Having a cost or penalty for skipping encounters is an ok idea. I can see how they thought making it deal damage is reasonable. They just completely failed to account for how annoying it would be to only walk everywhere.
They made 2 lists. The "good idea" and "terrible idea" list. After the meeting where they created the lists, the lead game dev told his assistant "take the list to the team" and the assistant grabbed the wrong list.
@asra-5180 yes but many got away with just having touch screen menu controls or a moveable map. This is just a little bit obtuse in the already massive obtuse pile.
There’s a theory that they INTENTIONALLY grabbed the “terrible idea” list. Game Arts was furious at the original LUNAR devs (Studio Alex), and wanted to tarnish their legacy even after suing them out of existence in 2003.
Funny thing is that flyann didn't even cover the gammut. 1. Battles are DOG slow. They're so slow the game comes with 2x and 3x options and neither makes up the difference. 2. Your main character literally does like 60% of the party's damage every round, because he attacks 3 times. If he dies, you might as well give up 'til you get him back. 3. When you finally get a healing spell, it uses up 10 MP. Your healer has 30. Basically makes the spell worthless 2-3 minutes into every dungeon. 4. They KNOW the battle and healing balance is terrible because finishing the enemies on every dungeon floor restores your HP and MP. 5. It's not even "EXP or Money", it's "EXP or items that are worth basically nothing if you don't partake in the game's courier system, which basically requires you to have an open fucking wiki page to use", and the cost of new weapons and armor increases EXPONENTIALLY throughout the game. Seriously, it's insane how quickly equipment prices ramp up. 6. You don't even get to fight the last fucking boss. Instead his second in command fights you... THREE TIMES, getting bigger and more tedious to fight each time. And then the boss just kinda kills himself. Yes, I'm spoiling this. Please don't blow 20 hours on this goddamn game.
Played this years ago and I definitely remember the stupid fetch quests, the even stupider "you can only get exp or item drops from battle" mechanic, and finishing the game saying "wait, is that it? The final boss just blows up his own castle and dies?" And also that part of the game where Jian loses his ability to attack 3 times until you complete a certain quest. That one was infuriating cause you couldn't even grind properly.
And here I thought that if they just removed the ass-backwards mechanics you'd at least still have a tolerable RPG. Instead it turns out all along it was just always a bad game.
I think it'd be a good mechanic for a darker rpg. One where everything is out to get you, and you'd need to choose between hurting yourself or escaping a brutal fight
I bought this game on the recommendation of a friend who thought it would be good because they liked the other Lunar games. For years I’ve wondered why this isn’t considered one of the worst games ever made. Some things you didn’t mention: - Equipment DOESN’T actually have durability, instead it has a chance to break randomly when certain enemies attack you. Equipment is so expensive and money is so hard to get that you just have to save after every single battle lest your armor break in the next encounter. - Selling items yields chump change. The real way you’re supposed to earn money is by filling “orders” for customers by collecting and turning in specific bundles of enemy drops. Every high-paying job requires rare drops to complete, and the drop rates are so low that it can take hours just to fill one order. - The battle animations are agonizingly slow. The developers seemed to realize this and made it so you could speed up battles by holding the right shoulder button, but you just end up holding it down for every single battle. My right shoulder button actually BROKE because of this game. - Enemy levels scale with your level. If you stay in the starting area and just fight monsters until you hit max level, they’ll still take the exact same number of hits to defeat as when you started. Once your healer learns all her spells, there’s no reason to ever level up again. - Enemies allegedly have elemental weaknesses, but every attack spell in the game is exactly the same: a target-all attack that kills every enemy unless they’re a boss. It would be a godsend actually, except you never have enough MP to cast more than four spells before running out. - The AI that determines which enemies you’ll target in battle doesn’t prioritize enemies that inflict status ailments, so you get poisoned constantly and there’s nothing you can do about it. - Spoiler: You never even get to defeat the primary antagonist. You fight him once in an unwinnable battle halfway through the game, and then never fight him again. The final boss is just his second-in-command. It was the perfect final insult after such an agonizing experience, to not even get the satisfaction of a rematch and a satisfying ending. They couldn’t even give you that. There should be a chapter about this game in every book on game design. It’s the most perfect representation of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. If they hadn’t tried to “innovate” so many RPG mechanics then it would have been a generic but passable game.
Save after every battle? You're joking, right? See, I did beat this game. Towards the end, I outright marathoned it, sort of--I did take breaks, but only ever putting my DS into sleep mode and whenever possible putting it on the charger. Why? _BECAUSE I'D SOMEHOW LOST THE ABILITY TO SAVE THE FUCKING GAME!_ I shit you not, the final...I don't know, maybe quarter of the game, I was unable to save. Just had to keep going.
This game feels like someone really wanted to make a game as "realistic as possible" which is almost always a mistake. Wanna go into battle? your armor needs maintenance. Wanna fix your armor? better find something good cuz the towns folk don't really need to buy your mushrooms and twigs, wanna go fast? well running makes you tired so say good-bye to your health. I'm surprised the game doesn't have taxes or something too.
First of all, it's a lighthearted fantasy game, it's never really going to be "realistic" as much as "there are elements of realism here". I think the problem here is that it's a terrible combination of things that artificially lengthen the experience and take away a lot of player agency. I don't have an issue with the elements they introduced (except no wealth *and* experience from battles at once, effectively doubling your grinding) in theory, it's that they also aren't especially well implemented.
Gosh, "makes you tired" is one thing but this is actively harmful. "Makes you tired" can be an interesting mechanic. The Zelda series has done it before, for instance (though those aren't RPGs you get my drift). But "does damage" is a different story altogether.
I’ll admit that the only ‘unique’ thing about this game, is getting to choose between receiving XP or Items after battle, but even then, I’d just prefer to have both given to me after winning a fight, regardless of item rarities
Persona 5 kindaaaa did something similar to this. Kindaaaa, after an interrogation you get to recruit, money, items or just cancel the interrogation and go for the kill for XP. You still get money, items or xp in different tiers/value depending on the choice
I just saw this video come up in my feed, and you need to hear this. I bought this game when I was a child, with birthday money, 4 months after MY MOM DIED. I was a young teen still coping and grieving during my first Christmas without my mom, and was at a Best Buy late one night needing something to play because I was sad and stressed from high school and greiving. And I see this cute looking JRPG with dragon in the title, and thought it would at least give me something to decompress on my winter vacation. I played it for 1-2 hours, and the mechanics were so bad, I stopped playing and gave it away at school. I was a child seeking comfort, and I was MUGGED.
@@william_.575 They may as well have kicked sand in my face and took my lunch money while they were at it. This game is an exercise in futility and learned helplessness.
@@LatteDragon Bro that was my experience with Kingdom Hearts 3, I FEEL you. Hit the lowest low of my life, only thing holding me together was the game I'd been waiting over a decade for finally releasing... Then it comes out and just pure disappointment, it genuinely broke any excitement I had for games for several months.
This is one of those cases where you really have to wonder how it finished development without anyone realizing they were making a thoroughly unfun game.
@@RockSoupWell, if they wanted to get it done cheap and quickly, I’d expect a super-generic My First RPG or at least a copy of one of the other games and not this hodgepodge of baffling nonsensical mechanics.
I remember finding this game in a bargain bin long ago (albeit not for the low price of $2). But I thought "Hey, I love JRPG, especially for the DS, and this one looks fun!" I was so wrong, for the reasons you showed here. It took sooooooooo long for me to understand why I didn't get any EXP, despite battling a lot. I gave up halfway through the first dungeon. One more thing that really bugged me, that you didn't bring up in this video, was this: WHY do you start with a character who's obviously supposed to be the healer, whose ONLY starting healing spell requires SO MUCH MP that you can't even cast it ONCE before gaining several levels? And like I said, even then you can only cast it ONCE!
Funnily enough, the worst game I ever played is World of Zoo on Nintendo DS. I found it in a parking lot outside a Music and Arts. Take Zoo Tycoon. Now take out everything except some animal models. If you give the animal models the right food and toy combination, you get get stars, and then you get another animal model. Don't know why I'm bringing this up, it just goes to show, just because something is free it doesn't make it good.
@@CrocvsGator I played World of Zoo on the Wii and remember liking it, though it was pretty simple. It wasn't really a sim game, more like a virtual pet sort of thing.
@KrimsonKattYT I just looked up the Wii game, that one looks excellent! ....yeah, the DS game isn't that. Kind of like the reverse of the Transformers DS and Wii games, come to think of it.
More like: Father: I bought you this game, you like RPGs. Flyann: *spits in dads face* get me something better next time, I called gamestop this is cheap! 😭
No idea why they didn't bother patching it, with 3:20 safe areas not having the hp penalty. Similarly, getting 5 times the experience may have been interesting, and auto healing with walking/not moving.
Half-Minute Hero also has that mechanic, but it works there because the game is all about doing stuff in a very tight time limit, so it acts as another bit of resource managing.
