A mostly-lame list of blog-related things I’d like to execute when I get some time.
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I’ve played Lunar: Dragon Song for roughly two hours now, finishing the first delivery. Speaking as a Lunar fan, it’s pretty good. Speaking as a critical fan of RPGs, it’s pretty average. I really wanted it to be much better, but it’s okay as it is.

Let’s organize this critique.

Pros:

• It has touchscreen controls, making menus a little more tolerable.
• It has spiffy character designs, an enjoyable story, and a lot of personality, as far as I can tell. This is a pretty big point for me.
• You can make the battles go faster, like you would if you were playing a game on an emulator and wanted to speed up a rather boring section of a game.
• It has an interesting departure from the normal RPG level up/item system. Playing in one mode or the other changes your strategy markedly.

Cons:

• The touchscreen controls are a tad inconsistent. The menus are a little unnecessarily confusing. Plus, trying to navigate a “walking around” area with the touchscreen is not intuitive or easy to do.
• The fact that you have the option of speeding a battle along is like admitting that your battles are boring. In fact, boring battles have been the bane of the Lunar franchise. It’s like they’re using an old, pre-FFIV attitude towards combat. A little bit of originality would help a lot.
• The dual system dosen’t seem to make sense at first, and it’s a little hard to get into. You can either get items or get experience from a battle, but not both. Boss battles only give items, no exp.

I can get over those things and enjoy the game. But, for my last list…

WTFs:

• There’s a walk-faster button, but using it drains your HP. It makes sense on a map with monsters, because you should be able to avoid enemy encounters at a small price. It does not, however, make sense to do this on a town map, because there shouldn’t be any penalty for moving faster.
• Battle sprites were drawn at a small size and scaled out a little when characters are in the foreground. This makes them look nastily blocky, and detracts from the otherwise good art.

I’ll keep my blog updated if my feelings on any of these things change. I’m convinced that one flawlessly-executed Lunar game could redeem the series and bring it out of the dark woods of fanboy-only praise. It’s got so many good things going on, but minor concerns always dog it. Next time you wanna release a Lunar game, GameArts, run it by me first, k? Kisses.