Review: Lunar: Dragon Song

Lunar: Dragon Song is a game for the Nintendo DS, published (on this side of the pond) by Ubisoft in 2005. It was (I think) the first RPG published for the then still-new handheld system.

Certainly from a blind, objective standpoint, Lunar DS is not the worst console role-playing game ever. (That honor probably goes to Hoshi wo Miru Hito.) But Lunar DS had twenty-five years (counting from the 1979 release of Temple of Apshai) to learn from the mistakes and foolishness of its predecessors — and it was released into a market and to a population that had also had those twenty-five years to learn what was and was not a quality RPG.

Lunar DS is only the second console RPG* I have put down unfinished knowing that I will nonetheless never return to it. (The first, Legend of Dragoon, was a rental.) It is objectively the single worst game that I own a physical copy of — including the infamous Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man, which contributed measurably to the video game crash of 1983.

... I had what I thought was a nice rant going, but this guy leaves me in the dust, so there you go. It's also pretty informative, but it does miss a few points that are worth covering.

First: some enemies can break or steal your equipment. No, really. Not bosses, either; just random enemies.

Second: the enemies' level, bosses and normals alike, matches yours. This means that fights never get any easier — and in fact get harder; the only way to counter this is better equipment. (See above.)

Third: ....

One other thing that's neither positive nor negative, but just is, is the fact that the game is almost entirely playable without use of the buttons or control pad: you can do very nearly everything one-handed wielding a stylus. This includes such amusing absurdities as blowing into the microphone being the buttonless 'Escape' command. Curiously, the only thing you absolutely can't do is talk to NPCs.

So, yeah. If you happen to see Lunar: Dragon Song for sale in the clearance bin, and you enjoyed Lunar: Silver Star Story and Lunar: Eternal Blue... just content yourself with fond memories of those, and walk on by.

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* One could dispute whether the DS qualifies as a console, but it doesn't seem very useful to classify DS RPGs separately from other console RPGs.