@@KnakuanaRkaYeah that's completely fine, sprinting hurting you isn't a bad mechanic in and of itself, there's just zero reason for it in an RPG like this with no time limit lol. Like a lot of other people said, if they just disabled it and let you sprint in non-combat areas I don't think anyone would really bat an eye at it, after all it would make sense as sprinting nonstop would end up hurting you. It would still be kind of annoying, but in a sensical way. But in town or whatever? Nah man I don't wanna slowly walk around, realize I forgoot to repair something and then slowly walk back cause I don't wanna waste healing items, that's just bad design lol. The worst thing I heard mentioned here though is not being able to select what enemy you attack. That's literally a good 95% of what makes turn based combat work, you need some strategy, maybe take down all the weaklings and then focus on the strong one, maybe the enemy that hits like a truck really needs a debuff, you know how it works lol. That right there makes it seem like it's just about unplayable, pure RNG as to whether you win or not. Funny enough though, I wanna play this now. If only to blow on it to run away from a battle because yeah that makes sense lmao.
When I started Skyrim for Switch, it asked if I wanted to play in "survival mode," which sounded more like "pain in the butt mode" to me. Do you honestly think all this busy work is going to make the game more fun? I can starve in real life, I don't need to do that in a video game!
@@jessragan6714 People are different, I think survival mode is fun. It's cool having to manage resources in a different way instead of everything in your inventory just amounting to different shaped healing pots. Of course, sometimes I also like to bump the difficulty down and just steamroll everything. But then again I love souls games where you either learn the game or don't progress, it's that simple lol. So yeah, that stuff does make the game more fun. I don't like games without a good challenge 99% of the time, cause then it's just watching a movie with extra steps, like a skinner box that dispenses cutscenes. If I'm just mashing attack and winning I'm not playing a game, I'm a mouse in a skinner box lol.
I agree completely, I grew up watching my mom play Lunar 1 and 2 and then played them on my own. This game out for DS and I was so excited! I didn't think it was terrible at the time, but I was pretty young when I played this. Going back to it put it in perspective.
“I have no idea how nobody during the testing phase didn’t see this and immediately think this was a bad idea” Unfortunately in Japan, the testing departments are all a bunch of underpaid yes men.
In big companies their voice is important. In small companies with the name of a back alley ramen shop, everthing is reduced to the usual Japanese overwork servilism.
The game is so recursively evil. You need both items and exp to progress in the game. Being forced to choose means you just end up grinding for twice as long. But equipment has durability and sprinting costs HP, so you end up needing more items in order to grind. Its like a fail spiral.
That's probably exactly what the devs thought - that it would be a really clever way to reflect how running around in real life makes you feel pain. And what they failed to realize is that it fucking sucks just as much in real life.
The crazy thing is this looks like it could've been a decent or even good rpg but they sabotaged themselves with some really bad ideas. The story setting sounds alright (not amazing but not bad), the character sprites seems to be animated decently in and out of combat (whereas alot of NDS rpgs use still image sprites), the dialog box with the anime cg/sprite also looks pretty decent but then they just shot themselves in the foot with weird and bad mechanics like blowing into the mic to run or having to choose between exp or items as a reward after battle.
0:46 Fun fact: Game Arts sued the original LUNAR devs (Studio Alex) out of existence in 2003. So Dragon Song is the only LUNAR game that did not involve the original creators. Some people suspect that Game Arts handing over a valuable IP to a small dev team like Japan Art Media signaled that they didn’t care about the quality of the product. If it was terrible, then they’d get the satisfaction of destroying Studio Alex’s legacy.
@coldsnap5742 Studio Alex ran behind schedule on a LUNAR spinoff, and the delays cost Game Arts a lot of money (adjusted for inflation, allegedly about $1 million USD). Meanwhile, Game Arts was withholding LUNAR royalties from Studio Alex. (I don't remember the exact timeline; this may have been in retaliation, or it may have just been Game Arts exploiting their favorable contract with the much smaller Studio Alex.) This was around the time when the LUNAR Complete remakes were released, so the royalties probably would have been relatively substantial. Studio Alex sued Game Arts for royalties (and thus for proper acknowledgment of their co-ownership of the LUNAR IP), and Game Arts countersued for the original delays. After roughly six years of fighting in court, Studio Alex went bankrupt.
@@realperson69 That's more nuts than than a "salted 'salted nut roll' roll!" How does that even happen? For a counter-claim to take place, the initial case has to be thrown out, right? And a case getting thrown out in _Japan?_ Tell me, were any flying pigs spotted on that day?
Ok, so. They made MC a courier, which means he runs a whole lot, AND they made him lose health upon sprint It's not just a bad mechanic, it's basically incorrect to the most surface lore💀
2 dollars?! I've never seen a game at gamestop be $2, even when they were still selling old gba games. Also, man I feel bad for your dad, you just wanted to get your son one of those vidya games he likes, but didn't realize why some games being cheap is a red flag
I've only seen a game go that cheap like 2, maybe 3 times. Once for a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, once for Lux-Pain, and I think a third for a copy of the new Dark Alliance game shortly after it came out. I could be misremembering that last one.
Oh, you've only scratched the surface of the problems this game has. Warning for spoilers, but I'll get to them later and it should be masked. 1) Two save files, and the cursor defaults to slot one, even if you're playing slot two. If two people were playing the same copy, you ran the risk of deleting whichever file was in slot one. 2) On top of the experience/loot split, there's a treasure chest on each map that will only unlock if you clear the entire map while in EXP mode. Because enemies will not respawn during a timer that if you clear the entire map during this timer, the chest opens. It's not a terrible mechanic, but it just compounds the absurdity of the exp/loot split. 3) Only certain enemies can/will break your equipment. Hope you farmed the cards that prevent breaking. Also, they don't tell you which ones can or can't. That's up to you to discover! Hope you didn't care about that unique equipment piece you collected from one of the above chests! Spoiler territory: 4) They give the protag a triple attack at the start of the game, only to take it away for a large portion of the game to "relearn" it. I have no idea why they didn't just have him start out as an aspiring acrobat, rather than have him as an acrobat that loses his ability to acrobat to "curse." It mechanically just frustrates. 5) The party members are always fixed, and it makes two of the five box art characters become a question of "Why even bother with them?". They shift out as they become irrelevant. The girl who starts in your party is basically removed from it not long into the game, and the sword guy is literally in your party for a map before he runs off to just die forever. Make sure they weren't wearing anything you'd miss! This also makes any act of purchasing equipment for them kind of pointless. 6) The biggest, most egregious flaw of the game: Now picture it. End of the game, no doubts about it. So much toil and suffering through BS mechanics and long ass dungeons that you cleared out each time for experience. Maybe you got loot or you just made due with whatever loot you could scavenge. This is it! Big Bad is at the pinnacle. "Go monster!" He shouts, and you fight the penultimate boss fight, the obvious "weaken them so if they get to me I can finish them off with my multiphase epic battle" routine. This guy is a hulking monstrosity you've fought twice before each time you came close to Big Bad. You deal with him as you did the previous fights, with no other extra mechanics or phase shifts. It's time to face off the Big Bad! Oh... Wait.... Nevermind! There is no final boss. Instead he slips off a cliff and the hero tries to save him only to be told off to let him die and he dies. As if that wasn't enough, while you saved the world, you didn't accomplish the other thing you set out to do for reasons that I have long since forgotten. There is no payoff for playing this game. All that struggle for a forced morality scene that didn't have to exclude a final fight, but did anyway. The F'ing End.
the running thing wouldve been good if you had like. a stamia stat that lets you run safely until it runs out, then it starts hurting you. that stamia takes a bit to refill or something, with food items speeding it up.
I was a huge Lunar fan, and was so excited for a new entry to the series. This came out during my freshman year of university. First time living away from home, with very limited spending money, but this was a no-brainer purchase! And it sucked. So bad. The series was struggling so hard at that point. I don't know why they didn't think to just play it safe, gain some more fan traction, and THEN do the weird experimental stuff. No, they had one chance to revive interest in the franchise. And they blew it. So hard.
My dad never “bought” me a game I didn’t ask for, but he did do something weirder and problems not okay. He worked in the repair and maintenance section of Nintendo of America. Whenever someone sent in a console but forget to take out the game inside, he would just take it home with him. That’s how I got my copy of Smash Brawl.
Some people: wait, but doesn't that mean that he stole their ga... Me: hey! It's not stealing if the person in question was just careless with their belongings 😏
@@deltadreamer1647 You'd be surprised how many things people *DROP* and the and the frequency with which they are *DROPPED* given their high monetary value. Subsequently, I happen to find quite a lot of *DROPPED* things.
@@CoralCopperHead ah yes, I too endorse the collection and holding of *DROPPED* goods as well. It's better to keep the news of said *DROPPED* merchandise to yourself too, because the neither the police nor some higher authority would be interested in returning said *DROPPED* item to its proper owner after receiving it 😉
@@CoralCopperHead yes, i still remember where i found some some weird ds card whit multiple games on it, like a ds rom kinda thing, there where some bad games on it, but there was one i realy liked, wich was avatar the earth burns, the ds version is a nice rpg kinda game, and the one i spent most times whit
Oh man this game was a DISASTER. I even beat it multiple times. You barely even covered the bits about the obtuse puzzles, how Jian losing his ability to stand on his head MASSIVELY gimps his offense for some reason, the fact that Virtue Mode doesn't even offer that great of rewards for full clearing areas and popping the chest, the pretty much lackluster villainy and one guy just marching to his death for no good reason besides shanking a boss... The kickass music... And the fact that we don't even get to beat up the main villain in the end! Also two other notes, it's not exactly 'durability' as much as it is 'enemies will break your stuff' from what I recall. And the fight with the four dragons kicked ass despite how lukewarm the game was. Still looking forward to a randomizer/improvement hack, no matter how low on the bar it is!
