Lunar Bin

I mentioned at the end of last year I was having a shot at playing the Lunar RPGs. So how have things gone with that since?

Disappointingly I'm afraid.

I played Lunar: the Silver Star and made some decent enough progress. I was enjoying this RPG a lot but then I hit a wall: I got to the point where Kyle was supposed to join my party but I could not find the sod anywhere. I looked all over Nanza but I could not find one single trace of him. So, being unable to progress further, I had to abandon playing Lunar: the Silver Star (if I've done something wrong can someone tell me? I want to beat this game dammit!).
Which was shame because I was enjoying the game a lot - I loved the music and was fascinated by the setting where a moon, supporting life, encircled a barren planet (very much the reverse of the Earth and it's Moon).

But I was still keen to check this series out - so I jumped straight into the sequel Lunar: Eternal Blue. A risky move one might think seeing leaving Silver Star incomplete may result in missing something but this series had my interest so I was not prepared to give up on it just yet.
To begin with, things got off to a promising start with this gorgeous intro:



Naked anime chicks aside, I loved the use of music and the art direction in this intro and certainly made a good case to see what lay on the other side.
So I played Eternal Blue and found much to admire: The voice acting was both fun and not calamitously horrific, the battles were great, the grind didn't feel like grind, the music was superb and the anime cinematics were compelling enough. Okay sure I couldn't shake the notion that I'd missed out on something through not completing the first Lunar game but I was still having fun with Eternal Blue nonetheless. And I must give a special mention to Lucia who was both cute and able to cast spells that could decimate the baddies in seconds.

But alack and alas, Eternal Blue ended up being another abandoned game: A software failure kept recurring at a particular point and, much like Silver Star, I was unable to progress any further. Frustrating yes but there's not much I can do about it.

Nevertheless, despite my frustrations (however out of my control) with the Lunar series this is indeed one series I would like to return to future and see if I can complete it. Although both Lunar games have been abandoned, I can say that what I did play of them revealed a personality, epic sweep, superb presentation and a lot of heart gone into it's making.
We will meet again Lunar series, make my words.....