humor that quickly became the series' trademark, so it actually feels like a Lunar game in its most central respects.  That said, the transition to a portable platform isn't flawless - the tiny resolution makes the large maps somewhat awkward to navigate, the tactical movement-based combat is replaced with a simpler Dragon Quest style battle screen, and the UI is crunched down to the point where you have to scroll left or right to view your current HP and MP totals.  While there are shops, there are surprisingly no equippable weapons to purchase, and the few pieces of armor that exist don't actually bolster your defense, only allowing you to regenerate MP at varying rates.  However, there are a fair number of items to utilize, both offensive and supportive, spells to cast and named NPCs to interact with, so it still looks and feels like a fleshed out RPG experience.  Not a flawless one, though - goals are often unclear and there's a lot of that irritating aspect of having to wander about and talk to random, nameless NPCs until you trigger the next plot flag.  But even with that, it's a surprisingly decent experience and definitely one of the Game Gear's better RPGs.

Walking School also had a remake the following year on the Sega Saturn known as "Mahou Gakuen Lunar!", which translates to "Magical School Lunar".  While it follows the same basic plot, events unfold in a much different way and the greater capabilities of the Saturn allow it to have higher-quality graphics, animated cutscenes and gameplay more in-line with the norms of the first two games.  That said, it also apparently has substantially worse gameplay than the original, as items are done away with almost entirely and the encounter rate is boosted to the point of becoming a major detriment to the experience.

Developer: Studio Alex, Ehrgeiz

Publisher: Game Arts
Released:1996
Platform: Game Gear

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete

Lunar's first remake for the fifth generation of consoles was a hit with fans of classic 2D RPGs, so it was inevitable that its highly-acclaimed sequel would soon get a remake of its own.  But does this remake do justice to the Sega CD cult classic, or is it simply a flawed counterpart?

Despite being released late in the system's life and garnering overall low sales as a result, Lunar 2 on the Sega CD quickly became a cult classic for the platform and is still widely hailed as one of its best games.  Its gripping story and high quality animated cutscenes were a sight to behold, as was a great CD soundtrack and even surprisingly competent voice-over for the era.  But it was marred with criticism as well, mostly for its publishers (the ever-controversial Working Designs) making bizarre and unnecessary alterations to both the gameplay and the script.  Like most of their games, it's translation was far from faithful to the original Japanese script, changing many plot points and adding in numerous juvenile jokes.  There are also an abundance of references to the movie "This is Spinal Tap" - even the company's motto at the time was "our games go to 11".  Many gameplay changes were implemented as well, ostensibly to add challenge but in practice making the game considerably more grindy and less fun.  The difficulty has been dramatically ramped up through higher MP costs for many spells, buying items and healing at shrines cost much more money, enemy stats were all cranked up, and most infamously of all, it forces the player to pay large sums of valuable Magic Experience (dependent on Hiro's current level) just to save the game - something that didn't exist at all in the original Japanese version. 

Thankfully, they seem to have finally taken that criticism to heart by the time Lunar 2's remake was announced.  Eternal Blue Complete was left largely untouched gameplay-wise, only making some minor tweaks to address bugs and other inconveniences (like disallowing items in fights the player is scripted to lose so that they don't go to waste). The translation is also a bit more subdued than their earlier efforts, though still laden with jokes, silly accents and pop culture gags (one that particularly stands out to me is a Who Wants to be a Millionaire reference, which dates the game quite a bit).  As usual, they also went all-in with the packaging, shipping the game in a foil-stamped box and including extras like a map, a bonus CD with a "Making of" commentary, a hard-cover manual and a set of miniature standees depicting all of the main cast.  They were very obviously passionate about their works and tried to invoke the mood you'd get buying an old big-box PC game with all the extras - you weren't just playing a game, you were adventuring into another world.  The downside, of course, is that complete copies of the game are now somewhat sparse and can go for over $100 online.

Eternal Blue Complete's gameplay is largely modeled on its predecessor's, retaining many of the improvements it brought. Random encounters are still a thing of the past, now allowing the player to see them on the dungeon map and evade them with the ability to dash. Combat retains a slight tactical bent, with each character having a finite movement range per turn and some attacks having areas of effect, giving the ability to hit large groups of enemies at once and lessen the damage from some moves by spreading out the party. The Magic Experience system from the original is done away with completely in favor of earning spells through levels, with some attaining more powerful upgraded versions after the player's level reaches a certain threshold.  Ruby (Hiro's dragon companion) also aids in battle, though in a slightly different manner than Nall from the previous game - if an enemy is reduced to very low HP but not quite dead, she will often fly down and deal a finishing blow at the end of the round.