I just finished the four dragon fights (I am still on my first playthrough) I didn't like the "anti-handstand curse" aside from the fact that I got to listen to the boss theme of Gronk (and other bosses later) longer, since my attacks weren't so strong. Then you had to fight back to back Gronk and Zethos without saving or healing
Except that series has a similar problem as Lunar: GS1 and The Lost Age was great, but then Dark Dawn basically hit a rock wall in the innovation side of things, because while the core gameplay is still just as rock solid as ever, and the 3D graphics and music keeps the greatness that the GBA era’s excellent sprite art has, the story dips itself on way too many cliches to be taken seriously, some collectibles can be permanently locked behind points of no return, a lot of the story threads are recycled from the GBA duology, and the difficulty is too easy until the very end, making the game just feels like GS1 and 2 without any of the charm.
@hoangson2007 First off, why should the quality of a different entry in a franchise be a reason to invalidate something as my favorite game? If I said my favorite game was Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, for instance, Enter The Dragonfly's poor quality would be irrelevant. Second, I have previously gone on record defending Dark Dawn, whilst still acknowledging it has many flaws. Yes, the points of no return are completely unnecessary, particularly as most occur in the early game. Yes, the story is stupidly bleak at timed, like Crystallux not saving his worshippers despite being in the same room makes me not even want to bother getting him. But as for the other points you brought up, this is the first time I've heard anyone say Dark Dawn was 'too easy', as myself and many others I've spoken with thought the game had too many spikes ij difficulty, especially immediately after the eclipse. And as for innovation, I'll also start out by saying that Rief is dumb and I hate him, and his pirate sister was way more interesting and should have been playable instead. That being said, I'll say that Sveta ended up becoming my favorite character in the entire franchise, not only storywise with her character are, but also through gameplay. Her werewolf combat gimmicks, in addition to her field psyenergy, did a whole lot in making the game feel fresh. If the series were ever to continue, I'd love it if they could somehow make more characters as unique as Sveta. In addition, stuff like 2 handed weapons were nearadditions, and the idea of more elements, such as light and dark, could be used for more gameplay opportunities if we ever get another game. Speaking of, I need another game just so I can finally have a proper boss fight against Alex. Let me bash his smug face in already, Nintendo!
Just a tip for anyone who wants to play Dark Dawn yourself: get the European version. Some of the shoddy writing are due to the North American version being rushed as the DS is nearing the end of its lifespan and the game being a sort of “swan song” for both the DS and the whole series. The European version got more time to work on the localization, due to being in the phase when NoA and NoE have separate localization departments. For example, the iconic “(character)’s (weapon) lets out a howl!” text was simplified to “(character)’s (weapon) unleashed its (unleash name)!” in the NA version, but Europe get the iconic line intact. Maybe playing the version with superior storytelling can keep your “play the game, skip the story” mentality at bay a while longer.
And the reason I just called the game a “swan song” for the series is because the commercial failure results in the series being mostly neglected, except for the original being included in NSO.
Another tip: keep a guide nearby and use multiple save slots. It’s already pretty much necessary for 100%ing the original duology, but the inclusion of points of no return means that missing one thing early on can permanently make your save file unable to be 100% completed.
I’m pretty sure there was a period at the DS’s launch where every game made for it was contractually obligated to use both screens and the microphone the same way Wii games were obligated to use the motion controls even if it wasn’t the best way.
The original Lunar games meant a lot to me, especially Silver Star. I played them at the perfect age so they were pretty special. GameArts did a masterful job importing Silver Star and Eternal Blue giving the games so much charm and character and Lunar became something I was desperate to see more of…and then I played this. I probably only played a few hours, and never touched it again. It didn’t feel like Lunar in the slightest and the games mechanics were frustrating at every turn. Still one of my favorite nostalgic game series, those intros when you start the games bring up all the feels. It’s just sad to see the series died with this outing.
My take as a up and coming game designer. I would be fine with running costing a resource. Like it would be cool if they had a separate parameter for running, like SP (Stamina Points) along with HP and MP. Use SP to run away from slow monsters, or you could also save it for special skills some characters could have, and if you used it for running you still would have MP for magic skills. I do think that the running resource mechanic should be disabled in safe zones though, like you said. There, this way it's an interesting twist to run from monster in the overworld, rather than having the monsters be faster than you and starting a battle, the monsters can be slow. Choosing between EXP and Items actually sounds interesting, however the problem lays forth when they add durability to the gear. If they want the player to choose between GP or EXP, remove the durability mechanic. It makes it impossible to actually upgrade your party members if their gear keeps breaking. Along with that, if you feel overleveled you can get more money instead, or if you feel wealthy you can get more experience. Allow the player to chose who they are attacking, that auto-play is dumb. What is this, a mobile gacha game where you just grind the same dungeon for 1000+ times straight? Taking away choice takes away player agency, not good.
Real talk though if Flyann ever got to playing silver star and eternal blue that would be rad. Specifically the ps1 versions though, I can't speak for the sega CD originals since I never played them but I really loved playing through the games on ps1 even with the nutty localization and adjusted difficulty (which honestly makes the dungeons and bosses more interesting for me.)
I don't actually understand how it's possible to make a game this bad. It doesn't even seem that lazy, it's like they tried, but were so full of themselves that they didn't test it to see if anything was good.
I remember back in the day, a friend of mine asked me to help him play this game on his DS. I was happy to help, since i was no stranger to RPGs and i used to love them (still do, but im not as patient as i used to be). Later, i realized the horrible mechanics of the game, the worst offender being having to decide if you wanted money or XP. Remembering this is really funny since my friend was almost lending me burden of beating that terrible game for him. Every time i was done with the game he used to tell me "no, no, you keep playing, its ok".
What makes it worse is that every other game in the series ranges from damn good to masterpiece, and before this game came out there hadn't been a new entry in the series that wasn't just a remake in a decade. Add on that since this was the most easily obtainable title in the series and likely most people's introduction to the Lunar series just makes it so much worse.
I was living overseas, and taking the bus for about an hour and a half each day. When my roommate went back to the US for a family event, I sent him with money to buy a DS. I could only afford one game, so I chose an RPG, and you know where this is going. This was literally my only game. It was this or staring out the window. I chose to stare out the window. Fun fact: the sound of a bus engine is loud enough to activate the microphone trigger, so I had to cover it up with my hand in order to battle.
I got this game as a gift from my oldest brother one year for Christmas, along with a different game that I don't remember. I am the kind of kid who would read the entire instruction manual for a game before playing even a second of it. So I already knew that running would cause the player to lose health. I only played this game long enough to find out if it was true, then turned it off, put it away, and never touched it again.
"maybe the devs didn't intend for you to lose hp while running in cities" no they fully intended it, i'll give you two reasons first reason if you hit the start button in a city built in guide states is drains 1/3 of your hp second reason, there are free heal statues plastered all over the place, that's also in the built in guide. the blue chest are just extra healing. if that wasn't enough you also get cards which give you anything from running away to healing hp or mp i learned quickly this game loves to inflict statues effects on you, but it's a non issue once the battles over.
In most RPGs you aim to level up so you can become stronger and beat stronger opponents. In this RPG, you aim to level up so you can have more HP in order to sprint longer.
Not the only RPG I've seen where running around the map is punished. Dragon Quarter, the game that killed Breath of Fire, has a constant timer. Running causes that timer to Rapidly count down.
Yikes. The only thing my father ever got me was Super Smash Bros melee. It sounds great, but I was an only child and never had friends close by to play with me. I literally only got to play it once a year on rare occasions when I would be at his house over the summer ,and he would have to be home to make sure I wasn't doing anything (idk, in hindsight, it makes no sense why i wasn't allowed to play games or watch movies without him being there after he got from work at 5pm.) So even with my half-siblings, we didn't get very far. I never unlocked all the characters because I also wasn't allowed to use a computer without his supervision and didn't know anyone else who played games. But hey, he tried.
The only thing that drove me nuts was the equipment breaking all the time. It got to the point where I was saving the game before EVERY battle and having to reload over and over again with how much things broke since things got ridiculously expensive and it took forever to earn the materials to complete the jobs that gave you even a halfway decent amount of money, even with using the trade market. Most frustrating feature ever.
I know this is an old video, but thank you for covering this monstrosity the way it deserves. I'll never forgive this game for killing the chance for any new lunar games.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when going to the comments, but I didn’t expect the video to only be scratching the surface of what is wrong with this game
A good artist (ie a good game designer) knows how to follow the rules. A great artist knows how to break them. These folks did not know how to break them. They evidently just broke rules at random to be unique without understanding why those rules existed. I love that not only does running drain HP, it apparently has no obvious damage animation. How many kids didn't even realize it was happening?
The plot is worse than you think. Lucia is the name of the female protagonist of Lunar 2. Right down to the spelling. There's sooo much they could have done with the whole human/beastmen plot , but they don't. And Lucia's whole plotline is a hash for rehash of Luna's plot from Lunar 1. I hate this game. Hate. Lunar shouldn't have ended this way.
This is what happens when your Boss tells you to do something and you are too scared to tell him he's wrong. Most Japanese companies are like this. When your Boss tells you to do something, you're not expected to grow a brain and actually think if it is correct. You just follow and do whatever he wants, work until 1am, go drink alcohol until 5am and go back to work again at 6am to continue to work. 🙂
It.. hurts my soul that "Lunar" and "The Worst RPG" has no choice but to coexist in the same sentence... But that's what this atrocity of a game has led to apparently.. and harm an otherwise what is possibly the best RPG series..
