Part 1: Starting On a Promising Note

Chapter 1: Starting On a Promising Note



What am I doing to myself?



Why am I doing this to myself?






Althena's magical power gave moisture to the earth and transformed the desert of death into a lush paradise. The world became aware of life, and embraced it. This reborn planet became the home of countless people, living under the watchful gaze and blessed by the Goddess Althena. The Dragonmaster vowed eternal loyalty to the Goddess, and was appointed as Master of the Four Dragons to protect the harmony of the world.


And mirroring them, the 'Humans'. Blessed with intellect and the ability to use complex tools, but with smaller, weaker bodies. As time passed... the relationship between these two races began to lean in the favor of the 'Beastmen'. The dynamic 'Beastmen' built a magnificent castle and lived a luxurious, rich lifestyle. The 'Humans', desiring quieter surroundings, moved away from the cities. These opposing lifestyles placed reasonable distance between the two races, creating a balance and ultimately aiding the maintenance of lasting peace.





...there is no script dump of this game online. Oh goodie...

But yeah, you may have already noticed a few things. First off, instead of a voiced cutscene or an exciting intro, we get a static, rambling text dump explaining the backstory. Get used to that; there are no animated cutscenes or voice acting in this game.

Keep in mind, Lunar was famous in the day for having cutscenes and voice acting back when that was rare.



And now we begin with the most original of JRPG intros.



I can't necessarily say that this game looks good, especially since the visual design is so bland, but there are some nice animations and decent touches here and there. It's not terrible to look at. I might as well get that out of the way because that's one of the few nice things I will ever say about this game.


But that's all part of the fun! I love acrobatics and standing on my head, and I do have quite a soft spot for Lucia... maybe!

You know how Lunar games were also known for their translations? Yeah. Working Designs no longer existed by this point, and even if they did they wouldn't touch this, so instead this translation was handled by Ubisoft. They... clearly didn't care much about it, as I think you can tell by now. (Although it's obvious the source material wasn't Shakespeare.)

And yes, we do appear to have a female lead named Lucia. I'm going to tell you now: no, not the same one. For those of you who don't know, Lunar 2 also has a heroine called Lucia. In Japanese their names are not exactly the same, but they're damn similar. Eternal Blue's Lucia is ルーシア (Ruushia) and Dragon Song's Lucia is ルシア (Rushia). Yup, totally different names.



And now we gain control.



First off, the status screen we get on the bottom is kind of confusing at first glance. Most of it is unimportant right now, but two things to note is the button to pull up the menu (which you can also pull up with X) and a party chat function, represented by the banner with the two heads (it can also be toggled with the Y button.) Frankly, party chat usually just exists to remind you where to go, and it's rarely interesting. I'll show it off when it is.

We'll get into the nitty-gritty a bit later. For now, we'll just walk around and gather info.



There's an unassuming umbrella in the room that we can check out for some text. Also, it's one of the few bits of backstory we've gotten for our protagonist.



By the way, Lucia and Jian here are apparently living in a hotel rather than a house or something. Why is not explained. I can't imagine it's economically optimal.









Unlike previous Lunar games, NPC dialogue isn't... particularly... good.


And if you're looking for Lucia, she already left.

But we have to talk to them. If we don't talk to this guy, we'll never find her. Not that this is obvious. It's like Lunar 1 all over again.



Lunar Dragon Song does not allow you to explore towns freely, but instead just has you select locations from a list. Not only is this lazy, it's oddly clunky. The D pad will move you on the map on the top screen, but you can't easily tell what building is what until you move onto the square. You can also move to locations via the list on the bottom, but it only gives four areas at a time and there are almost always more than four on the screen. You can't shuffle through the list with any of the buttons; however, if you look carefully, there are three tabs above the list. You scroll through the list by tapping those tabs. I actually just realized this as I wrote this update. It's not the most intuitive set-up.




One of my worst nightmares come true! I cannot take much more of this!

