I Was on the Back of a Nightingale (Day 315)

Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete is, like its immediate predecessor, Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, a remake of a Sega CD game which I have not played. According to what I've read, the improvements on the game are numerous. Full Motion Video scenes have been extended and graphical quality has improved. The graphics in this remake look dated by today's standards, of course, but I still find them quite pleasing--and considering the number of old RPGs I play, I'm more than accustomed to 2D graphics.

Right away, Lunar 2 forces you to engage in an epic battle with insects

 For the most part, the mechanics in Lunar 2 adhere closely to standard old school Japanese RPG tradition. Like only a few others, the first two Lunar games allow you to field a party of five characters, a trend that I wish was more common in RPGs of the time. I always really enjoyed having five characters in my party in Final Fantasy IV and I always wondered why Squaresoft didn't continue the trend. In the case of Lunar 2, having five party members is interesting because of the way formation works. The player's side of the field is essentially an invisible grid--much like some of the earlier Tales games. In this case, combat is still very turn-based, but your characters' positions in relation to your enemies affects how vulnerable you are to enemy attack and how far you have to travel if you must attack in melee.

Some characters have poor range, meaning they may not be able to move and attack in the same turn. Ronfar, the disgraced former priest turned gambler, is particularly short range, meaning that it can be a good idea to place him closer to the front row. However, he also serves as the party's primary healer, so it's important to keep him safe for boss battles. Following in the tradition of more Western RPGs, Ronfar assumes the role of a sort of battle cleric, wielding maces for decent physical damage. It is up to the player whether Ronfar is used more physically or defensively.

Jean is one of my favorites

Each character has access to a variety of unique spells and/or attacks. The protagonist, Hiro, learns sword skills and wind-elemental magic, whereas Jean learns dances that inflict status ailments. The success rate of these ailments depend entirely upon the enemy in question. The developers were kind enough to include an indicator that lets you know just how likely a certain ailment is to land. Some enemies might be susceptible to Sleep whereas others could more easily be poisoned. Jean is a dancer who was kidnapped as a child and taught a deadly martial art--which she of course later swore not to use to hurt others. It's a pretty common mishmash of tropes, but I feel it's done fairly well in this game.

Brains? Brains, right?

There's nothing particularly original about the characters in Lunar 2, but I feel they're reasonably well-written

and likable. The dialogue is often pretty entertaining to read, too, which is saying something. In most JRPGs like this, reading dialogue is a very tedious process. The Tales series is pretty bad about this; I often have to resist the urge to skip the dialogue completely and get on to the entertaining combat system. In Lunar 2, I may not always be enraptured by conversations the characters are having, but I seldom feel the urge to skip.

Lunar 2 is also a reasonably challenging game. I'm only about halfway through (as far as I can tell), and I've already had to reset on a couple of different bosses. If I search my memories, I can just barely recall that Silver Star Story Complete was similarly challenging, particularly in the case of the final boss. I'm not sure if it's true here, but in that game, bosses scaled with the level of your party, making it impossible to power level to defeat them. I really enjoy this mechanic because it requires you to think about strategy when it comes to bosses, regardless of how much time you spend cheesing out levels.

Ruby can see your true intentions

Overall, Lunar 2 is a really cool game and a great way to kick off a marathon of uncompleted games, if that is indeed what I'm doing here. I still haven't decided if that's really what I'm going to do. It's going to depend highly on how I feel after I complete this one. If I jump right into another game and feel like I'm making progress, I think we'll have a genuine marathon on our hands. We'll just have to see how it goes.