"Hoshi Wo Miru Hito" (aka "Stargazer") "Last Rebellion" Here are actual contenders for "worst RPG ever made". The first has been dubbed the "Legendary Shitty Game". The second caused the president of NIS America to apologize for releasing it in the US and comment that he felt sorry for their customers.
I absolutely loved Lunar Silver Star, and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue... this game was so dissapointing. I beat it. I spent a lot of time on it. I had fun with it, but I knew it was garbage. From the mechanics to the story, to the balance... it was a mess.
I was so beyond disappointed with this game. I loved the Lunar series and this entry just completely ruined it. WHY did they think this was a good idea? Why couldn't they have gone the traditional route that was already established?
Yeah as amazingly generic as they are in retrospect and boy... *dat voice acting*, they're solid little games with good audio/visual assets and actual challenge and strategic gameplay.
@@LeoMidoriAlthough the challenge was 100% created by the localizers buffing enemy stats out the wazoo, as they did for every game they got their hands on.
Bro I’ve been talking for ages about how LDS is absolute dogshit. It’s like the devs had a contest to see who could come up with the most awful game mechanics. Also why do new party members join at level 1 with dogwater equipment??? They’re useless when you get them. I love DS and GBA JRPGs but oh my god this game is an atrocity.
even as a ten year old child i knew this game sucked. i still powered through, because i was a kid and kids are stupid and assumed it was Just Supposed To Be Like That.... god, though, the ending was such a nothingburger that even after all that effort i took to complete the game i just sat there wondering if i'd missed something
The Hikyou Tankentai: Choutoko Special and SEGA AGES 2500 Vol.23: SEGA Memorial Selection are considered Game of the Year back then, many faithful fans still waiting for their sequels
Targeting would be harder, since the targeting system would have to be made from scratch. No damage from sprinting and getting both items and XP from encounters should be easy though.
When I saw the title, I thought "surely it isn't that bad, right?", but boy, was I proven wrong. It looks worse than Granstream Saga for the PS1, and that's saying a lot, because that game was awful.
Nice! I saw the title of your video and thumbnail text, and immediately was guessing and thinking, "Lunar Dragon Song?" I was pleased to see I was right.
why the triple six in the username? why do FLOCKS of immature people on youtube in the last four years think they are cool putting triple six in their username? my gosh! It's like they are fake accounts or immature kids breaking age restrictions. Intentionally trolling the waters for endangered species to molest; yangzhi river dolphins. Baby blue whales. to fill the holds of their false ships' comment sections. people treat that number like it is 888 or #23, 32, 33, or 34 in the 1990s basketball. They act like there is power in it that by displaying it will channel to them success. It is unoriginality and false emulation. An attempt to represent evil not good. It stands for accusation and bondage. Incompletion. Rending of root and branch, and loss of progression, not power. You can do better. I know. We are both Gen1
So what I gather is the natural flow of gameplay is to end up soft locked from a sub hobo class gameplay economy where it’s easier to start fresh then attempting to continue on damaged equipment and no money.
I will never forget that I wasted money on this game all because I saw dragon in the title. I think I got a little over halfway through it before I gave up. Anybody thinking of playing it, just don't. It's so bad and boring! Don't be like me! There are better games that also have dragon in the title!
This game repeatedly broke me, and I gave it some REALLY good tries. I kept running up against an inability to acquire healing and cash to maintain weapons to actually proceed along the plot. I could grind and end up with a net loss, or try to plow through and end up with a game loss because the balance was all f'd.
I bought this game at launch being a fan of the Lunar series and god was it awful. It's like they learned no lessons from any RPG before it or thought about the player experience at all. I mean imagine fighting a boss with minions that you just have to hope your characters will attack. Its like they set out to make a game for a younger audience and simplified things to the point of obscurity.
The concept that sprinting hurts you *wasn't even a new idea for the genre* . 1994's エデアの日 had it. The difference being 1: In that era, having a run button by default was unusual (remember the FF trilogy needed an item or ability to enable b dash in the original SFC releases, the ports and remakes are when it became a default ability and the things that enabled dashing now just increased the dash's speed further) 2: It was a very early example of showing enemies on the field instead of random encounters (predating Earthbound and Chrono Trigger) and the dash is clearly intended to be a tool that allows evading theses at a cost. 3: The cost doesn't scale (it's a fixed amount of HP, not a percent of it), and the chance of HP lose is based on a stat check. This means past early game the cost is essentially nothing 4: Since you had a DQ4-esque solo intro for most party members, this actually distinguishes them a bit (the pro athlete doesn't have issues running, but the frail psychic does). 5: It's a spiritual successor to a game that *literally* had the publisher publish an untested beta release without the developer's knowledge because development was taking too long and only became famous for how broken and strange it was, while the aesthetic deliberately weird. Weird ideas are to be expected in such a development.
The cost doesn't scaling and that the HP substracted is based (aside from a status check) in how "physically fit" the character of the party are does sound like good concepts
The protagonist is a delivery boy.
His job is to travel and delivery things.
And sprinting hurts him.
Top 10 Bruh Moments Of Gaming
Having a cost or penalty for skipping encounters is an ok idea. I can see how they thought making it deal damage is reasonable. They just completely failed to account for how annoying it would be to only walk everywhere.
A true underdog story
He runs about as well as a 350 pd fat kid with asthma and a broken leg.
Kojima could never make a delivery simulator as good as this game.
They made 2 lists. The "good idea" and "terrible idea" list. After the meeting where they created the lists, the lead game dev told his assistant "take the list to the team" and the assistant grabbed the wrong list.
What a wonderful response lmao
You're forgetting that ds games were FORCED to use ds gimmicks. Remember Phantom hourglass or Spirit tracks?
@asra-5180 yes but many got away with just having touch screen menu controls or a moveable map. This is just a little bit obtuse in the already massive obtuse pile.
@@Pokemen396 the zelda games weren't as lucky
There’s a theory that they INTENTIONALLY grabbed the “terrible idea” list. Game Arts was furious at the original LUNAR devs (Studio Alex), and wanted to tarnish their legacy even after suing them out of existence in 2003.
Funny thing is that flyann didn't even cover the gammut.
1. Battles are DOG slow. They're so slow the game comes with 2x and 3x options and neither makes up the difference.
2. Your main character literally does like 60% of the party's damage every round, because he attacks 3 times. If he dies, you might as well give up 'til you get him back.
3. When you finally get a healing spell, it uses up 10 MP. Your healer has 30. Basically makes the spell worthless 2-3 minutes into every dungeon.
4. They KNOW the battle and healing balance is terrible because finishing the enemies on every dungeon floor restores your HP and MP.
5. It's not even "EXP or Money", it's "EXP or items that are worth basically nothing if you don't partake in the game's courier system, which basically requires you to have an open fucking wiki page to use", and the cost of new weapons and armor increases EXPONENTIALLY throughout the game. Seriously, it's insane how quickly equipment prices ramp up.
6. You don't even get to fight the last fucking boss. Instead his second in command fights you... THREE TIMES, getting bigger and more tedious to fight each time. And then the boss just kinda kills himself. Yes, I'm spoiling this. Please don't blow 20 hours on this goddamn game.
I also wasted my time playing through this as a teen. The fact that the MC doesn’t in anyway become a real dragon warrior also blows.
Played this years ago and I definitely remember the stupid fetch quests, the even stupider "you can only get exp or item drops from battle" mechanic, and finishing the game saying "wait, is that it? The final boss just blows up his own castle and dies?"
And also that part of the game where Jian loses his ability to attack 3 times until you complete a certain quest. That one was infuriating cause you couldn't even grind properly.
And here I thought that if they just removed the ass-backwards mechanics you'd at least still have a tolerable RPG.
Instead it turns out all along it was just always a bad game.
raise EXPONENTIALLY
are you actually telling me that RAMPANT INFLATION is an actual mechanic you have to deal with. 😢
Wow, and people hated what Working Designs did to the Lunar games. I'll take Beavis and Butthead references over this crap any day of the week.
Running taking away your health is actually a great idea...
for a horror game
I think it'd be a good mechanic for a darker rpg. One where everything is out to get you, and you'd need to choose between hurting yourself or escaping a brutal fight
@@genericname2747 so like fear and hunger? as in, darker rpg
@@snwoop7921 Yes,exactly like that
Funnily enough, if I recall, the first clock tower did that
@@genericname2747I think there has to be an explanation for it to make sense
I bought this game on the recommendation of a friend who thought it would be good because they liked the other Lunar games. For years I’ve wondered why this isn’t considered one of the worst games ever made. Some things you didn’t mention:
- Equipment DOESN’T actually have durability, instead it has a chance to break randomly when certain enemies attack you. Equipment is so expensive and money is so hard to get that you just have to save after every single battle lest your armor break in the next encounter.
- Selling items yields chump change. The real way you’re supposed to earn money is by filling “orders” for customers by collecting and turning in specific bundles of enemy drops. Every high-paying job requires rare drops to complete, and the drop rates are so low that it can take hours just to fill one order.
- The battle animations are agonizingly slow. The developers seemed to realize this and made it so you could speed up battles by holding the right shoulder button, but you just end up holding it down for every single battle. My right shoulder button actually BROKE because of this game.