Not much to say about the town, other than to confirm that, yes, one of the major thrusts of the plot will be ~~fantasy racism~~, one of my favorite JRPG tropes.





But at least occasionally this game can still make me laugh.



To progress, we need to find Jack at, coincidentally, Jack's house to finally trigger Lucia to show up. If you haven't talked to the innkeeper guy, Jack will point you to him. And when do you do speak to the innkeeper (I guess that's who he is?), you have to go back to speak to Jack because she will not show up until you see this message.

No, scratch that, this is worse than any of the stupid dialogue trigger chains in Lunar 1.



You remember because somebody told you numbnuts.



Fade to black.

Come on...



Yeah, the graphic of Lucia (yes you know it's her don't play dumb) is one of those DS effects that looks OK on an actual DS but odd on a computer. Sorry.


Oh, Jian, honestly... Will you ever be able to wake up at a reasonable time?
Sorry...
I told you yesterday, didn't I? We have to take this package to Perit Village today, remember?
Of course I remember... No need to get so worked up about it! Your cute face will get all wrinkled if you don't watch out.


Ah, of course. You don't like being outside at night, do you?
I think that's perfectly reasonable! Anyway, forget that for now... We had better get over to Gad's Express and pick up that package! We must not delay this delivery any longer!
Just calm down, Lucia. Take a deep breath. Seriously, you really do worry too much! That package isn't going to up and run off!
Enough talk, already! Especially if you have nothing nice to say. Come on, let's go!

Now that's we've got a second party member, let's actually take a look at the menu.



The menu is fairly typical stuff.





First off, our characters' stats. Jian's a little different from most Lunar heroes, since he doesn't wield swords. Also Lucia uses umbrellas as weapons.

Hm, Jian doesn't have full HP. That's odd.



So Lucia's a healer. In addition to Healing Water, Lucia also gets Escape, which costs 5 MP, and Cure Squall, which makes FF8 tolerable. Er, it cures status ailments for one ally and costs 8 MP. I'm mentioning MP cost because holy shit look at those MP costs. Lucia can cast her healing spell once before running out of MP.



We start with 10 Healing Gums, our basic HP restoring item, and 4 Mental Gums, for MP restoration, so we're okay for healing without Lucia's spells. This still raises the question of why give us a mage who can't cast her spells.

The only function on the menu we can't do anything with yet is Job, but what that does probably isn't too hard to guess.



If Lunar DS has learned nothing from its predecessors, it at the very least gives you unlimited ability to save.



The town square has a Statue of Althena. It does the same thing as the statues do in every Lunar game past the first: full heal. That does remind me, though: why didn't Jian have full HP? Seems a bit odd, doesn't it?

There's an answer to that. If you press start, the game displays some hints.





Ah, there we go. This, right here, is one of the most infamous, loathed features of this game. Running costs HP. Let me repeat: Running. Costs. HP.

There is a reason (sort of) why this is in place. Now, in pretty much all the Lunar games from the remakes onward have visible enemies rather than random encounters. This is true here, as well. Running costs HP to discourage you from running past all the enemies. Now this still a bad idea, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue had limited dash in dungeons which worked just fine, but it's a still a reason. Here's the thing, though: running drains HP all the time. Even in towns, which is why Jian doesn't have full HP. At least in the Lunar 2 remake your walking speed was faster whenever there wasn't enemies on screen.

And how fast do you walk normally?



You wanna go faster than that? Prepare to consume HP.

In all fairness, you don't drop HP that quickly, like once every two seconds. But the thing is, you'll wanna run everywhere, because you're so damned slow. If are running all the time, you'll run out of HP pretty quickly. And as the screen mentioned, at less than 1/3 HP you can't run anymore. At least they don't let you run yourself to death.

I guess not being able to freely walk around town is a mercy.



Enough harping that aspect of the game's shittiness, let's move onto another aspect (which is also shitty, but that's not readily apparent.)





Gad's Express will later offer jobs we can take on for money, but at this moment all we have is the plot-relevant one.


That means we'll have to go through the Thieves' Woods, though... do you think our current gear is up for it?

