When I was a small child, I remember seeing a game at my cousin's house. He has just got his Sega CD and he was very excited to show it off... he put in a disk labeled Lunar and I was instantly intrigued. Years later I would walk into my local GameStop, see a poster advertising the newest chapter of this epic saga, Lunar: Dragon Song (thank you Nintendo, your consistency in naming gimmicks is without par). Little did I know it, but what lay in wait, in such a tiny cartridge, would be the worst gaming experience of all time.
Typically, when revisiting a serious from my youth (or any game for that manner) I try to take it with a grain of salt since I tend to overestimate my expectations or embellish my memories. Ripping the cellophane of with gusto, my already empty DS was waiting. I snapped in the cartridge and booted up my handheld.
At the loading screen I would be reminded of the subtitle, Dragon Song, yet I would never make it to the point to figure out or understand it. Within the first… oh I don’t know… 4 minutes of playing the game, I was already set upon by the rage monster. The story was ok, typical slow start for any RPG, but once combat was introduced it was a downhill ride on a greased slope.
The combat was so sluggish, the developers added the ability to speed it up by holding L and R shoulder buttons… but even with this modifier the combat was still unbearably slow. After wading my way through a few encounters (read: hours later) I made it to the second town. I was instantly greeted with the copy-paste town style that is common in the pokemon games, but unlike the pokemon games, there was no redeeming gameplay inbetween.
Not to mention actually getting to another area was nothing more than the game trolling you. You could run in this game, but at the cost of health… so by the time you got to a boss, or were nearly there (and were desperately trying to make up for lost time from the hellacious combat system) you would encounter an enemy and be all but dead.
Honestly, even thinking about this experience is making my head hurt, and blood surge. It’s a bit too early in the morning to be revisiting such a shitty game. Take a gander at this review if you wish to read on:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/ds/925564-lunar ... view-98455
I assure you, this fine gentleman is spot on.