- Enemy levels scale with your level. If you stay in the starting area and just fight monsters until you hit max level, they’ll still take the exact same number of hits to defeat as when you started. Once your healer learns all her spells, there’s no reason to ever level up again.
- Enemies allegedly have elemental weaknesses, but every attack spell in the game is exactly the same: a target-all attack that kills every enemy unless they’re a boss. It would be a godsend actually, except you never have enough MP to cast more than four spells before running out.
- The AI that determines which enemies you’ll target in battle doesn’t prioritize enemies that inflict status ailments, so you get poisoned constantly and there’s nothing you can do about it.
- Spoiler: You never even get to defeat the primary antagonist. You fight him once in an unwinnable battle halfway through the game, and then never fight him again. The final boss is just his second-in-command. It was the perfect final insult after such an agonizing experience, to not even get the satisfaction of a rematch and a satisfying ending. They couldn’t even give you that.
There should be a chapter about this game in every book on game design. It’s the most perfect representation of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. If they hadn’t tried to “innovate” so many RPG mechanics then it would have been a generic but passable game.
Save after every battle? You're joking, right?
See, I did beat this game. Towards the end, I outright marathoned it, sort of--I did take breaks, but only ever putting my DS into sleep mode and whenever possible putting it on the charger. Why? _BECAUSE I'D SOMEHOW LOST THE ABILITY TO SAVE THE FUCKING GAME!_ I shit you not, the final...I don't know, maybe quarter of the game, I was unable to save. Just had to keep going.
would be funny if there's some requirement to fight the final boss properly, but no one ever found out
This game stands right alongside Dragon Quarter as one of the most infamous examples of a game being so bad that it single-handedly sank a franchise.
Oh my God, I misread this and thought you said that the game controls were so bad they broke your right shoulder
@@genericname2747 😂
This game feels like someone really wanted to make a game as "realistic as possible" which is almost always a mistake.
Wanna go into battle? your armor needs maintenance.
Wanna fix your armor? better find something good cuz the towns folk don't really need to buy your mushrooms and twigs,
wanna go fast? well running makes you tired so say good-bye to your health.
I'm surprised the game doesn't have taxes or something too.
First of all, it's a lighthearted fantasy game, it's never really going to be "realistic" as much as "there are elements of realism here". I think the problem here is that it's a terrible combination of things that artificially lengthen the experience and take away a lot of player agency. I don't have an issue with the elements they introduced (except no wealth *and* experience from battles at once, effectively doubling your grinding) in theory, it's that they also aren't especially well implemented.
Gosh, "makes you tired" is one thing but this is actively harmful. "Makes you tired" can be an interesting mechanic. The Zelda series has done it before, for instance (though those aren't RPGs you get my drift). But "does damage" is a different story altogether.
Imagine a Monster Hunter game that drains your health instead of your stamina when you run and dodge.
of course it was taxes: when you buy the game and sales tax is added
Exactly why people who demand realism in games are clowns who should always be ignored
I’ll admit that the only ‘unique’ thing about this game, is getting to choose between receiving XP or Items after battle, but even then, I’d just prefer to have both given to me after winning a fight, regardless of item rarities
I mean, maybe if it was like "You get both, buy you can choose between getting MORE XP or Rarer items" that could be cool.
Persona 5 kindaaaa did something similar to this. Kindaaaa, after an interrogation you get to recruit, money, items or just cancel the interrogation and go for the kill for XP. You still get money, items or xp in different tiers/value depending on the choice
@@nezharose4953 I was thinking more like the cards from P4
And that's regular fights. So much worse for bosses, cause you actually have to decide between a lot of XP or one-time items.
@@nezharose4953 Shin Megami Tensei did it first, but Persona popularized it definitely
I just saw this video come up in my feed, and you need to hear this. I bought this game when I was a child, with birthday money, 4 months after MY MOM DIED. I was a young teen still coping and grieving during my first Christmas without my mom, and was at a Best Buy late one night needing something to play because I was sad and stressed from high school and greiving. And I see this cute looking JRPG with dragon in the title, and thought it would at least give me something to decompress on my winter vacation. I played it for 1-2 hours, and the mechanics were so bad, I stopped playing and gave it away at school. I was a child seeking comfort, and I was MUGGED.
Really sad and horrible... and also a tiiiiiny bit funny..?
imagine making a game so bad that someone considers your game a robbery
@@william_.575 They may as well have kicked sand in my face and took my lunch money while they were at it. This game is an exercise in futility and learned helplessness.
@@zoekm Over 10 years later? Yeah, it's a little funny now.
@@LatteDragon Bro that was my experience with Kingdom Hearts 3, I FEEL you. Hit the lowest low of my life, only thing holding me together was the game I'd been waiting over a decade for finally releasing... Then it comes out and just pure disappointment, it genuinely broke any excitement I had for games for several months.
This is one of those cases where you really have to wonder how it finished development without anyone realizing they were making a thoroughly unfun game.
I'm pretty sure they knew. This game reeks of "Get it done cheap and quickly and ship it".
@@RockSoupWell, if they wanted to get it done cheap and quickly, I’d expect a super-generic My First RPG or at least a copy of one of the other games and not this hodgepodge of baffling nonsensical mechanics.
I remember finding this game in a bargain bin long ago (albeit not for the low price of $2). But I thought "Hey, I love JRPG, especially for the DS, and this one looks fun!"
I was so wrong, for the reasons you showed here.
It took sooooooooo long for me to understand why I didn't get any EXP, despite battling a lot. I gave up halfway through the first dungeon.
One more thing that really bugged me, that you didn't bring up in this video, was this: WHY do you start with a character who's obviously supposed to be the healer, whose ONLY starting healing spell requires SO MUCH MP that you can't even cast it ONCE before gaining several levels? And like I said, even then you can only cast it ONCE!
Funnily enough, the worst game I ever played is World of Zoo on Nintendo DS. I found it in a parking lot outside a Music and Arts. Take Zoo Tycoon. Now take out everything except some animal models. If you give the animal models the right food and toy combination, you get get stars, and then you get another animal model.
Don't know why I'm bringing this up, it just goes to show, just because something is free it doesn't make it good.
You don't know how to read?
@@CrocvsGator I played World of Zoo on the Wii and remember liking it, though it was pretty simple. It wasn't really a sim game, more like a virtual pet sort of thing.
@KrimsonKattYT I just looked up the Wii game, that one looks excellent!
....yeah, the DS game isn't that.
Kind of like the reverse of the Transformers DS and Wii games, come to think of it.
God imagine playing this outside on a windy day and you can’t complete fights because the wind keeps making you run away
😂😂
Flyann: "Dad I want an RPG!"
Father Flyann: "We have an RPG at home."
I freaking hate that meme!!!
He probably wants to SHOOT it with an RPG.
The Assassin's Creed game at home is Zorro Chronicles and that was a much better game than this.
More like:
Father: I bought you this game, you like RPGs.
Flyann: *spits in dads face* get me something better next time, I called gamestop this is cheap! 😭
The "Running hurts you" can be used as feature for a kind of super hard mode, but not for normal gameplay
No idea why they didn't bother patching it, with 3:20 safe areas not having the hp penalty. Similarly, getting 5 times the experience may have been interesting, and auto healing with walking/not moving.
Half-Minute Hero also has that mechanic, but it works there because the game is all about doing stuff in a very tight time limit, so it acts as another bit of resource managing.
@@KnakuanaRkaYeah that's completely fine, sprinting hurting you isn't a bad mechanic in and of itself, there's just zero reason for it in an RPG like this with no time limit lol.
Like a lot of other people said, if they just disabled it and let you sprint in non-combat areas I don't think anyone would really bat an eye at it, after all it would make sense as sprinting nonstop would end up hurting you. It would still be kind of annoying, but in a sensical way. But in town or whatever? Nah man I don't wanna slowly walk around, realize I forgoot to repair something and then slowly walk back cause I don't wanna waste healing items, that's just bad design lol.
The worst thing I heard mentioned here though is not being able to select what enemy you attack. That's literally a good 95% of what makes turn based combat work, you need some strategy, maybe take down all the weaklings and then focus on the strong one, maybe the enemy that hits like a truck really needs a debuff, you know how it works lol. That right there makes it seem like it's just about unplayable, pure RNG as to whether you win or not.
Funny enough though, I wanna play this now. If only to blow on it to run away from a battle because yeah that makes sense lmao.
When I started Skyrim for Switch, it asked if I wanted to play in "survival mode," which sounded more like "pain in the butt mode" to me. Do you honestly think all this busy work is going to make the game more fun? I can starve in real life, I don't need to do that in a video game!
@@jessragan6714 People are different, I think survival mode is fun. It's cool having to manage resources in a different way instead of everything in your inventory just amounting to different shaped healing pots.
Of course, sometimes I also like to bump the difficulty down and just steamroll everything. But then again I love souls games where you either learn the game or don't progress, it's that simple lol.
So yeah, that stuff does make the game more fun. I don't like games without a good challenge 99% of the time, cause then it's just watching a movie with extra steps, like a skinner box that dispenses cutscenes. If I'm just mashing attack and winning I'm not playing a game, I'm a mouse in a skinner box lol.
Kind of a shame the Lunar Games went out like a whimper like this. The first too games are overly cheesy, but fun games.
Мне очень нравится Lunar 2/ Одна из любимейших игр, которую я рад заново пройти в любое время. Это больше, чем просто хорошая игра.