A new addition to the game is the Crest system.  Crests are items that grant small stat bonuses/penalties and occasionally spells when equipped.  This allows for a degree of character customization, and some even allow any character to cast elemental attacks, letting you exploit weaknesses more easily than in 1.  Seemingly taking a cue from the Final Fantasy series, many items also have extra effects when used in battle; particularly staves, which often cast mid-ranged elemental spells for no MP cost.  One of the more interesting ones is the Thieves' Staff, which grants a chance to steal items from enemies; you won't get anything too rare from most enemies, but having a few extra Angel Tears or Star Lights around is never a bad thing, particularly late in the game.

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, simply put, is a great update to a classic, taking the same great story as the first and updating it to a new generation in style.  Higher-quality cutscenes with top-notch animation, remastered music that sounds fantastic, the same great reworked engine and design philosophy as the first Lunar remake, and a number of gameplay improvements over the first.  Working Designs resisting the urge to make the game more difficult certainly helps it too; the game is polished to near-perfection as is, providing just the right amount of challenge without ever feeling overbearing and rarely requiring the player to stop and grind for experience and resources.  It may not be the most visually impressive PS1 RPG or quite as memorable as the remake of 1, but it's an elegant, enjoyable and charming update of a Sega CD cult classic.

Developer: Game Arts, Studio Alex, Japan Art Media
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten, Working Designs
Platform: Sega Saturn, Playstation 1, Playstation Network
Released: 1998, 2000, 2015
Recommended version: Thus far, the only version of the game in English is the Working Designs release on the Playstation.  The Japan-only Sega Saturn version is the "non-complete" release and lacks some extra content that was added to the Playstation versions.  The Playstation Network release is an emulation of the Japanese version and is currently only available in that region.

The original Sega CD release is a cult classic in its own right, although Working Designs did include a few of their questionable changes, including having to pay Magic Experience to save your game and making the battles considerably more difficult.  I would recommend finding the fan patch that "unworks" that version.

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete

A remake of a cult classic Sega CD RPG that introduced the franchise to a new console generation and gave it some substantial upgrades in the process. But did a 2D fairy tale RPG manage to hold its own in an era where 3d graphics, cyberpunk and urban fantasy were the new norm, or did it just sink into obscurity?

The Lunar games were some of the most influential JRPGs of the early 90s - niche to be sure, being released only for the Sega CD platform, but they were among the first to show western audiences what the CD format could do for the genre.  Not just providing a solid adventure with a lot of substantial content (and not just grinding to pad length), but high-quality music, voiceover and FMV to give them more of a cinematic feel.  Lunar 2 in particular is regarded as one of the best RPGs of the 16-bit era and has a cult following that continues to this day.

All that being said, I didn't play the original Sega CD games back when they were new.  While I knew of them from game magazines and catching glimpses at stores,  I wasn't really into RPGs yet at that point.  On top of that, I couldn't afford a Sega CD addon at the time, so I mostly stuck to the stock Genesis and the Super Nintendo.  However, once the Playstation era rolled around and remakes of the games were announced, I saw an opportunity to jump on board and see what I had missed in the last generation.

Luckily, what I saw did not disappoint.  Not only was it a breath of fresh air to see an RPG in that era that used good old 2D sprites instead of rough-edged, pixelated PS1 polygons, but even in the in-game cutscenes were hand-drawn and very good quality besides; maybe not Ghibli quality, but enough to rival any big-budget anime of the era.  Also unusually for the time, it featured voice acting of surprisingly good quality, giving the characters a lot of personality and adding perfectly to the humor - even in the non-voiced lines, it makes it easier to imagine the voices and timing of the jokes.

