Lunar: Silver Star Harmony – Reviewed!
Have you ever sat down and wanted to play a SNES era RPG, and found yourself looking at a pile of games you have beat a dozen times over, just to not play anything because nothing was appealing, and find yourself bored? I know that I do it all the time, as there are only so many times that I can replay Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 6. And as if someone heard my one very strange issue, so comes a remake of Lunar: The Silver Star for the PSP called Lunar: Silver Star Harmony. Being a SNES child, I missed out on a lot of the great Genesis games, and I think that a lot of people missed out on this game as well, because it was released for the Sega CD, which is a real travesty.
This game just oozes nostalgia. You play a young boy who idolizes Dragonmaster Dyne, one of four heroes who had recently saved the world. Your goal is to one day become a Dragonmaster as well and defend the planet of Lunar. Lo and behold, lady luck is on your side and the caves of one of the legendary dragons is accessible, and you and your friends set out to find it, and get a dragon diamond to sell so you can become rich. Through a series of events, you find out that one of the four heroes is actually the evil “Magic Emperor”, who wants to take the power of the Dragonmaster for his own to control the world, as well kidnapping your love Luna. Sound familiar? That’s because we have heard this story before, but the style and the story telling is a timeless classic that makes you more nostalgic, than have you roll your eyes. It is just one of those timeless stories that keeps the fantasy genre in business and makes you feel like a kid again.
The combat is your traditional RPG battle system with a twist. Your characters are placed on a map against the enemies and to attack them with anything other than special moves, your character has to get into range, which they will do automatically. You have your standard range of magic spells, and special sword slashes that will do damage to a single character, do AOE around the character you choose to attack, or damage all the enemies, compounded with the standard healing spells and status ailments. Again, nothing major, but flawlessly executed. One major feature that I really enjoyed was the ability to just let the computer do all the work for you. You could do this by setting up 1 of 3 prearranged tactics for your characters to do on a turn, or just have the computer take over full AI. This made for getting past most of the regular boring battles quick and painless, but at the same time, everything outside of boss battles turned into a “press A for victory” battle.
The graphics look very nice. All the sprites are hand drawn and beautifully rendered. All of the game has these wonderful bright beautiful colors, making the game just all the more fun to play, it just looks pretty. The anime cut scenes on the other hand I am not so much a fan of. They fall into a weird ’90s style that I just never really liked. They look well enough, and this is more of just a personal complaint.
Overall, this game is a fun skip down nostalgia lane. It is memorable, the dialogue is funny and witty, there are plenty of jokes to be found, the characters are likable, the game is at least 30 hours long and it is simply a lot of fun. Definitely worth a pickup to fill that nostalgic gaming gap.