I mean, the same team that made Lunar went on to make Grandia, so the same design stuck around for a little bit longer.
I think the PSP Lunar game is underrated, although yeah, the load times kind of suck. Whaddayagonnado.
I agree completely, I grew up watching my mom play Lunar 1 and 2 and then played them on my own. This game out for DS and I was so excited! I didn't think it was terrible at the time, but I was pretty young when I played this. Going back to it put it in perspective.
Lunar 1 and 2 are excellent! They made me so happy and so emotional
Some of my fondest memories
“I have no idea how nobody during the testing phase didn’t see this and immediately think this was a bad idea”
Unfortunately in Japan, the testing departments are all a bunch of underpaid yes men.
In big companies their voice is important.
In small companies with the name of a back alley ramen shop, everthing is reduced to the usual Japanese overwork servilism.
The game is so recursively evil.
You need both items and exp to progress in the game.
Being forced to choose means you just end up grinding for twice as long.
But equipment has durability and sprinting costs HP, so you end up needing more items in order to grind.
Its like a fail spiral.
Running hurts you?
Bruh that's lowkey just real life.
That's probably exactly what the devs thought - that it would be a really clever way to reflect how running around in real life makes you feel pain.
And what they failed to realize is that it fucking sucks just as much in real life.
running hurts you? how fat are you?
They wanted to reflect the energy of the fat nerds playing RPGs, because really guys if running actually hurts you you need to go touch grass
If you weight 200 kilograms and have mini heart attacks every now and then... then it makes sense.
It's really not that bad
The crazy thing is this looks like it could've been a decent or even good rpg but they sabotaged themselves with some really bad ideas. The story setting sounds alright (not amazing but not bad), the character sprites seems to be animated decently in and out of combat (whereas alot of NDS rpgs use still image sprites), the dialog box with the anime cg/sprite also looks pretty decent but then they just shot themselves in the foot with weird and bad mechanics like blowing into the mic to run or having to choose between exp or items as a reward after battle.
The music was also great.
0:46 Fun fact: Game Arts sued the original LUNAR devs (Studio Alex) out of existence in 2003. So Dragon Song is the only LUNAR game that did not involve the original creators.
Some people suspect that Game Arts handing over a valuable IP to a small dev team like Japan Art Media signaled that they didn’t care about the quality of the product. If it was terrible, then they’d get the satisfaction of destroying Studio Alex’s legacy.
@coldsnap5742 Studio Alex ran behind schedule on a LUNAR spinoff, and the delays cost Game Arts a lot of money (adjusted for inflation, allegedly about $1 million USD). Meanwhile, Game Arts was withholding LUNAR royalties from Studio Alex. (I don't remember the exact timeline; this may have been in retaliation, or it may have just been Game Arts exploiting their favorable contract with the much smaller Studio Alex.) This was around the time when the LUNAR Complete remakes were released, so the royalties probably would have been relatively substantial. Studio Alex sued Game Arts for royalties (and thus for proper acknowledgment of their co-ownership of the LUNAR IP), and Game Arts countersued for the original delays. After roughly six years of fighting in court, Studio Alex went bankrupt.
@@realperson69 That's more nuts than than a "salted 'salted nut roll' roll!" How does that even happen? For a counter-claim to take place, the initial case has to be thrown out, right? And a case getting thrown out in _Japan?_ Tell me, were any flying pigs spotted on that day?
Ok, so. They made MC a courier, which means he runs a whole lot, AND they made him lose health upon sprint
It's not just a bad mechanic, it's basically incorrect to the most surface lore💀
Man that's so unfortunate, Lunar Legend was my all-time favorite game as a kid and I always wished that they'd continue its story
FOR REAL
I love Lunar Legend,but the Lunar DS game is straight up a mediocrity
2 dollars?! I've never seen a game at gamestop be $2, even when they were still selling old gba games. Also, man I feel bad for your dad, you just wanted to get your son one of those vidya games he likes, but didn't realize why some games being cheap is a red flag
I got FFXV for $5 at GameStop lol it happens.
@@krimsonkatt meant to say 2, my mistake
I've only seen a game go that cheap like 2, maybe 3 times. Once for a copy of Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, once for Lux-Pain, and I think a third for a copy of the new Dark Alliance game shortly after it came out. I could be misremembering that last one.
SNES Super Scope 6
$2.00 game
Wasn't worth it
There’s a GBA version of the Jungle Book game at my Goodwill for like 4 bucks.
I’m not sure if I want it
Not going to mention the ODDLY very specific curse that makes the protagonist unable to stand on his head? The world famous curse may I remind you.
Unable to stand on his head?? Am I missing something because this already sounds like something a person can't do lol
@@catpoke9557 Iirc one of his attacks is a break dancing spin kick which requires him to spin on his head.
@@hrvstmn31 Amazing
"This is the worst RPG ever made"
-says the man who hasn't played the entirety of Spectral Tower yet.
Oh, you've only scratched the surface of the problems this game has. Warning for spoilers, but I'll get to them later and it should be masked.
1) Two save files, and the cursor defaults to slot one, even if you're playing slot two. If two people were playing the same copy, you ran the risk of deleting whichever file was in slot one.
2) On top of the experience/loot split, there's a treasure chest on each map that will only unlock if you clear the entire map while in EXP mode. Because enemies will not respawn during a timer that if you clear the entire map during this timer, the chest opens. It's not a terrible mechanic, but it just compounds the absurdity of the exp/loot split.
3) Only certain enemies can/will break your equipment. Hope you farmed the cards that prevent breaking. Also, they don't tell you which ones can or can't. That's up to you to discover! Hope you didn't care about that unique equipment piece you collected from one of the above chests!
Spoiler territory:
4) They give the protag a triple attack at the start of the game, only to take it away for a large portion of the game to "relearn" it. I have no idea why they didn't just have him start out as an aspiring acrobat, rather than have him as an acrobat that loses his ability to acrobat to "curse." It mechanically just frustrates.
5) The party members are always fixed, and it makes two of the five box art characters become a question of "Why even bother with them?". They shift out as they become irrelevant. The girl who starts in your party is basically removed from it not long into the game, and the sword guy is literally in your party for a map before he runs off to just die forever. Make sure they weren't wearing anything you'd miss! This also makes any act of purchasing equipment for them kind of pointless.
6) The biggest, most egregious flaw of the game:
Now picture it. End of the game, no doubts about it. So much toil and suffering through BS mechanics and long ass dungeons that you cleared out each time for experience. Maybe you got loot or you just made due with whatever loot you could scavenge. This is it! Big Bad is at the pinnacle. "Go monster!" He shouts, and you fight the penultimate boss fight, the obvious "weaken them so if they get to me I can finish them off with my multiphase epic battle" routine. This guy is a hulking monstrosity you've fought twice before each time you came close to Big Bad. You deal with him as you did the previous fights, with no other extra mechanics or phase shifts. It's time to face off the Big Bad!
Oh... Wait.... Nevermind!
There is no final boss. Instead he slips off a cliff and the hero tries to save him only to be told off to let him die and he dies. As if that wasn't enough, while you saved the world, you didn't accomplish the other thing you set out to do for reasons that I have long since forgotten.
There is no payoff for playing this game. All that struggle for a forced morality scene that didn't have to exclude a final fight, but did anyway. The F'ing End.
I heard this was supposedly made by people that.... didn't know how to make RPGs.
It was, clearly, made by people who didn't know how to make RPGs
Kinda like how Shaq-Fu's existence is made by people who don't know how to make fighting games cuz of street fighter 2's popularity at that time.
the running thing wouldve been good if you had like. a stamia stat that lets you run safely until it runs out, then it starts hurting you. that stamia takes a bit to refill or something, with food items speeding it up.
I was a huge Lunar fan, and was so excited for a new entry to the series. This came out during my freshman year of university. First time living away from home, with very limited spending money, but this was a no-brainer purchase! And it sucked. So bad. The series was struggling so hard at that point. I don't know why they didn't think to just play it safe, gain some more fan traction, and THEN do the weird experimental stuff. No, they had one chance to revive interest in the franchise. And they blew it. So hard.
My dad never “bought” me a game I didn’t ask for, but he did do something weirder and problems not okay. He worked in the repair and maintenance section of Nintendo of America. Whenever someone sent in a console but forget to take out the game inside, he would just take it home with him. That’s how I got my copy of Smash Brawl.
Some people: wait, but doesn't that mean that he stole their ga...
Me: hey! It's not stealing if the person in question was just careless with their belongings 😏
@@deltadreamer1647 You'd be surprised how many things people *DROP* and the and the frequency with which they are *DROPPED* given their high monetary value. Subsequently, I happen to find quite a lot of *DROPPED* things.
@@CoralCopperHead ah yes, I too endorse the collection and holding of *DROPPED* goods as well. It's better to keep the news of said *DROPPED* merchandise to yourself too, because the neither the police nor some higher authority would be interested in returning said *DROPPED* item to its proper owner after receiving it 😉
@@CoralCopperHead yes, i still remember where i found some some weird ds card whit multiple games on it, like a ds rom kinda thing, there where some bad games on it, but there was one i realy liked, wich was avatar the earth burns, the ds version is a nice rpg kinda game, and the one i spent most times whit
Cool
Oh man this game was a DISASTER. I even beat it multiple times. You barely even covered the bits about the obtuse puzzles, how Jian losing his ability to stand on his head MASSIVELY gimps his offense for some reason, the fact that Virtue Mode doesn't even offer that great of rewards for full clearing areas and popping the chest, the pretty much lackluster villainy and one guy just marching to his death for no good reason besides shanking a boss... The kickass music... And the fact that we don't even get to beat up the main villain in the end! Also two other notes, it's not exactly 'durability' as much as it is 'enemies will break your stuff' from what I recall. And the fight with the four dragons kicked ass despite how lukewarm the game was.
