The Let's Play Archive

Lunar: Dragon Song

by Camel Pimp

Part 26

Camel Pimp posted:

I have to wonder how many of the positive or semi-positive review Lunar DS got was simply because of the Lunar name attached to it. Hell, RPGfan's review just out and out says to buy it, no matter how crap it is, just so they'll make another Lunar game!

Still, seeing people defend the game is weird. You can find a surprising amount of people who do if you look. I've never really found a convincing counter-argument, though. Enjoy my favorite snippet from a GameFAQs review:

See, this is the thing that really depresses me about Dragon Song. My understanding from many of the guys who were working on the game is that they really wanted to revitalize the Lunar series. I mean, they went through the effort of seeking out the best people in the fandom with the most knowledge and clout about its lore and happenings to try and do it justice. Those aren't the actions of people who are being insincere. The first few conference talks with them they were very energetic and very forthcoming with what they had.

It was a good series with a fanbase tired of remakes. A new game would have breathed a whole lot of life into the series. But Ubisoft wanted to be first, they rushed there developers, made them change their plans, scrapped everything good, forced them to go with what was convenient. The game shows that endlessly moved goalposts and corner cutting everywhere.

Like I said, I've got a lot of, if not ALL of, the early storyboards here and what I'm mostly seeing at the head of it all is wistful musing about Vane's creation and the Vile Tribe. I have to, however, accept some minor guilt for Iggy. I did a lot of posting and snarky talk about how there was nothing that said the Dragonmaster had to be good. I'm sure those ideas reached the designers somehow.

Gabi is awesome and she could have been so much worse! Especially considering this game is terrible. Example: You can see in this game that Rufus and her had something going on and that something is kinda implied to be romantic in nature but it was never really built in the game. Now imagine instead of the reaction she has that instead her reaction was to completely break down into a sobbing inconsolable wreck (like Bella from Twilight) and be utterly useless. And that this would have the effect of her losing faith in herself and make her unable to use her techniques. Wouldn't that be terrible? I'm so glad something like that didn't happen because it very well could have.