Lunar Legend is a great addition to any RPG gamers library.
User Rating: 8.3 | Lunar Legend GBA
While Lunar Legend follows the standard RPG formula farily close, it still manages to stand on it's own as a very entertaining role playing experience. The story, while not entirely original, follows your main character along with a party of followers on an adventure to save the damsel in distress. And what RPG would be complete without the addition of an ultimate evil trying to take over the world? Lunar Legend has both of these elements but the overall way the story is told and the engaging gameplay helps keep he game fresh and entertaining. The main character, Alex, begins his quest by searching out 4 powerful dragons that can help him achieve his personal goal of becoming a Dragon Master. Shortly into his adventure though, Alex's childhood girlfriend Luna is snatched up by evil-doers. The story continues to move along fairly well while introducing new characters and interesting plot twists. All of the characters introduced are also well developed over time and are easy to like or hate depending on their attitudes. The only flaw besides the seemingly over used plot is the dialogue. All of the characters seem to have a very casual demeanor when delivering their lines, which works most of the time but seems out of place in the more dramatic scences. A few grammatical eror are also noticeable, most likely a result of the translation from Japanese to English. Gameplay sticks to classic RPGs we were accustomed to in the 16 bit era. Between turn-based, side view battles, players are often exploring towns and dungeons from an overhead view. While in dungeons the game uses the well known mechanic of random encounters which sometimes can get very irritating in a game. Lunar Legend pulls it off nicely though while having enough random encounters for your characters to level up, but not enough where the players get annoyed to point of turning it off. During battle players have the familiar options to attack, defend, use an item, cast a spell, or run away. For players who get bored with having to tell the characters what to do every turn, Lunar Legend has a solution. The option to assign specific commands to individual characters can reduce all of the above option to a simple button pres. While not neccessary to play, this option will apeal to some of the more impatient fans out there. When not in battle, players have the option of going to the menu screen and equipping various weapons, armor, and accessories. Lunar Legend offers a good amount of customization in this department and a lot of strategy comes into play when decideing which character would most benefit from a particular item. One thing that might disappoint some diehard RPG fans however is the games fairly simplistic feel. While some boss battles can prove to be difficult, once a party has leveled up enough a lot of the battles can easily be won just by tapping the A button until all the enemies have been defeated. As a matter of fact everything in the game is controlled by one of two buttons. While the A button handles all forms of interaction, the B button brings up the menu system and goes back when selecting commands. Graphics is one of Lunar Legend's strong points. The overhead view of towns and dungeons is pretty average comapred to other RPGs but the cutscenes are very well done. Using a side view similar to that in the battle system allows for more detail in the characters sprites. The characters also have a wide array of animations that give the cutscenes a little more action. Players are also treated to occasional anime inspired still images when an important chracter is introduced or they encounter a pivotal point in the games plot. Both the characters sprites and these images can later be viewed in a gllery inside the games options menu. Along with the two galleries two others can be unlocked by beating the game. The sound of Lunar Legend, while good, is nothing particularly innovative. It has the standard mix of upbeat songs for towns, mysterious and foreboding tracks for dungeons, and the intense, stress inducing music often heard in battle. One thing that is impressive is though is the sound of Luna singing. While only heard a handful of times throughout the game, the quality of an actualll voice coming out of the GBA is of pretty good quality. Overall though, Lunar Legend doesn't really have any songs that will be stuck in gamer's heads once they turn the game off. Overall Lunar Legend is a fun RPG that owners of a GBA should consider. Offering the classic feel of RPGs from the time of SNES with the modern convienience of portability, this game is really a win-win no matter how you look at it. With good character development, a fun and familiar story, great graphics, and a fair share of replayability Lunar Legend is a great addition the GBA's RPG line up.