Still looking forward to a randomizer/improvement hack, no matter how low on the bar it is!
I just finished the four dragon fights (I am still on my first playthrough) I didn't like the "anti-handstand curse" aside from the fact that I got to listen to the boss theme of Gronk (and other bosses later) longer, since my attacks weren't so strong. Then you had to fight back to back Gronk and Zethos without saving or healing
His dad story reminds me of what my Dad once did. Except the game he got was Golden Sun, and that became my favorite game ever.
Except that series has a similar problem as Lunar: GS1 and The Lost Age was great, but then Dark Dawn basically hit a rock wall in the innovation side of things, because while the core gameplay is still just as rock solid as ever, and the 3D graphics and music keeps the greatness that the GBA era’s excellent sprite art has, the story dips itself on way too many cliches to be taken seriously, some collectibles can be permanently locked behind points of no return, a lot of the story threads are recycled from the GBA duology, and the difficulty is too easy until the very end, making the game just feels like GS1 and 2 without any of the charm.
@hoangson2007 First off, why should the quality of a different entry in a franchise be a reason to invalidate something as my favorite game? If I said my favorite game was Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, for instance, Enter The Dragonfly's poor quality would be irrelevant.
Second, I have previously gone on record defending Dark Dawn, whilst still acknowledging it has many flaws. Yes, the points of no return are completely unnecessary, particularly as most occur in the early game. Yes, the story is stupidly bleak at timed, like Crystallux not saving his worshippers despite being in the same room makes me not even want to bother getting him.
But as for the other points you brought up, this is the first time I've heard anyone say Dark Dawn was 'too easy', as myself and many others I've spoken with thought the game had too many spikes ij difficulty, especially immediately after the eclipse.
And as for innovation, I'll also start out by saying that Rief is dumb and I hate him, and his pirate sister was way more interesting and should have been playable instead.
That being said, I'll say that Sveta ended up becoming my favorite character in the entire franchise, not only storywise with her character are, but also through gameplay. Her werewolf combat gimmicks, in addition to her field psyenergy, did a whole lot in making the game feel fresh. If the series were ever to continue, I'd love it if they could somehow make more characters as unique as Sveta.
In addition, stuff like 2 handed weapons were nearadditions, and the idea of more elements, such as light and dark, could be used for more gameplay opportunities if we ever get another game. Speaking of, I need another game just so I can finally have a proper boss fight against Alex. Let me bash his smug face in already, Nintendo!
Just a tip for anyone who wants to play Dark Dawn yourself: get the European version. Some of the shoddy writing are due to the North American version being rushed as the DS is nearing the end of its lifespan and the game being a sort of “swan song” for both the DS and the whole series. The European version got more time to work on the localization, due to being in the phase when NoA and NoE have separate localization departments. For example, the iconic “(character)’s (weapon) lets out a howl!” text was simplified to “(character)’s (weapon) unleashed its (unleash name)!” in the NA version, but Europe get the iconic line intact. Maybe playing the version with superior storytelling can keep your “play the game, skip the story” mentality at bay a while longer.
And the reason I just called the game a “swan song” for the series is because the commercial failure results in the series being mostly neglected, except for the original being included in NSO.
Another tip: keep a guide nearby and use multiple save slots. It’s already pretty much necessary for 100%ing the original duology, but the inclusion of points of no return means that missing one thing early on can permanently make your save file unable to be 100% completed.
lowkey game of the year
Early contender for sure
very lowkey
so low it sank to the other side of the planet.
Century**
I’m pretty sure there was a period at the DS’s launch where every game made for it was contractually obligated to use both screens and the microphone the same way Wii games were obligated to use the motion controls even if it wasn’t the best way.
"The worst RPG ever made"
ah, must be a lunar dragon song video.
I think I played this game on an emulator during my "crazy DS RPG" phase, thankfully I got bored after 30 minutes so I didn't suffer much.
This made it to the west and not Mother 3. Let that sink in for a moment.
This was made by a 3rd party, not Nintendo themselves.
@@micmac274but Nintendo published it
There is no justice
Mother 3 is bad
@@leargamma4912 Heresy
The original Lunar games meant a lot to me, especially Silver Star. I played them at the perfect age so they were pretty special. GameArts did a masterful job importing Silver Star and Eternal Blue giving the games so much charm and character and Lunar became something I was desperate to see more of…and then I played this. I probably only played a few hours, and never touched it again. It didn’t feel like Lunar in the slightest and the games mechanics were frustrating at every turn.
Still one of my favorite nostalgic game series, those intros when you start the games bring up all the feels. It’s just sad to see the series died with this outing.
You forgot to mention how Jian gets cursed partway through the story and loses his triple kick.
My take as a up and coming game designer.
I would be fine with running costing a resource. Like it would be cool if they had a separate parameter for running, like SP (Stamina Points) along with HP and MP. Use SP to run away from slow monsters, or you could also save it for special skills some characters could have, and if you used it for running you still would have MP for magic skills. I do think that the running resource mechanic should be disabled in safe zones though, like you said. There, this way it's an interesting twist to run from monster in the overworld, rather than having the monsters be faster than you and starting a battle, the monsters can be slow.
Choosing between EXP and Items actually sounds interesting, however the problem lays forth when they add durability to the gear. If they want the player to choose between GP or EXP, remove the durability mechanic. It makes it impossible to actually upgrade your party members if their gear keeps breaking. Along with that, if you feel overleveled you can get more money instead, or if you feel wealthy you can get more experience.
Allow the player to chose who they are attacking, that auto-play is dumb. What is this, a mobile gacha game where you just grind the same dungeon for 1000+ times straight? Taking away choice takes away player agency, not good.
The one time I tried to run it nearly killed me, so I can't blame them for realism.
Real talk though if Flyann ever got to playing silver star and eternal blue that would be rad.
Specifically the ps1 versions though, I can't speak for the sega CD originals since I never played them but I really loved playing through the games on ps1 even with the nutty localization and adjusted difficulty (which honestly makes the dungeons and bosses more interesting for me.)
I don't actually understand how it's possible to make a game this bad. It doesn't even seem that lazy, it's like they tried, but were so full of themselves that they didn't test it to see if anything was good.
I remember back in the day, a friend of mine asked me to help him play this game on his DS. I was happy to help, since i was no stranger to RPGs and i used to love them (still do, but im not as patient as i used to be). Later, i realized the horrible mechanics of the game, the worst offender being having to decide if you wanted money or XP. Remembering this is really funny since my friend was almost lending me burden of beating that terrible game for him. Every time i was done with the game he used to tell me "no, no, you keep playing, its ok".
What makes it worse is that every other game in the series ranges from damn good to masterpiece, and before this game came out there hadn't been a new entry in the series that wasn't just a remake in a decade. Add on that since this was the most easily obtainable title in the series and likely most people's introduction to the Lunar series just makes it so much worse.
I was living overseas, and taking the bus for about an hour and a half each day. When my roommate went back to the US for a family event, I sent him with money to buy a DS. I could only afford one game, so I chose an RPG, and you know where this is going. This was literally my only game. It was this or staring out the window. I chose to stare out the window.
Fun fact: the sound of a bus engine is loud enough to activate the microphone trigger, so I had to cover it up with my hand in order to battle.
I got this game as a gift from my oldest brother one year for Christmas, along with a different game that I don't remember.
I am the kind of kid who would read the entire instruction manual for a game before playing even a second of it. So I already knew that running would cause the player to lose health.
I only played this game long enough to find out if it was true, then turned it off, put it away, and never touched it again.
Flyann Lore.
Ngl though, I'd love more videos like this one.
(Less trauma, ofc)
Anti-Player Mechanics: The RPG
"maybe the devs didn't intend for you to lose hp while running in cities"
no they fully intended it, i'll give you two reasons
first reason if you hit the start button in a city built in guide states is drains 1/3 of your hp
second reason, there are free heal statues plastered all over the place, that's also in the built in guide.
the blue chest are just extra healing.
if that wasn't enough you also get cards which give you anything from running away to healing hp or mp
i learned quickly this game loves to inflict statues effects on you, but it's a non issue once the battles over.
In most RPGs you aim to level up so you can become stronger and beat stronger opponents.
In this RPG, you aim to level up so you can have more HP in order to sprint longer.
Not the only RPG I've seen where running around the map is punished.
Dragon Quarter, the game that killed Breath of Fire, has a constant timer. Running causes that timer to Rapidly count down.
At least DQ had a gross-cool animation of a dragon popping out of your skin when your timer was out.
When you search for a game on UA-cam and the first result is a video named "The worst RPG ever made", that's not a good sign a guess.
Before Dark Souls was even a thing, this game tried to be the Dark Souls of JRPGs, only to be the E.T. the video game of JRPGs instead.