Lucia helpfully reminds you to check out the shops before you go.



Not that you can afford much of anything. The two cheapest items we already start with, and with the exception of the sneakers everything is out of our price range.



The armor shop is even worse. Again, the two cheapest items we already have. The only new thing we can buy are the sneakers, so that's what I get.

All right, guess I've put it off long enough. To the Thieves' Woods we go.



Like with the towns, there is no real "world map", instead we just select locations.



All right, dungeon time.



Right away we're perplexed with a blue chest we can't open. If you try, it doesn't open and no message displays. Fortunately, the game does provide a new set of hints if you press start.



Oookay, so here's another universally reviled mechanic. (The game front-ends its shittiness.) Althena Conduct(s?) is just another term for experience. So what this means is that you can't get experience and items in one battles, it's one or the other. It's as annoying as it sounds.

Believe it or not, you generally never want to be on Virtue Mode unless there is a blue chest. But because of that, we're going on Virtue Mode. Here's where the stopwatch (or... "clock&check") comes in. Basically once you kill a monster you've got about a minute to kill another before one revives. Defeating a monster always resets the timer. Kill all the monsters in time and you get the reward.



To toggle Virtue Mode on and off, you tap that little picture of Jian, or you can press R. When Virtue Mode is on, it shines.



By the way, there are regular chests lying around, too.






Its worse than bad! Jian, what should we do? If Gad finds out about this... Our careers are finished!
Fired, for sure.
How can you be so calm? Get with it, Jian! If we don't get that package back...
I'm with it, I'm with it! Ok, so, we can't go back to Port Searis. Then let's try Perit Village. Ask around, see what we can learn.
Yeah, that sounds good... but... one thing... We can't let anyone know what has happened! If this gets out, our reputations are finished!
Yes, yes, I know. You really do worry too much, you know!

And the thrilling plot thickens.



All right, now that's out of the way, let's discuss combat.



You know how I said the game wasn't awful to look at? I have to amend that. Yes, the characters do in fact look that badly scaled in game.



Battles are very simple. You do run with the mic, which is an odd choice. This also means you can accidentally run if there's enough noise going on around you, as once happened to me on the bus.



But yes, quite simple. Fight, magic, item. So simple as a matter of fact, that you can't choose which target you attack. The game chooses for you, and for the most part everyone will attack the same monster.



And here's the fun part: nearly action everyone ally or monster makes is accompanied by a "dramatic" camera rotation.



Note that Jian has a three hit combo. But he doesn't have three attacks; in other Lunar games characters with multiple attacks will target another monster if the first one dies before the character runs out of attacks. Not the case here. He will only ever target one monster a round.

I haven't read these interviews myself, but the article on Lunar DS on Hardgaming101's Kusoge column says that the developers decided not allow you to choose your target to speed up battles. I doubt it would have made the battles any slower than they already are. Still, the inability to choose a target, you can't even choose an enemy group like in old Dragon Quest games, is utterly baffling. One of the aims of the game was to update Lunar's gameplay, but this choice makes the gameplay feel older than even the first Lunar.



I suppose it doesn't matter, since Lucia is completely inept at physical combat. And no, she doesn't get a multi-part combo. The fact that she has no MP to do anything, and no offensive spells, makes her dead weight. Jian at least one-shots enemies at this point, even if one of his three attacks misses, making the Sneakers a decent investment. Anything that makes this go faster.

In the end, there is no reason to do anything else but put the battles on auto and occasionally heal out of battle when you need to. In a small mercy, the R/L buttons will speed up combat for you, but I have to say I'm still glad for the fast forward option on emulators. It's going to get used a lot.



We don't really want to level up, but it's unavoidable. Lucia at least gets some MP, so now she can cast her healing spell twice. Woo. She gets a spell, Quick, which is 20 MP (meaning she can cast it exactly once) and increases speed of all allies. However, I'm not sure if she got it on level 2 or level 3 because the game does not tell you.



