Lunar: SSH's characters and story are packed with charisma, but the game itself is basic to a fault.

User Rating: 7 | Lunar: Silver Star Harmony PSP

Because the Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete box set is a bit of a pain to acquire, I settled for the PSP remake of this PlayStation classic. While I did ultimately enjoy the game, I wish I had played the game in its PS1 incarnation as this remake made several changes that seem questionable in light of what I know about the original. Taken on its own merits, however, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony has plenty of redeeming qualities. The hand drawn graphics are extremely vibrant and are generally a joy to look at, the characters are likeable, the dialogue is lively and well-written, and the story is both simple and eventful enough to give the player that delicious old school sense of adventure. The problem is that the game feels much too basic and by-the-numbers and the combat system starts to drag very quickly. I'm not a huge stickler for combat systems, but the act of playing this game often felt like a chore even in spite of the charismatic storytelling.

Lunar is the story of Alex, a young man who wishes to follow in the footsteps of the Dragon Master Dyne. In the spirit of adventure, he goes out with his friend Ramus to seek a precious gem. His childhood friend Luna also tags along, nagging all the way. Their adventure eventually leads them to Vane, the City of Magic, where Alex meets Ghalleon, a former adventurer who used to travel with Dyne. After many events, Ghalleon, who has his heart set on world domination, kidnaps Luna to make use of her magical voice, which has properties that are key to his conquest. Predictably, Alex and his friend must get Luna back.

The story sounds really simple and clichéd and it is, but the developers give life to these clichés with sharp, natural sounding dialogue and convincing character interaction. The twist and turns of the story, which might have fallen flat in the hands of lesser storytellers, have a surprising amount of impact due to the rapport between the characters which the game skillfully establishes early on. So while the writers often try much too hard to be funny (and there’s a flying cat character who is extremely annoying), the game has a ton of heart. If you want a pure adventure story with charismatic characters and ample reasons to care, you can't do too much better than this game.

The story is well paced, moving smoothly from event to event, but the actual game progression is a bit boring for all its competence. Where the Final Fantasy games alternate between leisurely expedition and fast, action-packed set pieces in a way that is dynamic, this game doesn’t have much in the way of varied pacing. You basically explore towns and dungeons, which are tied together via a world map that is not actually a world map, but is more like a glorified menu, and that’s basically it. The game’s sense of adventure would have benefited greatly if they had kept the legit world map that the PlayStation version had. As for the towns and dungeons, they are nothing too exciting, but they get the job done. In fact, that phrase, “get the job done,” might be the ultimate thorn in the game’s side. Everything outside of the story feels overly basic and perfunctory, but pleasantly so.

On another note, one thing that really annoyed me about dungeon exploration is that while there are no random encounters, the enemy avatars are so fast that you really can't dodge them with any kind of reliability. What's the point of giving you the ability to avoid encounters if the enemies are so quick that you're forced into them anyway?

The aforementioned perfunctory feeling is most apparent in combat. Lunar uses a very barebones turn-based system: you select your characters attacks and watch the rounds play out like so many other role playing games. To be fair, there is nothing gamebreakingly wrong with the battle system and it seemed pretty well balanced (with the exception of way too powerful limit break-like super moves), but there are two main problems that undermined my enjoyment: the first is that the battles last much too long. From what I’ve seen of the PlayStation version of the game, the battles were snappy with quick animations. That’s not the case here. Magic animations are unnecessarily belabored without any real eye candy to justify their lack of brevity and even regular attack animations seem kind of sluggish. The second problem I had with the combat was that for all the spells and techniques the game puts at your disposal, there’s no real strategy involved. You pretty much just dish out damage, heal, and buff sometimes, even in major boss fights. Granted, this is the pattern for most encounters in roleplaying games, but better battle systems always have hidden depth for curious players, depth that is noticeably absent in this particular adventure. I honestly can’t think of anything I could have done with the battle system to make it more strategic; even the way characters can be "positioned" on the battlefield when they carry out their attacks didn't amount to much. Not only that: there’s no real customization beyond outfitting your characters with new weapons and armor, which is fine, but I really needed something to sink my teeth into gameplay-wise and I never got it.

The visuals are one area where the game goes above and beyond getting the job done. The background artwork is quite gorgeous, with vibrant, eye-catching colors and tons of detail; the PSP’s screen makes it look especially sharp. The sprites on the other hand are not quite as remarkable, but they’re well animated and blend nicely with the environments. There are also some anime cutscenes that look like they were lifted from the PlayStation version, but since they still kick ass, there was no reason to change them. Arguably, the visuals are not as charming as they were in the PlayStation version, but XSeed could hardly justify rereleasing the game without a graphical upgrade of some sort and as far as revamped visuals go, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony gets it right.

The sound design is as competent as any other aspect of the game minus some slightly cheesy voice acting but I honestly didn’t care for the soundtrack. The melodies seemed fine, but there wasn’t much in the way of atmosphere or sonic texture. In short, the music is vaguely pleasant and not much else.

If you’re looking for a more “pure” JRPG experience with a great story and characters and a warm and fuzzy feeling of adventure, you really can’t go wrong with Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. Unlike many other JRPGs, the characters and writing is anything but perfunctory. It’s just a shame that the rest of the game doesn’t have as much vitality.

GAMEPLAY-3.5/5

DESIGN-3.5/5

STORY-4/5

VISUALS-4.5/5

PLAYABILITY-4.5/5

VALUE-4/5