Yikes. The only thing my father ever got me was Super Smash Bros melee. It sounds great, but I was an only child and never had friends close by to play with me. I literally only got to play it once a year on rare occasions when I would be at his house over the summer ,and he would have to be home to make sure I wasn't doing anything (idk, in hindsight, it makes no sense why i wasn't allowed to play games or watch movies without him being there after he got from work at 5pm.) So even with my half-siblings, we didn't get very far. I never unlocked all the characters because I also wasn't allowed to use a computer without his supervision and didn't know anyone else who played games. But hey, he tried.
Sorry about that. Hope u can play with others now.
@@EvyDevy Thanks. Things are much different 20 years later. At the very least, it got me into a bunch of other game series that I love.
@@Zach984racer That's good!
When I used to play Melee, I would mostly just play through the single player modes to prevent myself from becoming bored.
I remember getting this game at a garage sale as a kid 😂 worst $5 I ever spent
the blowing to run away was probably part of the devs contract ik many early ds games were contractually obligated to use each feature of the ds
The only thing that drove me nuts was the equipment breaking all the time. It got to the point where I was saving the game before EVERY battle and having to reload over and over again with how much things broke since things got ridiculously expensive and it took forever to earn the materials to complete the jobs that gave you even a halfway decent amount of money, even with using the trade market. Most frustrating feature ever.
I know this is an old video, but thank you for covering this monstrosity the way it deserves. I'll never forgive this game for killing the chance for any new lunar games.
"Knife uses ammo" moment
I wasn’t sure what to expect when going to the comments, but I didn’t expect the video to only be scratching the surface of what is wrong with this game
FINALLY, Yiik has some good competition! It was starting to get old!
A good artist (ie a good game designer) knows how to follow the rules. A great artist knows how to break them. These folks did not know how to break them. They evidently just broke rules at random to be unique without understanding why those rules existed.
I love that not only does running drain HP, it apparently has no obvious damage animation. How many kids didn't even realize it was happening?
This game has every bad game design mechanic and then adds some I've never heard of before.
The plot is worse than you think. Lucia is the name of the female protagonist of Lunar 2. Right down to the spelling. There's sooo much they could have done with the whole human/beastmen plot , but they don't. And Lucia's whole plotline is a hash for rehash of Luna's plot from Lunar 1. I hate this game. Hate. Lunar shouldn't have ended this way.
This is what happens when your Boss tells you to do something and you are too scared to tell him he's wrong. Most Japanese companies are like this. When your Boss tells you to do something, you're not expected to grow a brain and actually think if it is correct. You just follow and do whatever he wants, work until 1am, go drink alcohol until 5am and go back to work again at 6am to continue to work. 🙂
"Find every copy and destroy it!"
I agree it needs the Shaq Fu treatment!
It.. hurts my soul that "Lunar" and "The Worst RPG" has no choice but to coexist in the same sentence...
But that's what this atrocity of a game has led to apparently.. and harm an otherwise what is possibly the best RPG series..
That’s why I’ve never run a 5k because by Lunar Dragon Song standards I’d be dead.
"Hoshi Wo Miru Hito" (aka "Stargazer")
"Last Rebellion"
Here are actual contenders for "worst RPG ever made".
The first has been dubbed the "Legendary Shitty Game".
The second caused the president of NIS America to apologize for releasing it in the US and comment that he felt sorry for their customers.
This game is a shining example of just because it's different doesn't make it good
I absolutely loved Lunar Silver Star, and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue... this game was so dissapointing. I beat it. I spent a lot of time on it. I had fun with it, but I knew it was garbage. From the mechanics to the story, to the balance... it was a mess.
I was so beyond disappointed with this game. I loved the Lunar series and this entry just completely ruined it. WHY did they think this was a good idea? Why couldn't they have gone the traditional route that was already established?
This game wasn't that bad, had a fire soundtrack and was actually pretty fun when you figured it out.
$2? That sounds like it's $1.99 overpriced
If they wanted the whole sprinting damage mechanic, at least have it drain your mp bar instead…
such a shame cuz the other lunar games are masterpieces
Yeah as amazingly generic as they are in retrospect and boy... *dat voice acting*, they're solid little games with good audio/visual assets and actual challenge and strategic gameplay.
@@LeoMidoriAlthough the challenge was 100% created by the localizers buffing enemy stats out the wazoo, as they did for every game they got their hands on.
Bro I’ve been talking for ages about how LDS is absolute dogshit. It’s like the devs had a contest to see who could come up with the most awful game mechanics. Also why do new party members join at level 1 with dogwater equipment??? They’re useless when you get them. I love DS and GBA JRPGs but oh my god this game is an atrocity.
even as a ten year old child i knew this game sucked. i still powered through, because i was a kid and kids are stupid and assumed it was Just Supposed To Be Like That.... god, though, the ending was such a nothingburger that even after all that effort i took to complete the game i just sat there wondering if i'd missed something
Damn, and I remember beating this game as a kid, at one point Jian even loses the ability to do the triple kick and only does 1 kick instead. 💀
Well im sorry... i have no freakin idea how to kick 3 times when im badly hurt....
I was devastated with where they took Lunar. So much potential wasted
The Hikyou Tankentai: Choutoko Special and SEGA AGES 2500 Vol.23: SEGA Memorial Selection are considered Game of the Year back then, many faithful fans still waiting for their sequels
What a nice dad, shame what he did to his son 😢
*Hears the plot*
I hate it already.
I haven't even watched the video yet but seeing Jian's dumb sweaty running ass in the thumbnail is already bringing back angry memories.
i feel like a simple mod taking away the damage, the farming, and the targetting..oh man
Targeting would be harder, since the targeting system would have to be made from scratch. No damage from sprinting and getting both items and XP from encounters should be easy though.
When I saw the title, I thought "surely it isn't that bad, right?", but boy, was I proven wrong. It looks worse than Granstream Saga for the PS1, and that's saying a lot, because that game was awful.
Nice! I saw the title of your video and thumbnail text, and immediately was guessing and thinking, "Lunar Dragon Song?" I was pleased to see I was right.
no lie my dad ALSO bought me this game out of the blue. I honestly really tried to make sense of the game. Hearing it was 2$ makes a lot of sense
oh mama just wait till Hoshigami: Ruining Blue Earth
This game hurts me, cause I really liked the previous Lunar games, especially Lunar 2.
why the triple six in the username?
why do FLOCKS of immature people on youtube in the last four years think they are cool putting triple six in their username?
my gosh! It's like they are fake accounts or immature kids breaking age restrictions. Intentionally trolling the waters for endangered species to molest; yangzhi river dolphins. Baby blue whales. to fill the holds of their false ships' comment sections.
people treat that number like it is 888 or #23, 32, 33, or 34 in the 1990s basketball. They act like there is power in it that by displaying it will channel to them success.
It is unoriginality and false emulation. An attempt to represent evil not good. It stands for accusation and bondage. Incompletion. Rending of root and branch, and loss of progression, not power.
You can do better. I know.
We are both Gen1
The sad thing is all they had to do is make another Lunar game. I mean you have two of them already. They're both great. Just make that...
So what I gather is the natural flow of gameplay is to end up soft locked from a sub hobo class gameplay economy where it’s easier to start fresh then attempting to continue on damaged equipment and no money.
I knew exactly what game it is just by the title card that said "Running hurts you",
I will never forget that I wasted money on this game all because I saw dragon in the title. I think I got a little over halfway through it before I gave up. Anybody thinking of playing it, just don't. It's so bad and boring! Don't be like me! There are better games that also have dragon in the title!
When Ubisoft jumps on a game to publish it you _know_ that’s some primo dogshit that’s gonna make some tax shelter money in Germany.
This game repeatedly broke me, and I gave it some REALLY good tries. I kept running up against an inability to acquire healing and cash to maintain weapons to actually proceed along the plot. I could grind and end up with a net loss, or try to plow through and end up with a game loss because the balance was all f'd.
I bought this game at launch being a fan of the Lunar series and god was it awful. It's like they learned no lessons from any RPG before it or thought about the player experience at all. I mean imagine fighting a boss with minions that you just have to hope your characters will attack. Its like they set out to make a game for a younger audience and simplified things to the point of obscurity.
Your dad pulled the ultimate prank.
They might as well have just gone all the way and let them kill the characters so that way you could just die and play Something Else.
The concept that sprinting hurts you *wasn't even a new idea for the genre* . 1994's エデアの日 had it. The difference being
1: In that era, having a run button by default was unusual (remember the FF trilogy needed an item or ability to enable b dash in the original SFC releases, the ports and remakes are when it became a default ability and the things that enabled dashing now just increased the dash's speed further)
2: It was a very early example of showing enemies on the field instead of random encounters (predating Earthbound and Chrono Trigger) and the dash is clearly intended to be a tool that allows evading theses at a cost.
3: The cost doesn't scale (it's a fixed amount of HP, not a percent of it), and the chance of HP lose is based on a stat check. This means past early game the cost is essentially nothing
4: Since you had a DQ4-esque solo intro for most party members, this actually distinguishes them a bit (the pro athlete doesn't have issues running, but the frail psychic does).
5: It's a spiritual successor to a game that *literally* had the publisher publish an untested beta release without the developer's knowledge because development was taking too long and only became famous for how broken and strange it was, while the aesthetic deliberately weird. Weird ideas are to be expected in such a development.
The cost doesn't scaling and that the HP substracted is based (aside from a status check) in how "physically fit" the character of the party are does sound like good concepts
The SaGa games had overworld enemies as early as RS SaGa 1.... why am i commenting 6 months later?