One unpleasant bit about clearing out monsters on Virtue is that if you can't find where one of the monsters are, you're a bit shit out of luck. What happened, I imagine, is that one of the monsters spawned after the monkey mob stole the package. No monsters spawn before you cross the bridge, but I guess one spawns immediately after, while the rest spawn further up. The point is, now you have to dash over to find what you missed, and with the whole running takes HP this is a task made harder than it should be. Now the game is actually rather forgiving about this; if you exit this screen, but remain in the dungeon, if you come back the timer remains how it was. Moreover, if you run out of time only one check is removed and one monster respawns, although it's not like the game will tell you where the new enemy spawned in. In the end, I actually reset and did this again.



In any case, I eventually managed to beat all the enemies, get the chest, and reached level 4. Lucia got another spell, Grand Weapon, which increases attack for all allies and, again, she barely has MP for.

Well, whatever. What's in the chest?



A weapon that's worse than the one I bought earlier.



Oh right we're searching for thieves. The fact that there are locations listed here that we don't have to go to might key you in that we'll be back in these woods. Yay.

But let's just get to the stupid village. Next screen.



So a monster confused Lucia. At first I didn't understand what was going on, as it didn't seem to effect anything, but confusion doesn't do what you think it does. Instead, confusion makes the character occasionally skip their turn. Thankfully, only Lucia ever got confused in this dungeon. Who cares.



I switched from Virtue Mode to Combat Mode, as you can see from the fact we're getting items and not experience. One thing to note is that we never get money, not directly. You might be wondering how we get money. The answer is actually more complicated than "sell stuff" and... well, you'll see later.

So what items did we get?



Other than the dried grass, which is vendor/delivery trash, we got three cards. Cards are the method by which we break the game. We got Shreeker, pictured above, as well as Gloomwing, which recovers MP on the map for a brief period, and Bealzebub (and yes, that's how it's spelled. Poor Beez gets no respect), which guarantees that an attack will hit. More accurately, it increases accuracy. The faulty translation sometimes makes it hard to tell what the cards do.



Unlike Virtue Mode, there is no timer. Enemies just respawn over time, no matter what. So there's no point in hunting everyone down. Just pass through.



We're going to be coming back here a lot, aren't we? But, hey, a Lunar-related thing! That's promising at least.

Yeah, and that's all there really is to say about that. There's two more chests with Healing Gum and I got some more vendor trash. That's about it.



As you can see, there's only two locations listed here: the one we came from, and a new one. The world map in this game doesn't just let us go to any location we've been to before, so if when we return to Port Searis, we gotta run through the Thieves' Woods.



All right, new village.



We can't do anything with Gad's Express here, obviously.


The legendary giant has awoken! Oh my! Spewing fire, red eyes aflame... he's coming to eat us all. I know it!

Uh, okay.


Well... odd things have been happening there recently.
Odd things...? Actually, just now, we did...
Jian?! Yes! Right! We did! We did... make it safely through!
Well, that's good to hear. You're quite a... lively girl, aren't you?
I shall take that as a compliment.
As it was intended, I assure you. If you want to know more, anyway, ask the village head. He lives in the biggest house in the village.

I think this was supposed to be humorous but the jury seemed to be out on that one.

Anyway, we're supposed to find the "biggest house in town." Only one house has a "1F" after it, so I guess it's that one.



Yup. The game wastes no time in shoving us right back into the Thieves Woods.



Before we go, let's look at the weapons and armor. It's even more unaffordable. There's an upgrade we can buy for Lucia in armor, though.



Or we can buy a weapon upgrade for her. You'd think this would be a good idea, since her attack power is so low, but since you can't choose your target, all of your characters will attack the same target, Jian one-shots everything, and this new umbrella will not let Lucia one-shot enemies, buying Lucia a new weapon is pointless right now. Or possibly ever.

Also, that claw is a weapon that none of the characters can equip. How odd.



Oh there's a field. There's absolutely nothing here. Woo.

All right, that's all we do in town. Next time, the Thieves Woods. Again.