Lunar Silver Star Story Complete is a turn-based RPG made for the PSone. It was made by Working Designs, those who made a lot of others for the PSone game and was well-known for the Arc The Lad games.
In the game you take the role of Alex, who is a young man wanting to be and adventurer like his idol, Dragon Master Dyne. The story starts with Alex and his friends Luna (his secret crush and they obviously both like each other), Ramus (who is a fortune starved guy who all he thinks about is finding a way to get money), and his flying cat-like creature Nall, are all living in a small town near a Dragon Cave. Ramus, who wants to try to gain an easy fortune decides to get Alex to help him find a Dragon Diamond in the cave, which is supposed to be worth a lot. Alex decides to go and with a helping shove from Ramus are both off to the cave to seek their fortune. Luna, gets upset at the idea and goes with Alex to try to protect him. But once they are there they find out that the dragon there is still alive and actually friendly. The dragon named Quark sees potential in Alex and beckons him to become the new Dragon Master. This begins a long adventure in which the group finds multiple friends along the way, a mage, a mercenary, and a priest all end up joining in the journey which turns out to be much more than they imagined, with plot twists and danger around every corner, there is a lot more to this story then just trying to become a Dragon Master. The Magic Emperor is trying to take over the World, and only the true Dragon Master and his companions can stop him.
Presentation : A
Graphics / Animation / Sound
This game has a lot going for it in every department especially for its time. The Graphics weren’t the best but were very colorful and you could definitely tell who was who and what was what without much issue. If you enjoyed older games like the earlier final fantasy’s you will love this game. It took its roots from the old school turn-based games in which you could see the characters and they seemed very small compared to the enemies. And the battle animations were cool looking and made you feel almost over powering at times when you performed that ultimate attack you’ve been waiting for. Although it looked very cartoony I think that is what it was going for.
The Cut Scenes were animated like you would see in any kind of Japanese Animation, but they were done very well and there were quite a few. Unlike most of the games like this one during the run of the PSone, the animated cut scenes were fairly frequent and some lasted a couple of minutes. They were all very well drawn and it definitely added to the game and gave it a better feel. You also were able to relate to the characters more as they were acted out in rich color.
The character development was done extremely well and in my opinion is something we see lacking in today’s modern games. You felt for these characters as they went through everything, all the bad and good times, you just enjoyed seeing it played out and you wanted to see a resolution to the problems they were going through. The main character Alex was a very typical, young man trying to grow up and fall in love with his sweet heart crush. Luna, was of course the blue haired crush that Alex had and actually has a surprising background story and a very important part in the course of the whole story. But all in all the characters were loveable and fun to use and watch through the whole game. I myself loved Kyle, what a womanizer and a pervert but he was such a bad ass I couldn’t help but enjoy everything he did no matter how off the wall he did it.
The soundtrack and audio for this game was outrageously stupendous. (Yes that is right I said that!) The game itself came with the soundtrack on an audio cd just so you could play the songs and listen to them whenever you wanted, and trust me, I did! The Soundtrack did what it was supposed to do, made you sad when things were sad, made you happy and joyful when things were going right, and made you want to kick some butt when the kickin’ was good. I have found very few games that I’ve loved the soundtrack as much as I like the game, but this was one of them!
Single Player : A
Game mechanics / Length / difficulty
Game mechanics for this game were good, they game was responsive and in-depth enough that you could adapt your party as you needed. You bought gear at the right times and sometimes you even had to do a little grinding to get that great piece of gear you needed to help finish off a boss. The most impressive game Mechanic that I saw in this game and was actually explained in the miniature game manual in the box, was that the bosses stats weren’t full set. Let me explain, instead of say, a boss having 1,000 life points for you to try to beat through and hitting you for 52 points of damage a turn, the boss had multipliers. Instead, it would be along the lines of an algorithm of (main characters hit points x5 -250) Attack ( main character’s hit points divided by 10 and add 11). This way, a person could grind for hours to try to get ahead of the game, but the bosses were prepared and although might have been a little easier, they weren’t complete pushovers no matter what your level.
This game definitely had some length to it and for a game of its time it lasted about as long as the standard RPGs were running on the PSone system. You could get through the game in I’d say about 30 hours of gameplay, now I spent longer but I was trying to find some secrets and I actually had to back track a bit because I couldn’t seem to beat the final boss for nothing. This game became very difficult toward the end, but you get that great satisfaction when you finally down the final boss and get to see the ending to the game. It is well-earned after everything you went through along the way.
Multiplayer : F
Game mechanics / features / Online features
No Multiplayer.
Replay Value : C
Lasting appeal / Bonus Content / DLC / (If retro does it stand the test of time?)
Now the game was done during the PSone era, and there wasn’t much toward bonus content or DLC at the time so there isn’t much here for those looking for more. If you really want more of the game then there is a sequel to the game although it happens far in the future, so give it a whirl but I can’t very well count that toward this game now can I?
Lasting appeal, the story is great, and I still remember a lot of the game and love it, but after my first run through of it I never really needed to come back to it, other than for this review. The game stands alone as a great game, but replay value is pretty low, unless you just want to go through all the goofy moments again and you have 30+ hours of free game time to play.
This is one of my favorite PSone games of all time and although I can’t grade it an A due to its lack of replay value, the game gets as close to an A as I can give it. If you count an A- as an A, then of course I gave it an A. Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
Overall : A-
