Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
Working Designs
Genre:
RPG
Players:
1
Type/#:
CD / 3
Overall Rating
95
%
Graphics and Sound
Well, if there's anything negative to say with respect
to Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, it's that its graphics aren't
exactly fantastic. As this is a remake of a Sega CD game, you won't find
any hi-poly models or mind-blowing spell effects. There's lots of 2D art
and 2D sprites, though, and while the character sprites are a little
shrimpy,
the game still looks fine. Some of the areas are downright gorgeous, in a
tile-based sort of way. Yes, it's no Vagrant Story, but the graphics
more than make do for the game.
And the full motion video is excellent. With a wonderful mixture of CG and
hand-drawn animation, it really comes alive. The anime-style animation is
superb, the CG is quite sweet, and it blends together better than you'd
think it would -- vaguely reminiscent of the mixed styles of the movie
The
Iron Giant. Very nice. There's tons of it, too.
The sound, on the other hand, is top-notch. While the spell and other sound
effects are simply mediocre, neither too tinny nor too amazing, the voice
acting is solid and the music is excellent. The included music CD is a very
nice bonus, as the game has some of the best tunes I've heard in a
videogame. And the voice actors generally fit the characters. Although
it's certainly amusing to see a female who can cast insanely death-dealing
spells and then hear her supersoft voice, in the end it all works out well.
Ruby's cute, Hiro's just annoying enough to be a hero, and the other
characters sound good too.
Gameplay
And, when you get right down to it, the important thing about a
remake like Eternal Blue Complete is the gameplay. The source
material wasn't particularly strong in the graphics department to begin
with, but it had oodles of gameplay, and Eternal Blue Complete
follows in that tradition.
Set a millennia after the happenings in Lunar: Silver Star Story
Complete, Eternal Blue follows the story of Hiro the, er, hero
(ever read Snow Crash?) and his madcap adventures. When it comes to
characters, this game is much closer to, say, Final Fantasy IX than
it is to Final Fantasy VII/VII. Instead of dark and gloomy folk who
wander around angsting, you've got a bunch of people who laugh a lot, joke
around a lot, but get serious when they need to. It's a decidedly warmer
atmosphere to have an RPG in, and the recent release of such "warm-hearted"
tales is a definite bonus in my book.
The plot is long and winding, and while there's plenty of plot twists that
you can predict in advance (hint: characters with portraits are important),
there's lots of little things that you won't have figured out. It's got a
good story, mind you, but it's not on the level of the brain-twisting
madnesses that Chrono Cross or Vagrant Story is. That's not
necessarily a bad thing -- straightforward plots where you have a good idea
as to the big bad guy within a few hours of play are considerably more
enjoyable than the cliched "puppeteer" model.
The gameplay itself is strictly old-school RPG fare. It's got some
excellent touches, though, and does a few things that "modern" RPGs would do
well to learn from. For example, there are no real "random" battles. All
of the enemy groups appear on-screen, a la the Chrono games, and if
you encounter a group, you have to fight them. This is a much better way to
do it than the Final Fantasy way, as you can generally run away from
a battle if you're smart/lucky enough. And the battles themselves have more
strategy than your typical RPG. Your characters have a limited range of
movement, and you've got to decide whether you want to hit the nearby
enemies, run towards the farther away ones, or use magic attacks that can
hit said far away ones without having to move. Each has their own benefits
and drawbacks -- tougher enemies are usually in the back, causing you to
have to figure out how to take the least damage -- but it certainly takes
some of the tedium out of repeated battles. And since areas stay clear for
at least a little while after you clean them out, you don't have to worry
about running back to a save point and having to fight all over again.
Yes, it really brings nothing new to the genre. Who cares? It's fun!
And need I say anything about the translation quality of the game, other
than excellent as usual? What else would you expect from Working
Designs?
Difficulty Level
Surprise! You may actually die rather regularly in
Eternal Blue. Your characters start off weak, but they can gain
levels easily enough. And, unlike many games now where levels simply raise
your health and maybe tweak a stat here or there, in Eternal Blue
there's a noticeable difference every time you level up. You take less
damage, deal more out, and in general, things work better for you. It's not
to the level of Terranigma, thankfully, where being one level off
meant doing 2-3 damage instead of 30-40, but it's good to see a game that
actually makes good use of the old RPG concept.
Game Mechanics
Control is a snap, both with the digital and analog sticks.
The menus are also near-trivial to use, once you know which buttons open
which ones. Working Designs did a few really cool things, like allowing you
to have not one, but two save games in a single memory slot. This
means that you can have 30 (!) saves on one memory card, which you should
never need, but is a wonderful luxury nonetheless. Load times are minimal,
although there is a little gapping between the map and the battles.
PS2: As soon as I receive a retail copy that will work on my PS2, I'll
update this section with information on the effects of the PS2's
enhancements. I hear tell that what little load times the game has are
practically eradicated -- but don't quote me on that.
So what if it's a remake of an old game? So what if there are prettier,
more elaborate titles out there? With a rock-solid translation by Working
Designs, hours of gameplay, tons of sweet video throughout, and a whole crew
of genuinely likable characters, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete is a
winner. If you absolutely have to have state-of-the-art graphics in your
games, you should pass, but the rest of us silly people who don't mind
playing sprite-based games will be enjoying a wonderful RPG experience
without you. So nyeh.
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