Combat retains a traditional turn-based style, though with some slight changes.  First is the fact that your hand-to-hand oriented characters can get multiple attacks per turn, and can even hit different targets with them, keeping their power level roughly on par with your more magic-oriented ones (unlike many RPGs, where mages tend to start out weak but dominate in the endgame).  Second, the game has a slight strategy RPG feel in that for said melee attacks, one must actually approach an enemy on the field and attack them - if they are out of range, then you just spend a turn getting closer and that's it (which can put you at a disadvantage when the enemies get their turns).  Defending also allows you to manually reposition your characters, which proves to be an essential tactic in some battles (particularly against bosses with large area-of-effect attacks).  Throughout the game you are constantly accompanied by Nall, who does factor into combat too - from time to time, he will revive a downed character with 1 HP and allow them to get back into the fight.  While only sporadically useful, this is still better than Nall's contribution in the Sega CD version, where he simply gave useless advice against monsters.  New to this version as well, Nall will revive any downed characters at the end of combat, thus preventing them from missing out on any experience points gained - generally a good thing (though if for some reason you want someone to miss out on gaining XP, you now have to command that individual character to run from the fight).

Something else that was unusual for the time was that Lunar's bosses do not have fixed stats - instead, their stats are all based on multiples of Alex's level, so they effectively power up as he does to provide a consistent challenge (and reduce the player's reliance on over-leveling).  Some unscrupulous players found that they could exploit this by having Alex flee from every fight and simply let the rest of the party gain experience instead, making every major battle beyond the first hours of the game into a total joke.  Probably little surprise that this mechanic was left out of the sequel in favor of more traditional fixed-stat bosses.

Being published by Working Designs had its benefit for the game too; before virtually every game with a well-known name attached had big-box Special Edition releases, Working Designs paved the way.  Silver Star Story was probably their most ambitious one yet with additions like a cloth map, soundtrack CD, hardcover manual and even variant covers for the disc box.  Those who preordered the game got a Ghaleon punching puppet (though the Alex puppet, planned for release alongside the PC version, sadly never saw the light of day), and even the player's guide for the game was unusual in that it was a high-quality hardcover release.  Naturally, this all came at a cost, retailing for significantly higher than the average Playstation game and being relatively rare and expensive nowadays.

On the other side of that coin, Working Designs is a divisive name among RPG fans, making some controversial changes to many of the games they localized for western territories.  While not quite on the same level as Silhouette Mirage 's overhauled gameplay or having to spend Magic Experience to save one' s game in Lunar 2 for Sega CD, they nevertheless make for a substantially different experience than the Japanese release.  In general, enemy HP is about 10 percent lower, their damage output is 20-40 percent higher and XP and silver rewards were lowered around 15 percent, making combat tougher and the game require substantially more grinding.  All chests containing silver had their contents halved as well, and bosses were made significantly stronger, getting higher multipliers based on Alex's level and generally taking much longer to beat.  The translation also added many jokes (including several pop culture references and some generally juvenile moments) and a couple of puzzle solutions were obscured (mistranslated or left out completely) , making them tougher to solve.  I've never personally played the original Japanese release so I don't have a first-hand frame of reference, but I didn't find any of these to detract greatly from the overall experience.  In fact, the lowbrow jokes actually felt rather at home considering that the game also famously has quite a few fan-servicey moments, including allowing the player to collect "bromides" of the female characters to provide some cheesecake, and view bath scenes of both male and female characters with mild nudity (though the female baths are much tougher to access, being placed after one of the game's most dangerous dungeons).

But regardless of whether you agree with Working Designs' changes or not, there is no denying that Lunar is a solid update of a classic.  It provides enough old-school appeal for long-time RPG players, but enough charm, story and memorable characters to appeal to newer ones as well.  The 2D artwork in the game is downright gorgeous, the music is catchy and well-composed, and even the voice acting holds up remarkably well - while obviously not on the level of modern anime and game dubs, the cast is clearly trying and having a lot of fun doing it (with the post-credits blooper reel only providing more evidence of that).  Lunar is a fun and captivating fairy tale in video game form, and its charm will last for the ages.

Developer: Game Arts, Japan Art Media, Studio Alex, SoMoGa (iOS version)
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten, ESP, Working Designs
Platform: Sega Saturn, Playstation 1, Windows iOS
Released: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2012
Recommended version: If you can get ahold of a copy, the Playstation version is the one I recommend.  While the Saturn version apparently has cleaner spritework (little surprise as the Saturn was primarily built as a 2D system) and the Windows version has higher-quality FMVs, neither is available in English.  The iOS port is a hybrid of several versions of the game (based on the Saturn version's source code, using the graphics of the Windows port and having the script/VO of the PSP remake) and seems to be comparable in quality at a glance, though I have not played it firsthand.

(There are two remakes as well - Lunar Legend for GBA and Lunar: Silver Star Harmony for the PSP - that I will review at a later date)