Publisher GungHo Online Entertainment is once again back with a new remaster collection—developed by ASHIBI Co., they’ve gone and brought back a PlayStation One classic duology series (yes, I’m aware of their SEGA origins!) by the name of ‘LUNAR Remastered Collection’: not only packing in ‘LUNAR: Silver Star Story Complete’ and ‘LUNAR 2: Eternal Blue Complete’ into a launcher and making them playable on modern consoles and PC, but also offering a remastered mode that uses enhanced spritework, bumps the aspect ratio to modern display standards properly, and uses cleaned up full motion videos that LUNAR seems to be fondly remembered by.
I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard of LUNAR before. Or at least, not within the last fifteen years of my working memory. I was pretty excited to jump into collection as a result and came out miffed as I was pleased. But despite my feelings, this is a solid porting collection for a classic JRPG series.
(GungHo Online Entertainment)
The Port as a Whole
With this collection we’ve got some seriously good-looking sprites and animations. Both LUNAR titles look splendid in both their classic and remaster forms and a lot of care has gone into making the user menus, characters, and world as clean as possible even on 4K telly sets. The first game looks good, but the second looks stunning as I can only assume that the original developer, Game Arts, finally figured out how the SEGA CD ticked. I was surprised to find out Iwadare Noriyuki (‘Ace Attorney’, ‘Grandia’) was responsible for composing the series’ music and this port appears to be using a higher quality soundbox version for the remastered version, which of course was expected but I was happy to see. Plus, it seems he’s returned to compose a special song for the launcher itself.
The LUNAR Remastered Collection contains both PlayStation-based LUNAR titles, available for play in their “Classic” and “Remastered” forms. Classic mode is essentially the original game, playing at its originally intended some-240p resolution. Besides assets, behaviours that are new to the collection work across Classic and Remastered modes—for example, this new release offers a simplified inventory system so that you don’t have to do the rather tedious menu management that the first game had. You can switch to it, if you’d like, but the remaster’s is the default option. This also means that controls remain the same across modes and save files work both ways, so you don’t have to worry about choosing when you can simply admire the cleaner sprites or dirtier CGs as you please. Subtitle support is also available across both games natively.
Though I have to admit, the new inventory system for the first LUNAR was so simple, I didn’t actually know how to use it right away. See, in the original, you’d have to hand over items and equipment picked up by characters and balance them around. Very early on, your floating cat friend mentions that you should the equip armour and weapons given to you, but I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to give our protagonist his sword only to learn of the new inventory management later. Whoops! Mind you it’s no knock on the collection, because otherwise the framework itself is really good. Plus, you can speed along battles at warp speed, cutting down significant gameplay time during combat sections.
So, the port is solid—which means now the games must show up.
Check This Out!
I jumped into LUNAR: Silver Star Complete in its remastered mode right away. This game follows the story of a young boy named Alex with a floating cat-thing named Nall. Together, they watch over a shrine dedicated to a legendary Dragonmaster by the name of Dyne and Alex expresses his desire to take on the title for himself. He’s a big fan, after all—but dreams have to wait, because our straight-faced protagonist completely forgot about his perfect other Luna, per his goofy friend that shows up, and now they’ve all got to run to the shrine to make it to singing practise. Luna is a young girl with blue hair and an excellent singing voice, one that might just be key to the events that unfold not long after…
Silver Star’s story is one that’s played straight. It is a game where the protagonist decides he needs to go on an adventure, his parents are okay with it, and his friends all agree to leave their dainty little town to find the dragons that watch over their planet. And after the some twenty-hour adventure that unfolds, I can safely say that I do not like this game at all. LUNAR Silver Star is a boring game, one where its characters never develop, and its gameplay can be auto’d across nearly all of its runtime.
I’m not keen on turning this review into a thesis paper (and usually I’d be covering gameplay at this point of a review), but Silver Star’s narrative was poor enough that I’m compelled to jump right in and throw its entire script into a paper shredder. Our hero Alex starts off as a character that might have an active voice in the story, being voiced in the opening cutscene and some other one-off dialogues. But after that? He goes mute, save for some non-impacting story choices players can make.
