mavjs

Lately, I've been on a retro kick and playing 16 and 32-bit games that I never had an opportunity to play when they were new, and because the SNES was the only system I didn't own growing up, Chrono Trigger has always been top on my list. I bought it for the PSX ten years ago but those menu load times... At any rate, I was really excited to finally play it due to being universally praised as one of the best if not the best RPG's ever. I was disappointed and in fact, I think this may just be the most overrated game of all time. The combat is the best aspect of CT by far. Fun and completely unique at the time, I wish there had been more games modeled after it because I very much enjoyed it even now, and I never felt bored due to the combat. There are techniques to unlock and combine, and the strategy introduced by deciding to wait and use 2 or 3 allies for a skill is a lot of fun. The fact that this was the first game where combat was on the main map is very cool and works great. Secondly, the graphics are beautiful, and still perfectly acceptable and playable now in 2013. I remember back then seeing pictures of Chrono on the bridge and thinking about how incredible the game looked. The variety of animations for each attack and technique really go a long way towards making things feel fun and fresh. The colors are bright and the spells are impressive. The music was very good for the most part. I know a lot of people say the music is incredible and for a cartridge it probably was, but I'm spoiled by even earlier games on the Sega CD that had truly fantastic music, specifically the LUNAR series. Still, CT's music was pleasant, I enjoyed it, and it got the job done. The several side-quests and how they change the future are cool and interestingly done. Personally I don't think there was enough change at certain points in time, and while I won't hold that specifically against the game, this leads me to the bad... The premise of the plot was good, however, I find that the ball was dropped here in execution... again because of the lack of depth and HORRIBLE pacing. The story is very simple, and virtually everything in the first ten hours of the game progress through happenstance. The problem with that? The game is only 20 hours long!! This is by far the shortest RPG I've ever played and from one plot point to the next, the story moves along with very little discussion or explanation, major plot points are explained and over with nothing more than a sentence or two. Less time is dedicated to major story quests than most games side quests, and you just kind of stumble into things where nothing in the story has any weight because it's all over and done so quickly. While I generally thought the characters were alright, the issue with the story is represented in them as well. I would like to have loved the characters, I really would. In the end I just know so little about them though. Everyone has so little to say and at any opportunity to express anything, discuss story, or get to know them at all, it's over in a couple of sentences, they're just so flat with little meaningful dialog between themselves and anybody else in the game world. This leaves me with no particular love or interest with anybody from the game. I honestly don't understand why this game would have been so highly regarded. It had tremendous potential, to be sure, but it never really got off the ground. Given the length alone I would have never spent money on something so short, and yes, I played through to the end of the game on my first playthrough. The extra endings are fun to see and can add some replay value, but the game is so short, and the story so thin that playing again and again would be very repetitive. Besides that, a lot of the endings don't really add a lot or tell only part of the story, and some are accessible after very little time. I won't get into the lack of variety in the area's and how strange a decision it was to not make legitimate towns with everything accessible on the over world but oh well. Anyway, I think my score is generous, I wish there had been more to experience.

I'm rating this in combination of both this game and the original game on the Sega CD since there is no Sega CD version available to be rated. First of all, make no mistake that LUNAR, is one of the greatest JRPGs of all time. Working Designs' translation goes a long way to ensure that. The quality of their writing is far FAR superior to other highly rated JRPG's of that time, and the competition doesn't even come close in all honesty. The gameplay and combat is pretty typical for it's time, but is superior to games like Final Fantasy 6 due to the strategic element of having distance that is actually traversed during battle, as well as your entire party in combat at all times. The music is also characteristically fantastic, due to the quality of the original Sega CDs capability. What really makes the game though, is the strength of the characters and their likability. Virtually everyone in the game has an amusing and memorable personality, and the villain is the greatest of all time. It really is too bad that the original game came out for Sega CD because it had such a small base, but it could not have been done on another system at that time. By the time it was reworked for PSX, LUNAR was graphically dated and unfortunately never got the praise that it highly deserved as one of the best RPG's of all time.

What could have been a terrific game is all but ruined by the fact that it is unfinished in both presentation and execution. The story's premise has promise and is very intricate, but so poorly translated that it turns everything said into a joke, and as such, the poor translation is my biggest gripe. Virtually every other line is at best poorly written and awkward, with dialog that is strange and unnatural. This is very jarring especially in situations with certain characters that should sound intelligent or domineering, yet they just come across sounding like idiots or children. Now at worst, the grammar and punctuation is simply wrong, and this makes it apparent that the game is unfinished. Many times I actually had more fun laughing at the errors than reading the dialog. It's bad. On top of that, the plot is crammed full of elements that only serve to prolong the story unnecessarily, with many interactions being incredibly verbose, repeating things that have been said already and making characters seem stupid. That goes to the poor translation I suppose. Speaking of unfinished. The game is unfinished. The entire second disk is entirely changed in presentation and told like a story rather than played, which is all well and good because if it were like the rest of the game, it would be another 40 hours and to be honest it was dragging on given the games other deficiencies. What is good about it? I think that the game was ambitious, and had an interesting premise for a plot. The graphics are crisp and hold up even today. The music has several tracks that I really liked as well. I recently replayed Xenogears in it's entirety because I didn't finish at a kid, however it unfortunately proved painful to get through. There are plenty of other games from that era and even earlier that are still terrific and I can definitely enjoy playing again and again, but this isn't one of them.

Do you love JRPG's? DId you ever? Then play this. Consider that this game came out in 1994 for the Sega CD, so you probably never heard of it back then. At that time, this game had an hour and a half of full anime style animation, and an hour and a half of spoken dialog, six years and two generations earlier than the juggernaut Final Fantasy had it's first spoken dialog. It's too bad that the original came out for Sega CD because by the time it was reworked for PSX, LUNAR was graphically dated and didn't get the praise that it highly deserved as one of the best RPG series of all time. Why is that? Well, it's the writing and the likeable characters that do it for me. Working Designs put great care into their translations, and they were leagues better than the competition at that time, with none of that awkward stuff common in 1990's JRPG's. That, combined with a far bigger adventure than the first LUNAR, make it an incredible journey and game. The music of the series is also incredible, and I still have it on my computer. Check out Star Dragon Theme and compare it to the quality of other games of the 16/32-bit era. If you can still play through games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, or any other of those classic JRPG's, I highly recommend the Sega CD or PSX version of LUNAR Eternal Blue.

One of my favorite games of all time and of that 16-bit era, Shining Force 2 improves in every way over the original, which I also love. It has beautiful graphics for the time and honestly they still hold up today. The battle system is fun and engaging, and there are plenty of secrets to keep you playing. I Highly recommend it highly if you like JRPGs, Strategy RPGs, or just good games in general.

An incredible game, especially when you consider the story from start to finish as an epic complete trilogy. The story and dialog are fantastic. Combat is deep and fun. The lore of each and every item you find really adds a lot of depth to the world. The quantity and quality of characters make each replay a different experience. It goes on and on. There's so much in this game that is done so well, and few games can claim to come close.