From the beginning all the way to the end, I don’t think I ever knew who this kid was beyond “I want to be the Dragonmaster” and screaming Luna’s name enough times that he might contend with a certain high schooler’s obsession with “Inuyasha“. The kid’s a snore and the rest of the cast fairs no better, getting stuck in their little love pairings and one-sided conflicts.
This of course, trickles down to the plot beats, which seem to serve more as an excuse to lead up to short but beautifully animated 2D cutscenes. LUNAR’s got plenty of these cutscenes across both games and I could see the appeal for its time, particularly as FMV games were aplenty on PC at this point. Poor story execution is what I think Silver Star suffers from and honestly, it might have made for a better anime than a game.
In stark contrast to the first, ‘LUNAR: Eternal Blue Complete’ is a more enjoyable game. Here, Hiro and his floating pink cat-thing Ruby take centre stage both as active protagonists and just all around being better charmers. Taking players hundreds of years after the first game, our young man meets a young-looking woman by the name of Lucia, who has come to their planet because evil incarnate Zophar has been awakened. She gets zapped of her power and, though weak, she’s not giving up on her goal of talking to the goddess Althena, who has apparently made her presence known to the people of Lunar. Voice acting is more prominent here and cutscenes last much longer, which treats players to beautifully rendered hand-drawn animation.
I found the sense of adventure here to be much more localised compared to the first, which uses text to guide the player around its game world in a way that felt more mechanical than organic to its setting. Plus, Hiro doesn’t stop talking after the first thirty minutes of the game! Though I do want to note that one thing I liked about these games is how dialogue would change between NPCs depending on who you had in your party. That’s a cool thing to see considering plenty of games that would launch years later still don’t do something like this. It encouraged me to visit previous towns to see what was up and what their people were thinking of the games’ current events.
Small word of warning: both games feature extensive flashing imagery, particularly the second game whose opening hours will flashbang you. Keep that in mind and prepare your eyes.
(GungHo Online Entertainement)
Two-sided Moon
Both LUNAR games are turn-based role-playing games, where the player either chooses to “control” characters manually, dictating attack and defence commands, or they could instead have characters play out their fights through “auto-battling”. In essence, tactics you’ve set up will play out and your cast will defeat enemies while you alt-tab away or grab something to drink. And both titles will have you use this mode extensively to quickly clear out enemies (aided in part by the remaster’s fast-forward feature, a godsend!), because while neither games have random battles (hurray!), map design in both leads to forced battles anyway as you contend with tiny paths and enemies that relentlessly pursue the player (pain).
Combat isn’t difficult at all. As long as you prepare beforehand, buying equipment and the like, you can breeze through major story points with ease. Particularly with Silver Star, which is so easy you can complete the vast majority of the game without ever taking direct control of your cast. I spent most of my time in the first game doing anything but looking at the combat screen (and if I have to hear Nash scream “check this out!” one more time…). Even major fights were bested by the game’s auto-battling system and, if I did fail, all it took was a bit of healing and positioning re-arrangement and I was right as rain.
Thankfully, Eternal Blue wasn’t going to let me just waltz through it with its auto-battling mechanic. I had to take control of Hiro and the cast more often here and I think that also helped me feel more engaged with Silver Star Story’s sequel, besides the first game’s questionable narrative beats and frustrating cast members.
Though my thoughts on Silver Star Story aren’t necessarily the best, LUNAR 2: Eternal Blue does a lot of heavy lifting as the remaster work does for me. Both games’ Remastered modes have had a lot of care put into them to make them look good on modern display, as best as you can get when working with native code really. LUNAR Remastered Collection is a set of games I think can be enjoyed by anybody, particularly those who have a love for old-school, adventure-focused anime and JRPGs alike. ∎
I think I might just go back and finish up a bunch of old shows I’ve left to the wayside. Maybe.
LUNAR Remastered Collection
Played on
Windows 11 PC/Xbox Series X
PROS
- Solid remaster with cleaner visuals and audio.
- Graphics for both games look great, especially the anime FMVs.
- LUNAR 2: Eternal Blue is enjoyable!
CONS
- LUNAR: Silver Star Story is a slog. Story and gameplay alike.
